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3. Create a Timeline
A timeline will assist your team members in pacing themselves to meet
the project deadline . Be sure to ask the following questions:
When will the project begin?
Based on each classroom's schedule, decide approximately when the project must be
completed and then work backwards to determine when the project should begin. Check school
calendars. It's best to make sure the "launch" of the project does not interfere
with team members' school events, testing days or holidays.
What are the major milestones?
Identify the major milestones of the project so that you can pace yourselves, monitor your
progress and stay on task. An example of project milestones might be:
September 30: |
Project is announced to school leadership groups. |
October 30: |
Deadline for students to return their acceptable use policies and parental
consent forms. |
November 4: |
Classrooms meet for icebreaker activities. If team includes distant
collaborators, include email ice breakers. |
November 15: |
Classrooms brainstorm for topic idea. |
January 15: |
Deadline for collection of all project content. |
February 20: |
Deadline for organizing, word-processing and digitizing of all
content. |
March 14: |
Deadline for converting all content to Web pages. |
March 20: |
Deadline for uploading Web pages to the server for testing,
additional server programming and debugging. |
March 25: |
Solicit feedback from other classrooms. |
March 28: |
Discuss the learning and celebrate. |
Include a check list of tasks to be
accomplished.
Each milestone should have a series of tasks associated with it. Create a checklist of
specific tasks that might look like the following:
- September 30: Project is announced
- October 7: send parental permission letters home.
- October 30: Students have returned their acceptable use policies and
parental permissions.
Set incremental goals.
Set short range and long range goals so that you can experience success
throughout the project. Many beginners set overly ambitious goals and then feel frustrated
when they can not accomplish them all. It is better to have achievable and observable
incremental goals. For example, if your goal is to teach geometry, begin with 2-3
theorems. You can add more problems as time permits. |