Learning Pyramid

How do I know that I am going to retain the information I learned through my social bookmarking project?

The best way to retain information is to teach it. Then, the next level is to learn by doing or creating. This is the first thing that came to mind when I was refelcting about the project: the learning pyramid:

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~tbayston/eme6313/learning_pyramid.jpg

Besides learning about valuable skills and techniques I can incorporate in my future classroom in regards to social bookmarking, I learned how students can retain information.

How can we increase retaining information in classrooms (based on this project)?

1. Create interest through choice. I was interested in this topic, so I was eager to keep working on this project.

2. Group collaboration. Students will need to learn how to interact with others as they work towards a higher goal or product. This will be necessary in the real world, as I learned this myself working with classmates.

3. Working for a meaningful project. This project is one that we can all actually use in our lives. The skills we used towards creating this project are ones that we will need as we enter into the classroom, a future job. The project was meaningful; it wasn't just researching information on symbolism...

4. Learn by doing. We actually created our own websites that we are using. By immersing students in an active project, they will understand this material better than by trying to remember facts and regurgitate the information.

5. Teach your findings to classmates. This allowed for us to work on our oral presentation skills, as students will need this according to the standards. Students will learn better from one another because they are speaking in ways that one another can understand. They put their information into context that they can all understand. By teaching the class, students will learn many techniques/projects and will be an expert at one.

I think that having group projects like this in the classroom is very effective. Students use all four essential skills targeted in the standards, they interact with one another, they learn how to do the project with each other and on their own, and they actively create the project. They have ownership over their schoolwork, it provides purpose to the project, and they are interested in the project because it is of their choice.

My only concern would be that students should self-asses and group-assess every member's contribution in group work. Perhaps we should even be doing that in our group projects.