Governor's Career and Technical Academy in Arlington

Weekly PBL Technical Journal

Due Date

Your weekly journal should be completed each day we have class, so if you are absent for any reason, you need to make up the class time outside of class. It should be ready for evaluation each Friday.

Objective

The major objective of this process is to help you conduct self-directed learning while you pursue the learning objectives of your IT / CS class through study and projects. Leaving the course you should be well prepared to perform self directed investigation and study in the future, and to document your results. These are skills which will make your future colleagues and employers very happy!

Process

Each week you will create a new journal entry linked from your ePortfolio. Use a top level heading for the week, and a second level heading for each day of the week. The first day of the week should include The Plan in the heading and describe what you want to accomplish during the week. The last day of the week should include Evaluation in the heading and reflect on what you accomplished relative to your plan. Feel free to use journal_template.html as a template if you wish.

Working either alone or with a partner or group (depending on the project), you should document each of the following parts of a successful learning process:

Investigation can be presented most effectively by including links to websites of resources and tutorials you used for learning. To share your creations you should provide links to the digital artifacts^* that you make during the week. These can include computer programs, web pages, digital graphics, system or network configuration files, etc.

Finally, reflection, which occurs both before and after each investigation and creation, should be presented explicitly in the body of your journal. How do you evaluate the tutorials and documentation you used? Where they clear and helpful? Did you learn anything new that you found especially engaging or exciting? How was your experience creating your computational artifact? Was it thrilling or frustrating? What do your experiences suggest you should do to adjust your learning plan for next week?

Evaluation

Your progress will be evaluated each week and you will be given a grade according to the following rubric:

Exceeds expectations (A - 4 points):

Work shows effective goal setting and serious engagement with stated project aims together with concrete evidence of significant progress toward attaining them. There is evidence of Investigation ↔ Reflection ↔ Creation throughout the week's work. The investigation resources chosen show careful consideration and evaluation for quality and usability. The journal entries contain specific and detailed information about the project, and both affective and effective assessment of the results. The computational artifacts created are of high quality and demonstrate pride of authorship and mastery of the specific educational aims of the project.

Meets expectations (B - 3 points):

Work shows engagement with project goals together with concrete evidence of progress toward attaining them. The journal entries contain specific information about the project. Evidence of Investigation ↔ Reflection ↔ Creation in the week's work. Journal entries provide essential documentation relevant to the project, and links to investigation resources and computational artifacts.

Partially meets expectations (C - 2 points):

Work shows engagement with project goals together with some evidence of progress toward attaining them. The journal entries contain information about the project. Some evidence of Investigation ↔ Reflection ↔ Creation in the week's work, and some evidence of use of investigative source materials and some progress toward the production of computational artifacts. Journal reflection provides information relevant to the project.

Needs to get in the game (D - 1 point):

A journal for the week was created, but shows only limited evidence of project progress.

Failed to make an appearance (E - 0 points):

Did not post journal for the week. No evidence of project progress.