STAR LEGACY

• The star legacy model seems like a great approach to involve students in learning. By providing opportunities for students to take control of their learning they will hopefully find the work meaningful and put more effort into the lesson. I love how this model gives students a chance to reflect on their knowledge and compare their knowledge to what they should know. In addition, this model allows the student to go back and revisit the information and relearn parts that they have yet to master. I am a strong believer in the "mastery concept" and support any theory that engages the student while providing several opportunities to master the material.
  
• Another component of the star legacy model that I find useful is the application to the real world. I like the opportunity to enrich my lessons with an application project. My classes are set up with a lecture, short learning activities, a quiz, a collaborative project, and finally an exam. I am going to start substituting the star legacy method instead.
  
• I would definitely take advantage of free websites to create a learning environment for my classes. I have the luxury of teaching in a lab so I can implement many of the online learning techniques. A sample lesson about creating a marketing plan could include a challenge to create a marketing plan for the Charlotte Bobcats, the thought step would pose questions such as: what should be included in a marketing plan, who is a marketing plan presented to, and when is a marketing plan necessary. I could provide several resources and even some video segments from examples of other students presenting a marketing plan, as for the assessment I would go through each part of the marketing plan and ask the students questions about their plan. I really love this aspect in that it should save some time for me. I would list questions that I would generally be thinking of in my mind when grading the reports that my students usually turn in. By checking themselves off, I will hopefully receive a higher quality report that includes that information that I am looking for. In addition, I would "go public" by having my students present their marketing plans to different members of our school and community.
  
• This method lends itself perfectly for web based content. Although I am a big fan of the wiki for collaboration, when creating a report online like this in a group, I would encourage students to the use the reviewers part of Microsoft Word to make changes to the report during the assessment part. I would encourage the use of a group site such as google groups to post content. I would also encourage my students to skype to practice presentation skills. I also like screen toaster for narrating their powerpoint presentations. I also just learned about panopto and I think it would be a great way for my students to share information. Panopto allows the presenter to show notes or a document (marketing plan) on a screen along with posting a video in the same place. My students could present their powerpoint while also allowing those viewing the presentation to read over the marketing plan document at the same time. I also like its ability to allow the view to click on several different screen shots to skip to that portion of the presentation. I don't think it would work well in a group presentation though.