How to Plan Lessons With Instructional Technology
- 1). Evaluate your audience. According to the University of North Carolina-Asheville's website, writing a lesson plan using instructional technology requires that you first understand who it is that will be using your lesson plans. Without a thorough understanding of who will be benefiting from your instruction, it is difficult to adequately plan and put together a lesson. (See reference 1) While you should certainly consider your audience, keep in mind that it is not easy to determine or guess how each student will respond to your teaching methods. It is probably best to consider your audience as a group because trying to tailor an entire course for individual students could prove to be cumbersome for even the most innovative of teachers. If your audience is college students, you should use age-appropriate instruction that is commensurate with their education level.
- 2). Create individualized and collaborative projects for learning. Student assessment should be done on an individual level so that you can adequately gauge whether or not students are absorbing the material. This can take place through the use of quizzes, exams, papers and the like. Students are likely to benefit more from the course, however, if these types of assessments are used in conjunction with collaborative efforts in which the students are empowered to feel like part of a group. One of the negative consequences of distance learning can be the feelings of isolation that students may feel from sitting at home and taking classes. By creating an online community within the classroom, you can engender a sense of belonging for the individual students. Class discussions, forums, chats, and even projects such as wikis can be used to create this instructional atmosphere.
- 3). Create a curriculum that engages the student in critical thinking. According to the Kent School District website (Washington), critical thinking is integrated into the curriculum by "framing" projects differently. (See reference 3) In other words, simple regurgitation of facts and figures will no longer suffice in today's digital age. Students have access to all the facts and figures they will probably ever need right at their fingertips. Today's learning environment requires that students be able to look at those facts and figures and extrapolate information to answer more complex questions. Information itself should no longer be seen as the goal of education, but rather as a tool to aid in the process of education. When planning your lessons, be sure to have your students address the implications of statistical data rather than simply know what the data is and where to find it. This can be done by simply requiring writing assignments that reflect on an issue rather than describe it. This activity can be appropriate for most age levels if done correctly. Integrate reflective summaries and thematic essays into your coursework for positive results. Your students will eventually come to appreciate your courses as different because you no longer engage in teaching in the usual mundane style that has characterized education for decades.
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