Designing Lessons and Developing Curriculum with Technology is a very important skill for teachers to be aware of. Technology can do way more than help students learn, technology can help the teachers as well. After this chapter I was very shocked at how many helpful tools there are out to help teachers create lessons plans. For instance, there are many teachers as stated in the book who need help with organization for their lesson plans. In order to keep students interested after awhile doing the same routine or lesson plans will only make the class distracted due to boredom. However, with the updated technology that is available today there are websites and applications to help teachers with this issue. Specifically in the book they mention a website called Thinkfinity which is a store house of thousands and thousands of curriculum ideas. The ideas are organized well by grade level, subject matter and can be easily searchable by key words. Using these key words, teachers have access to an endless amount of resources and lesson plan ideas that will be interesting for the entire class. This caught my attention because I was fully aware about the applications that are available but I did not realize the applications that are available to teachers. With applications like this the teachers can be creative and make all the lessons regardless of the subject matter interesting. I think that websites and applications such as Thinkfinity is extremely beneficial to students and teachers because it only helps the learning environment.
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Websites and applications such as Thinkfinity is wonderful for teachers however they are not helpful if the teacher does not know how to use the tools and lesson plans. In the text book, I found the three components to make a perfect lesson plan for all. A lesson plan should have goals, methods, and procedures to make sure that the lesson plan is well organized and planned out. Goals are defined as the reason why a lesson is being taught. Methods are the instructional strategies the teacher is going to present the content. Procedures is the organization of the lesson plan, for instance a procedure is the grouping and scheduling of the students. Reading this part of the chapter I realized that there is a bunch of components that fit into a lesson plan which is why applications such as Thinkfinity is so important because it helps teachers create these intense lessons. After I read this chapter I realized that there are a lot of thinking and work that goes into a lesson plan. However, without the organization of the lesson plan, the classroom would be too disruptive.
Although there are applications and websites such as Thinkfinity and there is an organization pattern that goes into lesson plans, teachers still have to make sure that their children are understanding the content. The problem with this is teachers end up figuring out who is not understanding the material on the day of the test which is also the last day of the section. Fortunately, this chapter also exposed me to the finding of applications for teaching. One application is called Cram which provides a content review through customized flashcards and short quizzes/tests. I immediately thought this was a perfect application with keeping up the students because instead of printed quizzes and tests, the class could take unique quizzes throughout the entire chapter. Also, they could take class quizzes, as a class they could create or make their own flashcards. Due to this, teachers can have a more interesting way in keeping track of where their children are at in the chapter. There was also a website that stuck out to me which was Teaching Channel, it is an online video resource that contains lesson planning, student behavior, assessment strategies and meeting the Common Core State Standards. Although the students can not do anything with this site, this is extremely beneficial to the teachers because it is a guideline. Teachers can go onto this website and learn new ways to teach their children to take assessments or new ways to teach the Common Core State Standards which is pressured heavily on teachers now a days. All in all, this chapter was very informative in regard to the basics of teaching.
Check out my summarized chapter review on Gliffy!(:
References:
Textbook - Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc
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