3.3 Online & Blended Learning
Candidates develop, model, and facilitate the use of online and blended learning, digital content, and learning networks to support and extend student learning and expand opportunities and choices for professional learning for teachers and administrators. (PSC 3.3/ISTE 3c)
3.3 Online & Blended Learning
Candidates develop, model, and facilitate the use of online and blended learning, digital content, and learning networks to support and extend student learning and expand opportunities and choices for professional learning for teachers and administrators. (PSC 3.3/ISTE 3c)
ITEC 7430
Internet Lesson Plan Project
The Internet Lesson Plan was created for IB Literature II, a class of Seniors, to accompany our study of literary nonfiction, beginning with Orwell’s Down and out in Paris and London, among others. I designed this lesson plan for the Senior IB team and their classes so that students could research the work’s context and produce a presentation to involve the class in their study of the context of the work. Student teams use Internet tools to produce visuals, geographic location details, and credible sources for historical information about the work. Then, the class demonstrates their learning from the presentation by participating in an online student response tool that engages creativity. Finally, each student in the class responds to their learning about memoirs by producing one of their own. In doing so, the whole classroom engages with the ISTE standards for students of Knowledge Constructor, Empowered Learner, and Creative Communicator (ISTE, 2019). The Internet Lesson Plan is an example of blended learning, includes all digital content, and uses online learning collaboration to network students.
The Internet Lesson Plan induced me to develop online, blended learning, and digital content for a unit that is difficult for students to show progress in. In a traditional approach for an English classroom, students would read a memoir and then they might analyze it or try to write a pastiche to demonstrate the skills associated with understanding a memoir’s exigence and the writing skills involved with creating personal content. My trouble with this unit in the past had been that assessing skills in reading a memoir had been limited to questions about what happened in the work. Self-expression skills were limited to words, and the ability to generate vocabulary to express complex emotions is not yet fully developed in Seniors; it’s a skill that’s better demonstrated through visuals and music, arrangement, and abstract renditions. So, I developed a plan that capitalized on the prominent features in the memoir: context, personal narrative, persona of the writer, and expression of ideas through means other than text. The students created a context learning module for their classes using online tools such as GoogleVoyager which allows shared knowledge of geographic locales and even an assessment opportunity for those who engage with the application. Then, in a blended learning environment, I leveraged flipped classroom to offer content skills digitally through our LMS. Students could self-assess knowledge and skills that were required to read the Orwell memoir successfully. Then, I used our LMS’s discussion boards to break up the class into groups who led online discussions outside of class. This learning network helped us to have more intense discussions of scenes in the memoir which demonstrated the skills I’d asked them to learn. Finally, I asked the students to create their own memoirs using an online tools such as Adobe Spark or iMovie to create a presentation that purposefully incorporated music, visuals, and a storyline to vividly capture the emotional content of one moment that was important to them. Since many of my students are ELL, and since many of my students are still growing in vocabulary, they lack the advanced writing skills to fully capture emotional content. The online tool provided choice for students to demonstrate their mastery of memoir skills in an alternate way to writing an essay.
Then, I shared the plan with my teams. Often, teachers fear creating or using online or blended learning because it takes too much time and energy to “figure out.” However, I mad my Internet Lesson Plan was available to them with directions and coaching. Teachers’ choices to assess skills can be as limited as student’s choices, sometimes. The Internet Lesson Plan helped me to facilitate other opportunities for my teachers to assess their students in meaningful ways. Further, the Plan aided teachers in distributing the burden of teaching across the learning network of students. The teachers could become purposeful guides instead of having to direct all the learning.
Teaching memoirs is complicated, and teachers know that to write one is to know one. However, teachers have the complication of having to instruct writing skills on top of memoir skills, and they generally shy away from personal expressions because the energy it takes to teach that well is too much. The Internet Lesson Plan expands opportunities for teachers flexibility in product they demand. The Plan is a model for how to assess emotional content and the expression of memory without having to also teach inordinate amounts of writing skills to do that. It facilitates opportunities for teachers to learn other tools besides the ones they are used to, as well. I had to coach and teach my colleagues how to use the tools and even encouraged them to let their students help them through that process.
The Internet Lesson Plan responds to every single skill in the unit. That is helpful because for two whole weeks a teachers can use the plan without changing to another one. However, there are three distinct products required of students, and therefore, three opportunities for teachers to assess skills formally. This, not to mention the informal opportunities for students to learn using the LMS. In short, there is a lot going on. Too much, in fact. Sometimes students didn’t know what to prioritize - the instruction to their peers, the discussion, or the writing. So, they lost sight of what they should be working on. I would break up the Plan into three stages, with a rubric given at each stage’s product. Then, I would introduce each stage of the Plan separately. That way, a teacher is less overwhelmed with the appearance of enormity, and the students are better able to focus on the implementation of one section at a time.
I believe that memoirs are central to the genre of nonfiction. Teaching them demonstrates the importance of the individual’s voice in context and conversation with a society. There are not many opportunities for a student to practice meaningful self-expression that is a result of pastiche. And written pastiche just doesn’t have the same teaching opportunities since it requires vocabulary and writing skills students don’t have yet. The Internet Lesson Plan invites students to study the individual voice of one against many and then to produce an equally meaningful work of their own - without struggling with the medium itself. To create a meaningful message of one’s own using tools that heighten its effect is to compete in the world outside of school. Once graduates leave the building, they need to have a working knowledge of the tools that enable them to communicate their messages, and these messages often do not necessarily exist in all-text form. When they used the plan, teachers were inspired to use tools more often in their classes, convinced that the use of digital tools expanded choices for them and their students beyond what traditional written expression and content delivery could offer.
Candidates develop, model, and facilitate the use of online and blended learning, digital content, and learning networks to support and extend student learning and expand opportunities and choices for professional learning for teachers and administrators. (PSC 3.3/ISTE 3c)
ITEC 7430
Internet Lesson Plan Project
The Internet Lesson Plan was created for IB Literature II, a class of Seniors, to accompany our study of literary nonfiction, beginning with Orwell’s Down and out in Paris and London, among others. I designed this lesson plan for the Senior IB team and their classes so that students could research the work’s context and produce a presentation to involve the class in their study of the context of the work. Student teams use Internet tools to produce visuals, geographic location details, and credible sources for historical information about the work. Then, the class demonstrates their learning from the presentation by participating in an online student response tool that engages creativity. Finally, each student in the class responds to their learning about memoirs by producing one of their own. In doing so, the whole classroom engages with the ISTE standards for students of Knowledge Constructor, Empowered Learner, and Creative Communicator (ISTE, 2019). The Internet Lesson Plan is an example of blended learning, includes all digital content, and uses online learning collaboration to network students.
The Internet Lesson Plan induced me to develop online, blended learning, and digital content for a unit that is difficult for students to show progress in. In a traditional approach for an English classroom, students would read a memoir and then they might analyze it or try to write a pastiche to demonstrate the skills associated with understanding a memoir’s exigence and the writing skills involved with creating personal content. My trouble with this unit in the past had been that assessing skills in reading a memoir had been limited to questions about what happened in the work. Self-expression skills were limited to words, and the ability to generate vocabulary to express complex emotions is not yet fully developed in Seniors; it’s a skill that’s better demonstrated through visuals and music, arrangement, and abstract renditions. So, I developed a plan that capitalized on the prominent features in the memoir: context, personal narrative, persona of the writer, and expression of ideas through means other than text. The students created a context learning module for their classes using online tools such as GoogleVoyager which allows shared knowledge of geographic locales and even an assessment opportunity for those who engage with the application. Then, in a blended learning environment, I leveraged flipped classroom to offer content skills digitally through our LMS. Students could self-assess knowledge and skills that were required to read the Orwell memoir successfully. Then, I used our LMS’s discussion boards to break up the class into groups who led online discussions outside of class. This learning network helped us to have more intense discussions of scenes in the memoir which demonstrated the skills I’d asked them to learn. Finally, I asked the students to create their own memoirs using an online tools such as Adobe Spark or iMovie to create a presentation that purposefully incorporated music, visuals, and a storyline to vividly capture the emotional content of one moment that was important to them. Since many of my students are ELL, and since many of my students are still growing in vocabulary, they lack the advanced writing skills to fully capture emotional content. The online tool provided choice for students to demonstrate their mastery of memoir skills in an alternate way to writing an essay.
Then, I shared the plan with my teams. Often, teachers fear creating or using online or blended learning because it takes too much time and energy to “figure out.” However, I mad my Internet Lesson Plan was available to them with directions and coaching. Teachers’ choices to assess skills can be as limited as student’s choices, sometimes. The Internet Lesson Plan helped me to facilitate other opportunities for my teachers to assess their students in meaningful ways. Further, the Plan aided teachers in distributing the burden of teaching across the learning network of students. The teachers could become purposeful guides instead of having to direct all the learning.
Teaching memoirs is complicated, and teachers know that to write one is to know one. However, teachers have the complication of having to instruct writing skills on top of memoir skills, and they generally shy away from personal expressions because the energy it takes to teach that well is too much. The Internet Lesson Plan expands opportunities for teachers flexibility in product they demand. The Plan is a model for how to assess emotional content and the expression of memory without having to also teach inordinate amounts of writing skills to do that. It facilitates opportunities for teachers to learn other tools besides the ones they are used to, as well. I had to coach and teach my colleagues how to use the tools and even encouraged them to let their students help them through that process.
The Internet Lesson Plan responds to every single skill in the unit. That is helpful because for two whole weeks a teachers can use the plan without changing to another one. However, there are three distinct products required of students, and therefore, three opportunities for teachers to assess skills formally. This, not to mention the informal opportunities for students to learn using the LMS. In short, there is a lot going on. Too much, in fact. Sometimes students didn’t know what to prioritize - the instruction to their peers, the discussion, or the writing. So, they lost sight of what they should be working on. I would break up the Plan into three stages, with a rubric given at each stage’s product. Then, I would introduce each stage of the Plan separately. That way, a teacher is less overwhelmed with the appearance of enormity, and the students are better able to focus on the implementation of one section at a time.
I believe that memoirs are central to the genre of nonfiction. Teaching them demonstrates the importance of the individual’s voice in context and conversation with a society. There are not many opportunities for a student to practice meaningful self-expression that is a result of pastiche. And written pastiche just doesn’t have the same teaching opportunities since it requires vocabulary and writing skills students don’t have yet. The Internet Lesson Plan invites students to study the individual voice of one against many and then to produce an equally meaningful work of their own - without struggling with the medium itself. To create a meaningful message of one’s own using tools that heighten its effect is to compete in the world outside of school. Once graduates leave the building, they need to have a working knowledge of the tools that enable them to communicate their messages, and these messages often do not necessarily exist in all-text form. When they used the plan, teachers were inspired to use tools more often in their classes, convinced that the use of digital tools expanded choices for them and their students beyond what traditional written expression and content delivery could offer.