Sunday, November 2, 2014

Module 3, Unit 4, Activity 1: Instructional Goals for Selecting Digital Tools

Instructional objectives are the goals that we hope to reach, or the knowledge that we hope our students will acquire by the end of a particular lesson. The acronym SMART is a good way to remember how we should be setting our objectives –

Specific – Use specific language that clearly defines the goal you wish to achieve

Measurable – Be sure to understand what you expect to change in your students if they learn this lesson appropriately.

Achievable – Set realistic objectives that can be accomplished by all students if they make an effort.

Relevant – Make sure that your objectives relate to the overall lesson/term/yearly goals that the students are trying to reach.

Timeframe – State clearly how long this lesson/process will take until the results are measurable.

And so, when determining which tools we should use to achieve our objectives, I have found that TPACK is usually a good way to go about it. TPACK stands for Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge, and these are the three key building blocks for any lesson. While some people may discover an interesting technology and then try to develop a lesson plan to match it, lesson planning works more seamlessly when the teacher tries to think about all three aspects while developing a lesson and its objectives.

While the content that we have to teach will be set before time, how we teach it and what tools we use are what will decide whether or not it is an effective lesson. For example, let’s say that we’re doing a lesson on the Vietnam War, and we want the students to do some research on a key event that happened during that time. We could just have them Google it and write a paper, but by doing that, what would our objectives be? The copying of information from one source to their own paper?

We should think about how to make it more interesting and challenging for the students…which means that even though they have to think more about how to accomplish the assignment, they’ll enjoy doing it more. A simple assignment would be to have them create a Glog with images, videos, written summaries, and all of the animations that they wanted to include. This could serve the same purpose of having them delve deeper into an important time in American history, but they’ll have the freedom to decide how to present that information, which is a skill that will benefit them in the future.

But should they do this work in groups or alone? Should it be up to the individual students? When deciding things like this, as well, the teacher must consider the class and its dynamics. Many students will probably benefit from doing a project like this for the first time collaboratively, while some students may feel comfortable working individually.

And after thinking about the class dynamics, maybe the teacher will realize that some students may enjoy making a mindmap instead, and so will offer the students a couple of choices as to how they want to complete this project.

Choosing a technological tool isn’t just about choosing something so that you can say that you’ve used technology in the classroom. It’s about choosing the right tool for that lesson and for your students, and, if need be, giving them a number of different options for accomplishing the same task.

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