SPO Curriculum :: Lesson Plans

Introduction

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery"-Mark Van Doren

Be patient with yourself when learning something new. Teaching with Technology is a one-week intensive workshop for experienced educators in the design of learning experiences using design and emerging technology. The workshop brings together the teaching practices of experienced teachers with design-driven approaches to the application of technology for teaching and learning. This hands on learning design program helps teachers use new tools to expand and deepen their teaching practice.

This week long course takes teachers on an immersive journey in the application of design and technology to teaching and learning. We begin with your hardest teaching, content, and classroom challenges and use those to develop, prototype, and refine new and engaging approaches that advance teaching practice—and leave you with a roadmap to apply these techniques in the coming year.

We use an active-learning methodology that:

Makes students responsible for their own learning outcomes
Is built around fostering important questions in the minds of learners
Builds cooperative learning
Encourages personal exploration in the pursuit of common learning objectives
Focuses on rapid prototyping and testing
Emphasizes continuous documentation and sharing

Feedback Loops

"The formulation of the problem is often more essential than the solution."— Albert Einstein

We want our students to love learning and to be actively engaged. More important than just knowing facts we want them to be able to do something with their knowledge, to be creative and innovative., and we want our students to ask the right questions, to be able to :

Weigh The Evidence
– Is something true or false? What is the evidence, and is that evidence credible?
Be Aware of Varying Viewpoints
– What viewpoint is being heard? Who is the author, and what are his or her intentions? How might it look to someone with a different history?
To See Connections/Cause & Effect
– Is there a pattern? How are things connected? Where have you seen this before?
To Speculate on Possibilities/Conjecture
– What if? Supposing that? Can you imagine alternatives?
To Assess Value—Both Socially and Personally – What difference does it make? Who cares? So what?

—www.missionhillschool.org

Reframing a question can lead to innovation feedback loops are essential to engaging students in the learning process.

Flipping Classrooms

Applications
Games
Challenges
Digital Portfolios
Digital portfolios are online collections of student work—projects, rationale and reflections. More tha a transcript can, portfolios paint a clearer picture of the work that has been accomplished, it is a body of evidence that demonstrates both what a student can do and how that student has grown.

The digital portfolio provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate achievement, as well as set sights on the next level.

Applications
- Google Sites
  
  An Introduction to Google Sites
  Use Google Sites to create, customize and update/add to an online portfolio.
  
  The Site layout and theme include all the navigational/visual elements common to the entire site (all pages, all areas, all views, etc). This means the header, navigation sidebar(s), footer, top nagivation options, and discrete options for each section (Search box, content, etc).
  
  A page is any of the pages (sorry) contained within the site, organized into the site hierarchy, with specific content on each.
  
  A template is a blank version of a page that you can use over and over to provide the foundation of a new page you're creating.
  1. Navigate to sites.google.com and log in with your gmail account
  2. Click on the red CREATE button on the left side
  3. Click on the Browse the Gallery for more button to preview and select a starting template that suits your needs
  4. Click on any template and then click the Preview template button to see what it looks like with filler content
  5. Select your template and then name your site (use a descriptive phrase) and either leave the URL or change it to whatever you'd like
  6. Click the red CREATE button up top
  7. Time to address the sharing permissions:
    Click the blue Share button in the upper right, and set the sharing to Private until the site is ready to launch
  8. Note the buttons up top that you (as an editor) will see on every page, though viewers (non-editors) will not:
    
    The pencil will start edit mode (e) and the page+ button will create a brand new blank page. The more menu brings up a host of options. Press e to see the edit options:
  9. The important option is the Insert menu, which brings up a slew of things that you can embed into any page in your site:
    
    Note that you can click on the content area of this page and change any text, add images, insert goodies from the menu above, and change the content of the page. You may notice that the layout/surrounding areas stay put - to change that you'l need to change the templates.
  10. To exit editing mode, click on the Save or Cancel buttons in the upper right to accept or reject your changes.
  11. Setting site permissions and settings is important. Click on the More button in the upper right and then select Manage Site.
  12. Note the list of categories along the left side. The default selected is General. This is where you can edit the site's name and many other advanced options.
    
    and at the bottom:
  13. The Copy/Publish options will allow you make a duplicate of a site (useful if you'd like to create a new public version of a private site) or to create a template that others can use.
    
    Configure search lets a search box on your site search just your Site's content, your institution, or the Internet.
    
    Access settings will determine who can see site activity and revisions&mdah; you may want to restrict.
    
    Now if we go to the Pages option in the left sidebar, you will see a list of all pages in your site. This is useful for jumping to pages you'd like to edit or seeing the organizational tree. Note that some pages are sub-pages of others.
    
    Attachments lets you see a master list of all files uploaded to your Site. Note that this is different than uploading a file to Drive - this is a separate destination.
    
    Page templates is an important part of Sites - this is where you can create new templates (you can't edit default ones, but you can copy them and then modify as suits your needs) that you can apply to existing pages or use to create new pages. A Page is a finished page of content, while a Template is a blank sketch for where content of various types would flow into to become a finished page. You can have an unlimited number of each, but note that while you'll only need a visual scheme for templates, you'll need actual content for pages! You can set up templates from a selection of different layouts:
  14. On the left sidebar, under the red Manage Site column header click the title of your Site to return to the Site.
  15. Time to customize your pages, add and edit content!
  16. Back on the main page, press the More button/menu on the upper-right, and take a look at the options:
    
    Preview page as Viewer shows what someone who can see the Site (if its public or if they've been invited to see a private Site) would see in terms of content, options, etc.
    
    Revision History is very useful when editing collaboratively.
    
    Subscribe to changes will email updates to you as alerts. Also very useful when editing collaboratively.
    
    You can also change the current page's template, or if you really like the page save it as a template.
    
    Finally, you can use this menu to Edit site layout, which will let you modify the main layout elements of the entire site, that is, the areas that flank/accompany the content. This is where you can add a horizontal navigation bar which will allow you to easily link to URLs, make drop down menus and such that will be accessible on any page.
    
    Page Settings are where you can turn on commenting on a page for editors, choose to allow file uploads or not, and display the current template in use and select to display sub-pages or not.
  17. Time to create and organize these pages correctly:
    Go to the Participant Pages section to see a list of the current sub-pages.
    
    If you add a new page from here, you have the option of making it a sub-page of the current page. Do that.
  18. Name the page properly, and then select the location to Put page under Participant Pages so it's a sub-page
  19. Pick the right template.
  20. Press the Create button to now create the new sub-page, and note that it shows up in both the sidebar and list of the current sub-pages on the main participants page.
  21. Click on the blue Share button in the upper right, which brings you into the sharing section of the Site Management page.
  22. Click on the Enable page-level sharing permissions button in the upper right and enable page-level permissions.
  23. Select the page you'd like to share, and click the change button:
  24. Set the permissions as you'd like - always stay like this or auto-add new people who can see the whole site to this page as well.
    
    Note that in order to add someone to be able to view or edit an individual page, they must be at least be able to view the main page/Site. You can now select them from the shared list and set them to view, edit, or remove them from this individual page.
  25. Turn page commenting on or off for any page (note that only editors can comment!)
  26. With a little more exploration, you shoiuld be able to upload and organize files to a Site, display or embed Google Drive Docs or Folders, upload/embed/insert nearly any other resources, including:
    - Google Docs & Forms
    - Images
    - Maps
    - Insert and display a calendar from Google Calendars
    - Insert, edit and use different types of lists
    - Post on Announcement/Blog pages or read ones your peers have posted
    - Upload, embed and display images and videos:
      - Photos or Slideshows from Picasa
      - Videos from YouTube or Drive
      - Videos from other sources
      - Files from Drive
- Weebly
- Wordpress
Digital Portfolio Resources

Design Strategy Skills

Design strategies, like Visual Thinking, Mind Mapping and Sketchnoting can help students transform ideas into visual communication. Students who engage in any these activities listen and process information, structure their thoughts, cluster information, synthesize what is important and establish a hierarchy to concepts, facts and ideas.

Students can participate in these activities on and off a computer or tablet. If working offline, they should find a notebook that feels big enough to draw in, but small enough to bring everywhere. They should avoid using pencils, which will allow them to waste their time correcting mistakes. Students should use ink pens that are fast drying. If they make a mistake, they should cross it out

Concept Mapping
Often represented in circles or boxes, concepts are linked by words and phrases that explain the connection between the ideas. This structure helps students organize and structure their thoughts in order to understand information and discover new relationships. Most concept maps represent a hierarchical structure, with the overall, broad concept first with connected sub-topics, more specific concepts, following.

Concept maps
- Help students brainstorm and generate new ideas
- Encourage students to discover new concepts and the propositions that connect them
- Help students integrate new concepts with older concepts
- Enable students to gain enhanced knowledge of any topic and evaluate the information
The website below is a great way to use concept mapping at the beginning of a research project:
Instagrok
Visual Notetaking
Visual Notetaking or Visual Recording is the process of creating personal visual memory aids that keep students engaged and involved in a lecture. It is not the only or even the best way to take notes, but it can be very helpful to certain students. The idea is to capture the key points and what is relevant to the student from a lecture, presentation or lesson. It forces them to listen carefully, process the information and translate the important points into a structured hierarchy. The notes are personal, expresive and creative, which helps student retain more from the lesson. By practicing this form of note taking, students develop their listening,organizing and synthesizing skills.

Notes become expressive, creative and personal to each student. Listening and synthesizing involves active decision-making when it comes to filtering the important meassages, laying out the information and finding ways to translate the written words into pictures.

Visual Notetaking forces a student to actively listen, synthesize the information, help identfy trends and patterns. Improves understanding, provides triggers. The Head First series uses surprising and humorous imagery to help you remember the different ideas. Visual Notetaking works the same way.

Before you begin drawing have a sense about where a talk or lecture is going. If it is an hour talk divide your drawing space into accordingly.

The goal of Visual Notetaking and sketchnotes is to listen, synthesize and visualize.

Avoid making lists or outlines and use the spatial properties of the page to your advantage by "chunking" information. Some ways to force yourself to work spatially might be starting in the middle and working outwards or working in columns for a panel discussion.

There are 6 Fundamental components to making Visual Notetaking:
1. Letters and Typography
2. Bullets
3. Frames—some of the more common containers include (but are not limited to): quote bubbles, boxes, circles and thought clouds.
4. Conectors—connect ideas and pieces of stories with arrows and lines.
5. Shadows
6. People and a few basic icons (internal library of imagery
If you mess up a line, draw it again. If you misspell a word, scratch it out and rewrite it. You want to capture what you are listening to, and you can also add your own commentary. Visual notetaking needs to just capture the keypoints. It is essentioal to not focus on the details of your imagery, at least while you are in the process. Remember, it is not about the drawing, but about the listening and capturing of ideas. If you can look at your notes and retell the story you've heard, then you've done it right

What tools you choose, paper, tablet, pens, a stylus, etc, should be determined by what one is comfortable using. If the tool is too confusing, the process won't work. It takes all of your attention to listen and synthesize and you want to have a language that already exists and is easy to implement. I personally prefer pen and paper, but I need to use technology in order to share my sketches.

Resources for Visual Notetaking
- Drawing in class: Rachel Smith at TEDxUFM
- Giulia Forsythe at Faculty Academy 2012
- What Does Doodling do? by JACKIE ANDRADE, School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, UK, 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
- TOOLS (iPad / iPod Touch / iPhone apps)
Sketchnotes
Sketchnotes are a form of visual notetaking. They tare simple and clear visual maps that take advantage of visual libraries, typography, shapes, arrows, and boxes. Visual metaphors can help you illustrate or remember a more abstract concept. Draw someone losing track of time. Sketchnoting takes advantage of metaphors and images. If a lecturer or lesson refers to a book you can write the title or passage on the image of a book. To emphasize that something is a quotation, place the text in a speech bubble.
You can create your sketchnotes any way that suits you, but if you need some help you can take advantage of the following frameworks or patterns: Linear: left to right
Radial
Vertical: top to bottom
Path (journey)
Modular/Grids
Panels
Popcorn

http://sketchnotearmy.com
An Educator's Guide to Sketchnoting
Mindmapping
Mindmappping is a thinking tool that helps students use images, colors and text to link and cluster ideas. To create a mindmap, start with a central concept, topic, idea, word, question, or problem and connect key ideas to the central idea through branches and subbranches.
- Ws: who/ what, how much, where, when, how, and why.
- Classification: Arrangements or relationships.
- Definitions: Meanings of things.
- Divisions: Chapters or lessons or themes.
- Evaluation: Benefits.
- Function: What things do.
- History: Chronological sequence of events.
- Process: How things work.
- Properties: Characteristics.
- Roles: Roles or relationships of characters.
- floating concept.
- Ws: Who/ what, how much, where, when, how, why, what if, and what else?
- Purpose: Why are you reading this? Why does it matter? What is your desired outcome? What do you want to be able to do with this?
- Clarity: Do you understand the concepts? Could you express the concept in another way? Could you give an example? How should you interpret it?
- Accuracy: Is the information true? How do you know that it's true? Are you being a healthy skeptic? Have you captured it accurately? Do you need to refine any of your previous information based on these new facts?
- Precision: What are the details? Do you need additional specifics? Could you be more exact? Are you getting stuck in the details?
- Relevance: How is this connected to other information? What does this mean? Why is this important? Are you being diverted away from the main point? Are you letting your personal biases lead you astray? How can you apply it to other information?
- Depth: What's the big picture and what else is missing? What are the different layers of complexity? Are you addressing all the complexities? Are you dealing systematically with parts of the whole?
- Breadth: Do you need to consider another point of view? Is there another way to look at this? Are you being open minded? Are you considering the whole?
- Logic: Does this make sense? Does it follow from what you already know or what you read? What are the assumptions? Does the evidence enable you to draw conclusions?
- Significance: Which of the concepts are most important? Are you focusing on key concepts?
- Fairness: Is the information biased? Are you looking from various viewpoints?
- Patterns: Are there any patterns (similarities, differences, dependence, independence, etc.)?
- Orderliness: Is there a better arrangement of details that could result in better understanding?
Source:Krasnic, Toni (2012-03-11). How to Study with Mind Maps: The Concise Learning Method for Students and Lifelong Learners (Expanded Edition) . Concise Books Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Resources for Mindmapping
- conciselearning
- www.biggerplate.com
Mindmapping Applications
- mindup
- mindmeister
- Scrapple
- Xmind
- iMindMap
- coggle
- freemind
- mind42
Books for Mindmapping
- Buzan, Tony, and Susanna Abbott. The Ultimate Book of Mind Maps: Unlock Your Creativity, Boost Your Memory, Change Your Life. London: HarperCollins, 2005. Print.
- Taylor, Michael. Mind Maps: Quicker Notes, Better Memory, and Improved Learning. 3.0rd ed. Lexington, KY, 2014. Print.
- Krasnic, Toni (2012-03-11). How to Study with Mind Maps: The Concise Learning Method for Students and Lifelong Learners (Expanded Edition) . Concise Books Publishing. Kindle Edition.
To help students develop their skills in a low pressure environment, have them practice note taking by watching a TED talk.

To share student notes consider:
- Google Drive
- Upload to school server
- Prezi
  See Transitions
  tutorial
- Display on web page