After exploring the Florida Department of Education's website (www.fldoe.org), my county's website (www.marion.k12.fl.us), three other websites from our text by Shelly, Gunter, and Gunter (2010: www.google.com/educators, bensguide.gpo.gov, and www.educationworld.com), and doing some indepdent searching for teacher resources, I've realized that there is a LOT of stuff out there. One thing I noticed was the number of lesson plans out there in cyberspace. While a lot of the lesson plans provide age ranges and descriptions, having to read all those descriptions to find the lesson plan you want would be time consuming. Also, when you get to junior high/middle school and high school, a lot of times they're all grouped in together so you can have a lesson plan that could potential be used for students from 6th grade to 12th grade. After eliminating many of the lesson plans based on their descriptions, you would have to review the lesson plan to make sure that you could do it and that it was appropriate for your students. If all lesson plans had tags or keywords such as technology-based, English Language Learner appropriate, explicit instruction, etc, it would save some time. Also, you'd have to have criteria set up before hand to evaluate lesson plans for quality. A lesson plan may sound like it would be fun and your students might love it, but it might be lacking in some way (goals and assessments matching, accurate time estimates, etc). Another thing to consider is teacher experience level. They could label lesson plans with beginner, intermediate, and advanced. It's not that the beginning teacher isn't capable or couldn't use an advanced lesson plan, but if it was labeled as such then he or she would know to ask a more experienced teacher where the lesson plan might be problematic in the execution and whether they could modify it to prevent problems. Beginning teachers (like me) often don't have the experience to know what activities may cause which kinds of problems and what they should do beforehand to mitigate the potential chaos.
It would be difficult and time consuming to go through everything available on the web to find what you needed. There are tons of articles, websites, apps, videos, and blogs dealing with education. There's just no way for any one teacher to keep up with all of it. I think that's a good reason for supporting collaboration among teachers. If each teacher in a group keeps up with a part then they can share the useful stuff with others.
Shelly, G.B., Gunter, G.A., and Gunter, R.E. 2010 Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom (6th Ed.). Boston, MA: Course Technology.
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean reagarding so much information on the web that it can feel overwhelming. I honestly have given up searching for something and just done it on my own due to the inconvenience of the search. But you can find some good sites that separate the information better. Usually they are the ones for your specific course and/or grade level. Or even collaborative groups that have been formed of other teachers in your same boat (sometimes through teacher associations).
And if you are lucky enough to be in a group of teachers in your school that want to/ and have time to share... and the school is participating, then you are in luck!
Alex
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteI also found the state and my county page (Brevard County) to be full of useful information. What was your favorite section of these pages? I found it to be a useful way to keep parents and students informed on things like upcoming school functions, student holiday schedules and upcoming lunch menus. Think of the time we can save in responding to emails if we simply include the link to these pages in our newsletters so that parents can look up this information for themselves! I also found the section on inservices and professional development to be useful, as teachers can easily look up and register online for upcoming seminars that interest them.
I also found that there an overwhelming amount of lesson plans available online. It is true that very few of these plans can be simply taken as they are and used in the classroom as every state and county has different standards, and every classroom dynamic is different. However, I have found in the past that even if you don't use the plan exactly how it is, these resources can still be very useful for getting ideas or tweaking them for use in your own classroom.
Megan Smith
I agree that the abundance of content is certainly overwhelming. I completely agree with your statement that there is such an abundance of information that it is quite a bit of work for educators to sift through. There are so many different lesson plans available and websites that offer instructional suppliments. While it is a lot of work, I feel like it is an overwhelmingly good thing. We as educators don't have to use all of the stuff that is out there. It is merely a menu of options. I'm really glad I read this post as well as the research for the assignment. I plan on utilizing these resources in the classroom in the future.
ReplyDeleteOne of your main points that I couldn't agree with more was the idea of a central theme of tagging the available content. It would be infinitely easier for educators to share their content as a community. It seems that while there are a ton of things being made available online, there is somewhat of a lack of structure. If there was a more organized way to tag these content pieces, we as educators would really be onto something in the way of creating a limitless center of resources.
I completely agree with you about tagging lesson plans with keywords and just the need for a better searchable database in general. If we can search for a car by year, make, model, mileage, body style, color, miles from home, ext. you would think we could create something encompassing all the criteria you included. In fact, why not shoot for the moon and create a website that accomplishes all this and network it among all the teachers of the world. We could create the ultimate teachers database! It really doesn’t sound that hard. With networks and computers these days it seams like we can accomplish anything.
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely correct when you write about finding lesson plans and how time consuming they are to read. However, in my experiences, the time has paid off in the classroom. I have obtained a lot of good lessons off of the Internet. At my school, we have had different teachers who teach the same subject research different lesson plan topics on the Internet and then share them at a meeting, just as you suggested. This has saved us time and frustration with all the information in the Internet.
ReplyDeleteYou have a lot of good ideas about how to organize a website devoted to lesson plans. For example, “If all lesson plans had tags or keywords such as technology-based, English Language Learner appropriate, explicit instruction, etc, it would save some time.” Perhaps you should start your own website that would make it easier to search lesson plans.