Designing Instruction with Technology

Learning Theories

Overview of Learning Theories

What is Learning Theory?

Cognitivism

Social Constructivism

Approaches to Lesson Development

Designing engaging learning experiences while envisioning creative instructional approaches is challenging for new teachers.

  • In this chapter, we look at online resources enable teachers to organize learning experiences for students, and offer models for how to incorporate these ideas into your classroom.
  • We include apps and web resources for creating lessons and expanding your professional knowledge as a teacher.

For a perspective on changing instructional practices at the college level, listen to Rethinking the Way College Students Are Taught from American Radio Works (2014).

Understanding by Design

What is the UbD Framework? by Jay McTighe & Grant Wiggins

3 Stages of UbD Planning

  • Identify Desired Results
  • Determine Assessment Evidence
  • Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction

Flipped Classrooms

Flipping the Classroom, Center for Teaching, Vanderbilt University

Eight Tips for Flipping Your American History Classroom from the Organization of American Historians

Flipped Social Studies

Start a Reading Revolution: Flip Your Class with Blogs

Flipping a History Classroom

10 Pros and Cons of a Flipped Classroom, TeachThought (January 8, 2018)

Online Tools for Teaching and Learning, Torrey Trust, University of Massachusetts Amherst

  • Assessment-Centered Tools
  • Community-Centered Tools
  • Knowledge-Centered Tools
  • Learner-Centered Tools

Web Resources and Apps for Researching Academic Content

From the Web

Annenberg Learner

  • A multimedia curriculum resource center with lesson plans, interactive activities, and videos for classroom use or for teacher professional development. Sections for the Arts, Foreign Language, Literature & Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and History include multiple topics. The site offers free use of online videos (no download rights) with options for purchasing DVDs or downloading other video materials. Many of the video resources on the site have been produced and filmed by public television stations and made available through the Annenberg site.
    • You can search topics within the site by grade, or discipline, or both. You can view all of the learning interactives, see contents of a course, read materials, enroll for graduate credit in a wide range of courses
      • Sign up for a free e-News email.The monthly NEWS page has a Curriculum Focus, Current Events, Connecting Learning with Special Days, Notable Birthdays, and Annenberg Announcements about new features or topics, with links to other resources about the topics. There are also videos of students, filmed by teachers.

PBS LearningMedia from the Public Broadcasting Service features thousands of lesson plans, professional development opportunities, videos, and blogs. There are on-demand streaming videos from selected PBS programs plus a special blog with customizable lesson plans and online discussions about media and technology in the classroom.

8 Top YouTube Channels to Boost Classroom Lessons


English/Language Arts


History/Social Studies

  • Technology Position Statement and Guidelines, National Council for the Social Studies (2013)
  • National History Education Clearinghouse (NHEC), developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the History Education Group at Stanford University
  • Offers an impressive collection of online resources, including a state-by-state database of history standards, customizable lesson plans, online discussion forums, and short updates on research and analysis in the field of history education. “Ask the Historian” invites teachers and students to submit questions online and receive answers from history researchers.
  • Smithsonian's History Explorer
  • National Geographic's Xpeditions
  • EconEDLink


Science and Mathematics

Early Childhood Education

Technology and Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8, National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media at St. Vincent College (2012)

State Level K-12 Curriculum Frameworks


Apps for Academic Content

  • TodayinHistory gives day-by-day listings of important events and notable people in history.
  • MathRefFree has hundreds of math formulas, figures and strategies.
  • iBooks allows teachers to download and read books and other materials; publications that are in the public domain are free.

Web Resources and Apps for Designing Learning Plans

From the Web

The Lesson Plan Generator, San Diego State University

The New Teacher's Guide to Creating Lesson Plans

Five-Minute Film Festival: 10 Sources for Free Lesson Plans from Edutopia.

Lesson Plans for Multiple Subject from Teacher Planet

Teachers continually seek ways to enliven day-to-day classroom teaching. New teachers tend to emphasize lectures and teacher-centered methods of instruction, often because they feel as though they have little time for, or experience with, other approaches. The web and app resources in this Tech Tool are intended to expand options for teaching while enhancing teacher productivity in the classroom.

Teaching Channel is an online video resource for teachers with materials in all subjects and across all the grade levels. Video topics include lesson planning, student behavior, assessment strategies, and the meeting the Common Core standards.

UbD Related Websites for Social Studies from Jay McTighe

My Lesson plan uses pre-established templates to support lesson planning by teachers. You can customize the app to fit the requirements of your school district or school.

Student-Designed Curriculum Helping Students Create Their Own Lesson Plans


Apps

Penultimate is a handwriting and drawing app for the iPad that includes photo annotation. Teachers can use it for on-the-go notetaking in the classroom, recording notes about student performance and activities.

Keynote is a presentation app that allows teachers to prepare dynamic visual slideshows complete with animation charts and transitions from one topic to another.

Cram provides content review through customized flashcards and short quizzes and tests.

BrainPopVideo and Children TV provide video materials for classroom use. BrainPop offers a video a day with quizzes and other follow-up activities; Children TV selects YouTube videos suitable for students of all ages.

5 Best Lesson Planning Apps for Teachers. See also

  • iStudiezPro lets you plan lessons and set deadlines with the feel of a real notebook.
    • EasyBib creates APA, MLA and Chicago-style citations.
      • SimpleMind does mindmapping and notetaking on phones and iPads.

Web Resources and Apps for Assessing Student Learning

Creating rubrics,designing quizzes,maintaining grades,and completing other student assessment activities can be time consuming parts of a new teacher’s job.The apps and web resources in this Tech Tool are designed to give teachers more resources for handling the many responsibilities of assessing student learning.

From the Web

Fair Test: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing is an online resource for keeping informed about testing policies and wider education debates about the effectiveness of standardized tests in assessing student learning.

RubiStar is an online tool for creating rubrics electronically.

  • The RubiStar system provides a set of templates that teachers can either use as written or customize to fit the parameters of a particular assignment.
    • Rubrics are provided in six areas: Multimedia, Products, Experiments, Oral Projects, Research and Writing, and Work Skills.
      • Two types of rating scales are available: numerical (4, 3, 2, and 1) and descriptive (excellent, good, satisfactory, and needs improvement).
        • Each rubric area includes categories; for example, the research report rubric evaluates students on parameters of a particular assignment. Rubrics are provided in six areas.
          • Each rubric is saved to its own URL so you can access it at any time.

See also, Rubrics from the Authentic Assessment Toolbox created by Professor Jon Mueller, North Central College, Naperville, Illinois

QuizStar

  • Provides software for multiple-choice, true/false, and short quiz creation with varied administrative options, including opportunities to review quiz results by class, student, and questions.
  • Multiple data formats can be generated that are compatible with conventional data-processing programs.

See Book Chapter on Multimedia for information on Adding Questions and Quizzes to Videos

Link to Quizzes as Active Learning Resources


Apps

QuickVoice Recorder lets teachers record classes as a way to review and improve teaching practice and performance.

Great Online Grading Tools from Common Sense Media. See also

Grade Pad is a performance assessment app that lets teachers assess student work on their mobile device as it happens in the classroom.

eClicker displays graphs of class responses to teacher questions as a way to assess student understandings and progress.

Essay Grader includes pre-set comments for student essays, but teachers can add their own personalized comments as well. The goal is to give teachers an electronic alternative to hand writing comments on dozens and dozens of student papers.

Android for Academics includes functions for keeping track of attendance, grade book, and grade charts as well as building grade rubrics and grading papers.

Remind 101 sends one-way text message reminders to students about due dates for assignments and other class activities.