Teachers as a Designer of Lessons
Teaching is an art form that is performed by talented individuals who study their craft intently. We have moved from a teacher centered environment where everything revolves around one person and what they say to a world where the learner comes first and plays a much more active role in their own learning. Teachers design lessons the way that choreographers design dance numbers and football coaches design passing plays. There is movement, there is discussion, there is excitement…and often times there are audibles taken based on situations.
As a technology leader and instructional leader for a public school district I truly enjoy helping teachers find new ways to become expert designers of lessons, and love watching those designs get put into action. Digital breakout activities and other engaging designs that combine critical thinking skills, collaboration, and communication have truly changed the way instruction is delivered and have enhanced learning for students around the globe.
That being known, there is still much to learn from the experiences of the past year where remote learning was thrust on a world that may or may not have been prepared for it. The silver lining in this is that teachers and students have experienced a new way of learning, and will ultimately find that many of those tools and strategies that they have learned can enhance learning even more when they return to a face-to-face environment. We have what John Hattie recently called a golden ticket that will help us not only rebound but improve overall learning.
As we continue to combat learning loss stemming from the disruption of learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we look to find ways to improve both face to face and remote environments. There is an abundance of research that can be done in the current environment to study how students are learning and what we can do to improve on it with the digital skills that have been gained over the past 12 months.
One issue teachers must face when leading instruction and becoming a designer of lessons is the juggling of the immense amount of digital tools that are at their disposal in the modern educational technology field. Teachers can often read articles that discuss 10, 20, or even 50 different tools that they should be using in their classrooms and can quickly become overwhelmed trying to always learn the latest and greatest. The following helps organize a short number of tools that all teachers can use. They are organized by the 4 Cs (Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking) to help find the best ways to utilize them in and out of the classroom.