Project One

Lesson Plan

 

Educational Technology

Dr. Larry Froehlich

 

ITEC 19525

Back to the Course Syllabus

Back to the Assignment Page

 

Scenario Your school has recently received a grant to participate in a program designed to share online lesson plans between teachers at different schools. As a part of this program, you have volunteered to place one of your favorite lesson plans on the World Wide Web. Your lesson plan includes a pathfinder—a page of related links that you have previewed to ensure that they are on-topic and otherwise appropriate. The pathfinder will contain at least 10 related links with kid-friendly descriptions. The content of the lesson can be anything you choose but aligned with the ODE Academic Content Standards. Keep in mind that the lesson should be comprehensive and represent what you think are excellent teaching practices. The lesson plan you create will be posted to your web site on the College of Education Portfolio server.

 

Objectives:  After this lesson you will be able to:

·        Create and save simple web pages created with Microsoft Word

·        Import graphics

·        Use a table effectively in the document/page

·        Customize the table layout

·        Insert hyperlinks

·        Use the STOPEM format for your lesson plan

·        Post files to your web site using FTP

·        Locate appropriate Internet resources in support of this lesson

 

Here are some samples of completed projects:

http://portfolio.educ.kent.edu/brannonj/lesson.htm

http://portfolio.educ.kent.edu/bowserc/lesson.htm

http://portfolio.educ.kent.edu/ensmansj/lesson.htm

http://portfolio.educ.kent.edu/muddles/lesson.htm

http://portfolio.educ.kent.edu/skidmoreh/lesson.htm

http://portfolio.educ.kent.edu/shoffc/lesson.htm

 

STOP EM+ lesson plan template:
The STOP EM+ format is an easy to use representative lesson plan template. STOP EM+ is an acronym for:

 

Title and Introduction:  Provide a simple but interesting title and a short introduction.

 

Subject:  General subject area.

 

Topic:  What specific topic or title are you addressing?

 

Objectives:  Aims of the lesson stated in terms of student behaviors.  What will the students know or be able to do after the lesson? (Use the ODE Academic Content Standards)

 

Procedures:  What will the teacher do?  What will the students do during the lesson?

 

Evaluation:  How will you know if your students have met your objectives?  You must make a rubric as part of your evaluation.   Please visit the Rubistar web site.

 

Materials:  A list of materials needed during the class to execute the lesson, such as books, paper, supplies, and visual aids.

 


Pathfinders

Many parents and teachers alike are concerned that the material children might encounter through unsupervised web surfing might be inappropriate. Moreover, simply locating the appropriate resources can consume vital classroom time.

 

A pathfinder focuses children on a few specific and valuable sites and promotes active learning through appropriate questioning or exploration activities. Strategies for promoting active learning include posing summary questions and directing specific activities. For example, you might ask, "According to xyz.com, how can continental drift explain geologic formations?" You might direct students to specific information such as, "Summarize the contributions of African motifs on the art of the cubists."



 


 

 

Procedures Getting Started

1.     Acquire a web account on the portfolio.educ.kent.edu server and a jump drive to save your course files.   Registering according to the directions will allow your account to be activated and your files to be created.

2.     Your web account will consist of your last name followed by your first initial. For example, Jennifer Student's account would be: studentj

3.     Your password is the password you entered when you registered your portfolio account at www.folioweb.org.

4.     Make sure that you have correctly installed the Microsoft Office package on your personal computer.

5.     You should save your files in your "Portfolio" folder on your Jump Drive, not in "My Documents".

6.     Creating the Portfolio folder on the USB drive:
Our ultimate goal is to keep our portfolio files on the JumpDrive synchronized with the folder on the portfolio server. That process will be easier if you have a dedicated folder for your portfolio files.

1.     Open your JumpDrive so that you have a window showing its contents. Usually, the easiest way to access the JumpDrive is to double-click on My Computer.

2.     Go to File > New > Folder. A new folder will appear with the name "New Folder" highlighted.

3.     Rename "New Folder" by typing "Portfolio" while the name is still highlighted.

4.     Drag any file or folder (e.g., lesson.htm, lesson_files, pathfinder.htm, pathfinder_files) that belongs in your portfolio to the new Portfolio folder.

 

7.     Launch Word from the Start menu.

8.     If you prefer a horizontal page orientation, or wish to change the size of your page, go to file..."page setup"...choose "Landscape" then click "ok." Click on the "paper" tab if you wish to change the page dimensions.
 

9.     Type a title and your lesson introduction. For this example, we will pretend that we are developing a 3rd grade science lesson on insects. So, our title is going to be "Going Buggy!"
 

Inserting a Table

1.     To enhance the formatting of your web page, we'll add a two-column table. The left hand column will contain the headers and the right hand column will contain the text descriptions.
 

2.     Enter 2 for the number of columns and 6 for the number of rows:

Your document will have an empty table. To format the table, move your cursor over the table. Note the small 4-headed arrow in the box in the upper left. Click on the box to select the whole table. The table will turn black to let you know it's selected and ready to format. Turn off the borders by selecting Format > Borders and Shading...

3.     the "None" button to turn of the borders. The dark lines turn gray to show the table borders. These guidelines will not show when you save the document for the web. Experiment with the other options in this panel.
 

4.     Move your cursor to the vertical line that divides the two columns. Note that the cursor turns into two-headed arrow. You can change the width of the columns by clicking-and-dragging the line to any position. Here, the left column has been narrowed.
 

5.     Fill-in the cells of the table with your STOP EM plan information. Highlight your text and use the formatting toolbar to change the size, color, and font family of your text.
 

6.     You may also merge cells, or have visible, custom borders and shading. Left click and drag from one cell across a row, or down a column. Go to Table > Merge Cells. Single click inside selected area to see change.
 

7.     If you would like to make changes to the borders or shading, on the file menu go to Format > Borders and Shading
 

8.     For "Apply to" make sure you choose "Cell" to change specific cells...otherwise "Table" makes the change to the entire table. After choosing "Cell"...choose the style, color, and width ...finally click on the corresponding line beneath "Preview." You may use more than one style, color, or width...just click again on the corresponding line after making your choices. When the preview picture looks as planned, click "ok."
 

9.     For shading be sure to click in an individual cell, or select a range of cells... On the file menu go to Format > Borders and Shading ...choose the "shading" tab. Be sure that "Apply to" shows "Cell" instead of table. Either click on one of the visible colors, or go to "More Colors" for additional shades. Click "ok." Repeat this procedure for each additional cell shades you wish to apply.
 

10.     Many adjustments, such as table alignment, can be applied to the table by clicking inside the table then going to "Table"..."Table Properties."
 

11.     Other table options such as "cell alignment" and "text direction" either right click in a cell (or selected range of cells), or after selecting cells, go to the "Tables and Borders" toolbar for many options (if toolbar is not visible...on file menu, go to "view"..."toolbars"..."Tables and Borders."

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Inserting Word Art/Auto shapes

1.     Word Art, auto shapes, and lines have similar characteristics in Word...in that they are represented as graphics. Once inserting any of them, you can right click on the object and adjust its properties. You can access the features under "Insert" or on the "Drawing Toolbar."
 

2.     You will see the following selection. Each will provide the opportunity for further customization in the further steps. Choose one...click "ok." In the next step choose the font, size, and style then type the word or words you would like to display. Click "ok." If you need to edit the text itself...double left click on the newly created Word Art image.
 

3.     Right click on the new Word Art image (or go to format on the file menu) then choose "Word Art" You will see the following image ...experiment with the fill and line colors, layout...and be sure to check the "web" tab for the "alternative text."

 

Inserting Clip Art

1.     Move your cursor to the location where you want your clip art to appear.

2.     Choose Insert > Picture > Clip Art... to launch the Clip Art browser.
 

3.     Depending on the version of Word you are using, you will see a different version of the clip art browser.  The browser appears as a search engine on the right side of the screen. Enter a search word or phrase. Here, we'll search for "insects:"
 

4.     Depending on how much of the clip art collection installed, you will see a variety of images. If not, change your search and/or change the "Search In:" options to search again.
 

5.     Scroll through the images until you locate one that you want to use. Click on the image and it will appear at your cursor location.

6.     Click on the clip art and note the small black squares that appear on the sides and in the corners. These are called "handles." Click and drag the handles to resize the image. Hold down the Shift key to constrain the image (keep its proportions).
 

7.     If the clip art seems to float above the table...try changing the picture properties by right clicking on image and going to "picture properties" (or image properties)...changing the "layout" to "in-line with text", then dragging the picture into any particular cell. You may also put a border around a clip art image or picture...right click on image...go to "format image" (or sometimes "format drawing canvas)... click on "colors and lines"....choose a line color, style, and size.
 

 

Inserting Hyperlinks

1.     Surf the Internet for a website you wish to link to. In this example, we're going to create a link to http://www.insects.org.

2.     Place your cursor where you want the hyperlink located.

3.     Type the phrase that will be the hyperlink. This phrase will appear underlined in your page. For this example, we'll use "Insects on the Web" as the target phrase.

4.     Highlight the phrase.

5.     Choose Insert > Hyperlink
 

6.     Note the text that you highlighted in the document is contained in the "Text to display:" box. Click on the "Browsed Pages" button to display the pages you have recently visited. Then, click on the page you want to link to and notice that the address now appears in the "Address:" box. Click <OK>.
 

7.     Add a hyperlink to your pathfinder page by choosing a text phrase for your hyperlink and choosing Insert > Hyperlink.

8.     Type "pathfinder.htm" in the address box. Click <OK>.  

Saving Your Work

1.     Choose File > Save as... name the file lesson and save it as Web Page, which will make it an htm file.  You can continue to make changes to your lesson. Be sure to use the STOP'EM found under the Concepts section above.

2.     When you are finished with your lesson plan, save your file again. You do not need to Save as, since it already has been saved.

3.     Note that you should have two new items on your disk: lesson.htm and a folder called lesson_files. The lesson_files folder contains the graphics you inserted into your lesson. Anytime you save a file with graphics, you will get a _files folder.

Building the Pathfinder:

1.     Use a search engine like Google or "Yahoo for Kids" to locate at least 10 appropriate sites that support your lesson plan.

2.     Launch Word  and make a table, 2 columns and 10 rows.

3.     Enter a description of the website and and the URL for at least 10 appropriate websites.

4.     Enter link phrases that are appropriate to your audience and grade-level. They should be kid-friendly, with simple phrases and NOT CONTAIN ACTUAL HYPERLINKS. In other words, links like, "NASA Pictures" are much preferred to http://www.nasa.gov/planets/images/....

5.     After you have created at least 10 hyperlinks, add clip art or images. Try to match the look of your lesson plan. Remember to use tables.

6.     Save your pathfinder as pathfinder.htm and post (publish the new page to your portfolio web directory). Since you added images to the pathfinder, you will also have a pathfinder_files folder as well.


 
Viewing your website:

1.     Your new lesson plan address will be: http://portfolio.educ.kent.edu/username/lesson.htm

 

Assessment Guidelines:

 Your lesson plan (20 points) must:

·        Use a table for organization

·        Be 1-2 days (periods) in duration

·        Have an objective from the Academic Content Standards

·        Contain two or more images

·        Indicate duration & grade-level

·        Use the STOP EM format

·        Have at least two text styles

·        Have at least one hyperlink to a content supportive external website

·        Have a hyperlink to the pathfinder.htm page

·        Be saved as lesson.htm and lesson.doc

Your pathfinder must:

·        Use a table format

·        Contain two or more images

·        Contain at least 10 related links

·        Support your lesson plan

·        Use friendly and age-appropriate links

·        Be attractively formatted

·        Have a hyperlink to the lesson.htm page

·        Be saved as pathfinder.htm and pathfinder.doc