Giving Students the Paint Brushes to Paint Their Own Pictures: Reflecting On Creating a Multimedia Lesson Plan

Technology, like just about everything on planet earth, is comparable to a two way street. In one lane, technology can be frustrating and potentially dangerous for a person and a society, but in the other lane it is useful, makes the lives of people easier, and offers educators a chance to dispense knowledge beyond the confines of a classroom. I walked on both sides of the technology street over the past few weeks when I was tasked with creating a lesson plan that was both technological and student-centered. Along the way, not only did I encounter my frustrations and appreciations for technology, but I also discovered the difficulties in resisting my teacher-centered approach to education. On my lesson plan creating journey, down the two way street, I learned to stretch myself beyond my comfort zone and discovered yet again, the large role that standards play in creating lessons.

For reasons of accountability, the educational system that western schools have employed relies heavily upon standards to determine, not only what students should learn, but also, what teachers need to do to ensure student learning. With that said, according to the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers or NETS*T, one standard explains that teachers should “demonstrate a continual growth in technology knowledge and skills to stay abreast of current and emerging technologies” (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 2000). For this particular lesson plan assignment, technology was needed to accomplish the lesson and one thing I needed to do was step outside of my comfort zone of typical teacher driven lectures, in terms of knowledge dispensing and outside my technological comfort zone of Power Point presentations. I’m not fond of change and new things, but in the 21st century, it was something I would have to get use to, especially as an educator, because educating can be just as hectic and frustrating as technology. I could not completely let go of what was familiar to me, so I held dearly to Power Point as a sort of safety blanket of technology. However, I did use some other tools that I was not so familiar with. One tool that was completely foreign to me was a website creator called Weebly. As one who has never created a website or even a My Space template or background, Weebly turned out to be an easy tool for me to show my lesson plan to the world on. It was easy to navigate and figure out, but it was not the only tool I used.

The lesson plan that I had created was geared toward a tenth grade language arts class and students were tasked with creating a digital demonstrative speech using some sort of digital recording device, such as a digital camera, and digital editing software, such as Movie Maker. Because this lesson would take place completely online [which is the great thing about the internet and technology: education goes beyond the classroom] I needed to utilize more than just Power Point and Word to inform my potential students of their task. In addition to my use of Weebly and Power Point, other tools that I used included Slide Share, All Capture, Movie Maker, the Google blog, Video Jug, and a digital voice recorder.

I posted PowerPoint presentations online using Slide Share and created audio and video posts using a digital voice recorder, All Capture (a tool that allows users to record their activities on the computer) and Movie Maker to edit examples for my potential students. I also expanded my visual resources beyond You Tube to a site called Video Jug, which perfectly fit my purpose of demonstrative speeches because Video Jug is all about showing viewers how to do things. In order to not only teach a lesson over the internet in which students would be responsible for viewing, thus making it student-centered, but also to expand and grow into a future teacher that would be more willing to use technology, I used both tools that I was very familiar with such as Power Point and some tools that I was not so familiar with, like All Capture. Despite my hesitance towards technology, I had to take into consideration that within the past decade, the use of the internet and computers has expanded and students maintain an interest in social networking and internet browsing. Because of this interest, I also utilized Google’s blog site as not only as the main way in which I would dispense demonstrative speech knowledge and lessons to my students, but a way for students to post their speeches, interact with other students, as well as myself. What better way to keep up with them and keep students interested than to utilize the World Wide Web! In relation to NETS*S standards, I achieved this “stepping-outside-my-comfort-zone” task by sticking to some familiar technological tools, but also gently tip toeing into unfamiliar grounds. However, as I stepped outside of my comfort zone for the sake of education, I discovered some things that I liked and did not like concerning this lesson planning assignment.

The thing I liked least about this assignment was the fact that I had to “cut to the cord.” That is, with this lesson plan project, it had to be a student-centered learning experience. I could not keep students trapped in a mold of follow-the-leader and although I am not an educator in the classroom just yet, I have become so familiar with teacher-centered learning and instruction, that the thought of giving students complete control over their learning made me fearful and skeptical. When I thought of the idea of giving students complete control over their own learning, I thought of some of my old classmates and their abilities to guide their own learning. Some of them would not have been able to guide themselves through a doorway, not because of a lack of intelligence, but more so the lack of desire. However, at the same time, while I was skeptical and hesitant to give students control, in that they would be responsible for learning, checking, and doing all the things on the blogs themselves, I also liked this idea. I was a high school student not too long ago (less than four years ago in fact) and I often wished that teachers would allow me to be creative on my own. While at the same time I wanted a bit more freedom to learn on my own, I was also scared to be on my own. What if I messed up? Something I have to keep in mind is that this student-centered approach focuses the responsibility on the students themselves and this reflects a real world application. In the real world, students will not have the guidance of educators or anyone, for that matter, and will need to learn to take responsibility for just how far they can take themselves when they are only given the tools. My new motto: Give the students the paint and paint brushes to paint their own pictures.

I learned in doing this second lesson plan that teacher-centered learning can only take learning so far and cannot induce responsibility and personal connections to learning the way that a student-centered approach can. While I liked the fact that student-centered learning would make students (hopefully) more responsible for their own learning, I was skeptical about student abilities to do so. In terms of being an educator and educating, this lesson plan taught me that working with technology can produce a million new resources for future teachers that are often free of charge. I also learned that with technology, teacher’s knowledge and growth, in terms of providing a learning experience for students, can grow and expand beyond PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and the often drab text book.

References
North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. (2000). National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers: Achievement Rubrics. Retrieved November 18, 2008, from http://www.ncrel.org/tech/nets/nets-t-rubric.pdf

Weebly:
http://www.weebly.com

Slide Share
http://www.slideshare.net

Movie Maker
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx

All Capture
http://www.allcapture.com/eng/index.php

Video Jug
http://www.videojug.com

Google Blog
http://www.blogger.com