The Sims Go To School

Lesson Planning for ALL is a training/ professional development session that is meant to have teachers think about what differentiation is and how to differentiate for all students.  

One component that could perhaps improve teacher learning is the use of simulations.   I could have included two or three slides using XTRANORMAL (or other online program) to create a virtual classroom environment where teachers can discuss student learning and apply the strategies they discuss.  The simulation would have teachers discuss students in a variety of classroom learning events.  Students would succeed or fail depending on the assignments and assessments.  This is a component that would also integrate practice and feedback.  

Enhancing Learning with Research-Based Guidelines

How many power point driven professional developments have you sat through that make you want to stick your pencil through your ear? In Lesson Planning for ALL, I used researched - based teaching strategies and applied them to the research - based guidelines provided by Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer.

· Multimedia, Modality,Contiguity:  In order to address each of these areas in a way that did not overwhelm the learner, Xtranormal software allows you to create a video with a selection of characters and not.  A "script" is created by typing in the information you want the character to say. At the time that the video is selected the character then "speaks" providing the audio along with the text.  I'm not sure why it does not play on other people's computer; perhaps it is a macro setting that needs to be adjusted.

Along with this each slide that contains a graphic also contains text that pertains to the graphic. However, in this presentation the graphics are used to punctuate the text.  

· Coherence and Redundancy:  The intention here was to make the presentation/learning move seamlessly from one idea/ concept to the next. Ever have someone read their entire presentation to you and call it professional development?  That's their personal lack of understanding with the redundancy principle.   

· Personalization, Pretraining and Segmenting:  Of these three perhaps segmenting was the easiest to incorporate.  In face to face teaching this is called chunking information.

The purpose behind making sure that each of these are appropriately placed and used is to enhance learning.  This is done to minimize cognitive overload.

E-Learning and Critical Thinking

I realized today that with all the technology going into classrooms, lesson planning and lesson creation should and must change.  E-learning principles such as multimedia, modality, and the contiguity principles should be used to create lessons that are engaging and relevant.

In my professional development session known as Lesson Planning for All, I used the contiguity principle to make sure that the graphics and the text were aligned.  For example, on slide 6 this picture appears with the word PROCESS right below.  The reason for this is to draw attention to the poster and engage teachers in a discussion regarding what they might know about students who are high or low process learners.

PROCESS

I was explaining this to my room mate when she asked, "What happened with: "see figure below?"  I explained to her that placing the graphic in close proximity near the text allows the learner to focus on the concepts and lowers the cognitive stress of trying to figure out where the figure/ graphic is located.