Our Sense of Place - Learning Design

I was looking over the syllabus today to make sure I completed all the work for this course when I realized I forgot to complete the blog post on the lesson plan implementation! So, I am reflecting now.

Our Sense of Place

Lesson Design Implementation

The group Lesson Plan Implementation project was quite the interesting and fruitful process! In our group we, in a way, completed a backward design in that the main idea for the lesson came from Chris. He had an interesting lesson idea that could incorporate the Google tools. Our group loved the idea, so we decided to run with it. Since Chris has the basic outline for the project, we worked backward to mold it into something that could fit the HPL framework as well as match up with Cognitive Apprenticeship. By completing this project together, I feel that all the different minds at work and various perspectives from members in the group really transformed the project into our final design. I know for myself, the HPL framework was reinforced as well as the Cognitive Apprenticeship model. I also learned many new technologies with Google Docs that I didn’t know before.

By going through the process of creating this project, I feel that I experienced Cognitive Apprenticeship in learning new technologies. Chris is really a techno-guru and by modeling how to use Google Maps and Google Sites, I was able to follow his lead and eventually contribute to the project site myself.

I sometimes find it difficult to deal with various personalities and working styles in a group project setting, but with this group we were all able to push through and produce something awesome. Although there may have been different visions for details in the design, we were all universally committed to creating something valuable. I think it’s important to learn how to collaborate with others in a group setting. It was great practice for working with others in a school community as well as understanding what it’s like for our learners working in group projects. Although there may have been bumps in the road during our journey of this project, I feel that through class meetings, multiple emails, IMs, GoogleDoc comments and edits we were able to unite and
I found a graphic that depicts group work as a puzzle. This graphic portrays what our process was all about.

I took the image from the University of British Columbia website. There is an Online Groupwork section that provides helpful tools for working in a group setting. Although I discovered this site when thinking about how to reflect on our project, I feel that we eventually fell into this model as we completed our learning design. I will also use this as a reference for future group projects!

Additionally, we, as a group, went through the process of completing our lesson plan as a student would. Each person in the group produced a piece of writing. This enabled us to put ourselves in the shoes of the learners we were designing for. The process was fun, and part of this was because we got to chose what we would write about. This independence allows the learner to care about what they are doing and the freedom to get creative with their writing. As teachers, we have to know which designs facilitate learning and which don’t. This is one way to see how students might learn through our design, by actually completing the project ourselves.

By working together as a group, I truly feel that we mastered the project better together than we could have on our own. I learned a lot about working with others, technology implementation, new technologies, and lesson plan design. Also, the content we learned about throughout this course was reinforced for me. I feel that this project was a culminating execution of everything I learned throughout the semester.