Introduction to “Developing Unit Objectives that Integrate Technology within Instruction"

Video Transcription

Hello, and thank you for joining me for an introduction to one on one environment in Action. By the end of today's tutorial, we will be able to answer the following essential questions. What are the learning objectives for this unit? Why do these objectives matter? And how are these objectives related?

The unit objectives include analyze the purpose of Understanding by Design, standards and competencies in establishing unit objectives; analyze the various theories presented throughout the course and how you will apply these in a unit of study; develop 3 to 5 unit objectives and essential questions; reflect on how your unit objectives will drive decisions related to technology, pedagogy, and content in developing a larger unit.

Let's look at analyze the purpose of Understanding by Design. Standards and competencies in establishing unit objectives. Essentially, this deals with how I establish unit objectives. One way to do it is by using Understanding by Design. So we're going to explore what that means in this unit. We also want to explore the difference between standards, competencies, and unit objectives, so that we use the terms correctly, and so that we implement them correctly in our lessons. And we also want to talk about how standards, competencies, and unit objectives are related.

Next we're going to analyze the various theories presented throughout this course and how you will apply these theories in units of study. We're going to look at the why behind the frameworks that we're using. So we tell you to use Understanding by Design, to write out what your competencies are, and to use technology. But this is the why.

So we're going to explore various theories including, but not limited to, cognitive, behaviorism, and theories underlying gamification. We're also going to look at what these theories look like in practice, and we're going to discuss how we can use technology with these theories.

Next, we're going to develop three to five unit objectives and essential questions. We're going to define what a unit objective and what an essential question is. And we're going to talk about how to actually write them. Then we're going to look at an exemplary unit using them, so you have a sense of how to write them yourselves.

Then we're going to reflect on how unit objectives will drive decisions related to technology, pedagogy, and content in the development of a larger unit. To do this we're going to explore TPACK, which stands for Technological, Pedagogical, Content, Knowledge. We're also going to look at Marzano's 10 questions for lesson design and use those to reflect on our own unit designs. And we're going to look at several example units to get a good idea of how we can use these objectives with technology, pedagogy, and content.

So why do these matter? And why do we want to learn them? Well, we want to learn them because no matter what sort of career path you end up choosing, they're going to be standards in that career path. So it's good to know what the standards are and how to use them. It's also really useful to know how to actually plan and write a lesson or a unit, because that's what you'll be doing on almost a weekly basis when you become a teacher or when you're teaching.

We also want to talk about using technology, because this is the 21st century, and we have tech savvy students, and we ourselves live in a tech savvy world. Some of these theories that we're talking about are really old. They date far back. And at the time, their technology was maybe not as advanced as our technology. So we want to explore how we can use modern day technology with these older theories, which have stood the test of time.

And we also want to know the theory behind what we do. We don't just want to be a little robot to do everything we're told. We want to know why we're doing what we're doing. And by studying theory, we understand the why.

So how are these connected to each other? Well we're starting off with design. We want to design units using standards and competencies and unit objectives. But in order to effectively design them, we need to know what the theory is behind them. After we learn about the theory, we want to then develop the units using both theory and design. And then once we've developed the unit, we want to reflect on it and see whether or not it was worthwhile or we should continue it or we should discontinue it.

So today, we talked about what are the learning objectives for this unit and why do these objectives matter. We also talked about how these objectives are related. I look forward to learning with you throughout this unit.