Summary of "Developing Unit Objectives that Integrate Technology within Instruction"

Video Transcription

Welcome to a summary for the unit one-on-one environment in action. Congratulations on your completion of all of the lessons in this unit. I'm Trisha Fyfe. And during this video, I will be taking you through a recap of the concepts that we've covered throughout this entire unit.

We started the unit off by thinking about the classroom and how things are changing in our world today. Technology is everywhere. We are dependent on it. In work, in socializing, and now in education.

As teachers, we need to prepare students for a world where they need communication, collaboration, and critical thinking skills for success. By introducing students to the one-on-one environment, we give them opportunities to practice these skills by having more access to information, more opportunities for engaging activities, and more opportunities to take ownership of their learning.

There are theories and models that look at changing dynamics in education, best practices, and how to use technology in the classroom. Throughout this unit, we have looked through and broken down some of these theories and models and how to apply and reflect on them in your own classrooms.

Our first objective of this unit was to analyze the purpose of Understanding by Design, standards, and competencies in establishing those unit objectives. We used questions like, what is Understanding by Design? Why should we use it for instructional planning?

What are standards? What are competencies? And how are unit objectives formed?

By looking at the stages of Understanding by Design-- stage one, identifying those desired results, your standards and goals and objectives. Stage two, determining your acceptable evidence or those assessment methods, formative and summative. And stage three, developing your learning plan-- we were able to see how the standards, competencies, and unit objectives connected and aligned throughout all of these.

The next objective of this unit was to analyze the various theories presented throughout the course and how you can apply these theories to your own units of study. Remember, we talked about many different theories and models and frameworks throughout this entire unit. Let's take a look at some of the specifics here.

We looked at TPACK, which is where we talked about the integration of technology, pedagogy, and content in your classrooms. We looked at social learning theory, which is a theory based on the idea that students observe and then imitate and model other student's or other individual's behaviors and actions based on outcomes. And we looked at Marzano's Teacher Evaluation Model and Instructional Strategies where we can learn how to better apply techniques and strategies to our own instruction to enhance our teaching.

The next objective in this unit was to develop 3 to 5 unit objectives and essential questions. And we asked, how can I develop and reflect on unit objectives? And how can I develop and reflect on essential questions?

We used techniques, like goal setting, smart goals. And we looked at how to write quality essential questions and what some examples of these essential questions look like. Again, we learned how to look back and make sure that our unit objectives were aligned to goals and standards and those essential questions.

The final learning objective of this unit was to reflect on how the unit objectives drive your decisions, decisions related to technology, pedagogy, and content. We need to look at things, like who are my students? What are their needs? How can I incorporate technology?

This is where we referred back to many of these theories and models. And we looked at how we can utilize these theories and models to make sure that we have a good, solid understanding of what technology is available and what technology we should use. We also looked at things, like gamification, bringing in those elements of games and that fun, active, engaging environment into your classroom.

The objectives throughout this unit are connected throughout this entire unit. The process of solidifying your understanding of how successful one-on-one environments work takes understanding fully the first two objectives, which are analyzing Understanding by Design, standards, and competencies in establishing those unit objectives, as well as analyzing all of the various theories that we talked about and how you can apply these theories.

Once you have a good, solid understanding of these two objectives, you will be able to develop unit objectives and essential questions on your own, and then reflect on those unit objectives and how those will drive decisions for your units. You might need to go back to some of those theories and models and frameworks in order to successfully and effectively reflect on all of your decisions and your units. All of this combined will lead to higher levels of student achievement in your classrooms.

Since you have now completed all of the lessons in this unit, you should be able to answer the following four questions. How and why should we analyze the purpose of Understanding by Design, standards, and competencies in establishing unit objectives? How can we analyze and apply various theories to units of study? How can we develop unit objectives and essential questions? And finally, how can we reflect on how the unit objectives will drive your decisions, decisions related to technology, pedagogy, and content in the development of the larger unit?

Again, thank you for joining me in this unit, one-on-one environment in action. I hope you found the concepts in the video lessons to be beneficial and meaningful to you as a teacher. And I hope you are able to use these concepts and ideas in your own teaching.