The file above is a scanned document of the handout I received at the Designing Digital Unit Plans professional development session in May, 2011. It includes instructions on how to create digital units based on the SMARTBoard (SB) technology, which can be applied to all subjects of learning.
There were a few important items I learned about integrating technology into the curriculum from this session. Different technologies can be combined with each other to create new mediums for learning, but this indicates that both teachers and students must first become familiar with the software as well as the hardware in order to carry out an effective lesson so that time is not wasted on resolving technical difficulties during the actual lesson. SBs allow digital media such as the World Wide Web to be incorporated directly into the lesson, but this, in my
opinion, creates both pros and cons in terms of student learning. Students have a chance to access relevant subject information more quickly, but this in turn would open the door to irrelevant information to be displayed as well. The environment where a SB unit is carried out must therefore be controlled, in that teachers must first determine where the information is to be accessed from, then decide how that information should be used to enhance learning so that students do not end up ‘surfing the Web’ during a lesson. A helpful link for creating SB lessons is the SMART Exchange website where a variety of SB lessons have been posted in subject categories for users to download and modify to suit their needs.
From this professional development session, I realized that the teaching profession has an endless opportunity for learning. Not only do teachers have a chance to learn from and share their knowledge with each other, the possibilities of finding new methods to help the students learn better are limitless. I hope that in the near future, I too, will have the ability to contribute to the profession by informing other teachers of what I know and can do from the experiences I will have through such sessions.