Interactive White Board Lesson

I can't think of another lesson that reminded me more of the blind leading the blind.  None of us really knew how to design a lesson for a IWB before we started and I'm not certain that we do now.  There are several reasons as to why I feel this way.  First, we did not interact F2F.  So, we had no real discussion of ideas that were really developed discussions.  Second, I have been designing a science unit and it is only 2/3 finished, but is already 70 pages long.  This makes me feel like we developed some IWB activities but I question whether they should be identified as lessons.  Maybe they should.  Significant parts of our activities were no different than power point informational slides so that the actual interactives were relatively small portions of the lessons.  I realize that this all depends on how we use the activities with the students.  In mine, some of the interactives were intended primarily as warm ups with the main activities being development of food webs.  After considering the initial draft, I added a blank page so that students could discuss and develop other food webs for other biomes.  I wanted students to associate trophic levels reasonably well with the proper habitats so that they could demonstrate their understanding of ecosystems.  I also wanted students to think seriously about the complexity of food webs and move beyond simplistic views of herbivores and carnivores.  I want them to think about whether there really are pure carnivores by researching some primary literature on food habits.  They will find that almost all so called carnivores are really omnivores witrh some exceptions.  they will also find that they never really thought about what some animals ate previously.  For example, why are there so many skunks around pastures and places where cattle and horses are kept?  Think about it.

 So, I'm thinking that one of the objectives is to think about those things.  How do we use the technology appropriately?  How do we actually accomplish the learning goals that we have identified?  Obviously, it was not a learning goal for us to become IWB lesson plan experts.  We are all far from that. 

The other problem is that like it is with so many other computer programs, there are no directions.  There are examples but a majority of those are poor examples, actually.  So, some teacher posts a couple of interactive slides on smart exchange that are not accompanied with an explanation or lesson plan.  So what?  That leads me to the final topic which is the amount of time I spent on this.

Amount of Time?

I don't know.  I do know that I spent hours trying to make something work (one little thing and then another).  I spent time trying to find the introductory slide.  I sent messages but finally found it on my own in the gallery.  I spent time trying to make an interactive response slide.  I asked experts in the schools.  They couldn't do it either.  I luckily spent time contacting smart help and one of them sent me a link that fixed the program I had downloaded.  Apparantly, one of their auto updates failed to install the response part of the program.  Lucky me that I got that fixed.  I would still be trying to fugure it out, otherwise.  I spent another large block of time click, click, click, clicking on my food web figures and their sounds attempting to select both so that I could group layers together.  None of the experts could tell me specifically how to do that either.  I spend one whole 8 hr stretch trying to get that one.  Every so often it would work.  Then, I realized that I must have done something different when it did work.  I discovered that I could right click on the top layer while holding down the ctrl, and then left click on the bottom layer to select it.  Then when both were selected, I could select group from the drop down on either of the selected boxes. It worked nicely and I edited that slide in about 10 minutes (marvelous).  So, I posted that on the discussion in D2L hoping to help somebody else.  Frustration?  Yes!  I was remined of the old days when you would get an assignment in a computer class and had to spend countless frustrating hours trying to figure out how to program some function without help. 

So, does all of this frustration create better learning?  I don't think so.  How much more could I learn if I had not wasted so much time with a few details?  That's a question worth considering, especially with assignments that I might give students.  I am involved in a shop class where students were given a mouse trap and some supplies.  They were told to make cars that will travel a certain distance and then cut loose to work on their own in teams.  I have video of the results.  I will link to it after I edit it, if I find time.  Tomorrow we finish with the mouse trap cars.  Some groups succeeded although poorly.  Others broke all their stuff and threw it all over the room.  What if they and I had been given additional instruction?  I know the answer to that.  Dr. Cook shared with us a theory that if you give kids some stuff to play with, they eventually will come up with the correct solution or product.  Maybe that's true for some kids, but not for all, and not for the majority of those who I encounter.  Most people need and appreciate a good set of directions when they are putting together.  Yes, I do feel accomplished, but tired.