Introduction
The necessity to redesign lesson plans is motivated by the constant development of education and introducing various novelties into the process. It means that the 21st century educational system operates under new provisions, which should be taken into consideration when developing teaching instructions meeting them. This paper aims at redesigning a lesson plan paying specific attention to the 21st century student outcomes especially information, media, and technology and incorporating the 21st century support systems such as learning environment.
Modification
The initial lesson plan was based on the ‘understanding by design’ approach and backward design. It implied that educational process should be made up of three stages: determining the desired results, identifying acceptable evidence, and planning learning experiences (Mangelsdorf, 2013). It also pointed to the existence of six facets of understanding: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).
The idea for redesigning the plan is to include participatory technologies into the process for enhancing the six facets of understanding. The motivation for this option is that sharing a student’s work with classmates or even the world and receiving their feedback would improve the understanding of the information because the pupil obtains different sources of explanation, not only those of the teacher (Burnaford & Brown, 2014).
Introducing the newest technologies is also a step to redesigning learning environment. The initial plan does not mention the type of the learning environment. I believe it is vital to highlight the effectiveness of technological aspect of the teaching process, i.e. incorporating social media, wireless connectivity, and mobile devices (Burnaford & Brown, 2014). In this case, a teacher obtains an opportunity to reach the pupils. Moreover, introducing the newest technologies enhances knowledge reusability and transformation making information more understandable (Harsh, 2014).
Conclusion
To sum up, one of the options to redesign the initial lesson plan is to implement the newest technologies because it will make the learning environment easily accessible and adaptable as well as improve the learning outcomes due to enhancing participation, which is effective for the better understanding of the presented information.
Reflection
The process of redesigning the initial lesson plan was both interesting and challenging. It was an exciting experience because it helped obtain new knowledge and apply the information learned before to designing something new. However, at the same time, it was the source of several challenges. First of all, it was complicated to choose the lesson plan, which would be redesigned in terms of understanding the requirements of the 21st century.
Nevertheless, it turned out that it is easy to handle the problem of making this decision by taking a closer look at previous assignments and detecting the gaps for incorporating the components of the 21st century student outcomes and support systems. Moreover, it was a challenge to choose one tool, which would address both outcomes and support system. The most complex part was to determine the correct components, which would be mentioned when revising the initial plan.
However, recollecting that introducing the newest technologies is the universal tool for enhancing productivity helped cope with this challenge. Finally, it was a little bit complicated to determine the correct type of technology and propose the area of their implementation in terms of meeting the requirements of the 21st century student outcomes and support systems, but outside sources of information turned out to be useful in overcoming this problem.
References
Burnaford, G., & Brown, T. (2014). Teaching and learning in 21st century learning environments: A reader. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education. Inc.
Harsh, K. O. (2014). Role of knowledge reusability in technological environment during learning. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 5(8), 68-74.
Mangelsdorf, N. (2013). Understanding by design. TLN Journal, 20(1), 38-39.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2012). Understanding by design guide to advanced concepts in creating and reviewing units. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.