LESSON PLAN

My area of learning is technology and the strand for this particular assignment is Information. This includes communication; ways of creating and organising information; techniques of gathering, sorting and presenting information (p.6-7,A statement on technology for Australian schools,1994)

Off-computer based activities related to the topic

Before the students actually use the program, I want to get them to brainstorm and think of reasons why this area of learning is important. This will include making some type of visual presentation of what the children think about communication across computers.

Activities may also include:

* Talking to business people, family members and even friends and finding out why e-mail and other forms of newly developed communication is important to them (eg. faxes; even telephones) From here the children may be able to present a short talk about the information that they have gathered.

Computer-based activities related to the topic

Student's will be fairly busy during this period, as they will all be getting their e-mails, so other work on computers will be conducted during this period. The use of Eudora will be shown as a whole class exercise. After this the class wil be put into a timetable of when they can use this program. Depending on the school, the class may be lucky enough to have a couple of extra lessons in a computer lab. This would include things such as sending each other messages, and eventually this would lead through to sending another school e-mails on a regular basis to talk about work in the classroom, what has been achieved in the term, and other events within the school. This would be fantastic if another school would be willing to participate in this type of program. If the school doesn't have many computers in the school, it would be possible to have half the class, or even groups of 5-10 learning in tutorial-type groups about the program (if they are troubles with it which wouldn't be the whole class anyway)

Classroom management and strategies

The classroom management would have to be carefully monitored on a regular basis. As this software would be used on a regular basis from now on, the computers would have to placed in appropriate places; that is, not near any quiet working areas or reading areas. As mentioned earlier, there would have to be a timetable of when the students were able to send and check their e-mail. Other considerations would be things like:

Making sure that the computers are not going to be placed with sun shining on them

Making sure that the students use the e-mail for educational purposes in class time

Making sure that students do not become distracted when others are on the computer; that is they stick to other work that is going on in the classroom.

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