Teacher as Designer

I’ve frequently heard people talk about designing lesson plans, but the idea that the designing aspect is one of the primary functions of a teacher was new to me.  It makes sense, though – the better designed a lesson the less often a teacher will have to scrap it and start over (granted this will still happen occasionally when a teacher misjudges a classes ability or when a good question or outside circumstances warrant  a divergence).  I took an on-line class in the spring and our final project was designing a unit that used different types of technology.  Designing a project where students can use the technology because it makes the most sense to do so rather than ‘because that’s the assignment’, is trickier than it appears at first glance. 

As a computer lab assistant, I see people coming in to do all sorts of projects. Some are extremely well-designed - the English teacher who had her students (in groups) write a research an issue affecting Africa, then create a PowerPoint as if they were an international aid organization seeking funding for problem – including solutions that didn’t work and the solution they were proposing (when they presented it, there were several teachers and administrators there as judges and the winning group got a pizza party).  Some are very poorly designed – the Foreign Language teacher who gave all the students the same topic for a PowerPoint and allowed the students to just cut and paste the text from the suggested websites (and what were they learning?).  The difference in the student attitude towards well-designed projects as opposed to poorly-designed ones is generally very striking.