Librarians. Priceless.

Today’s class was a great introduction to collaborative lesson planning.  One of the biggest problems my group had at the outset was determining which subject to focus our lesson on, as we were from three different content areas: physics, English, and chemistry.  Eventually, we decided to focus on the physics aspect of the tsunami, as the radiation concerns of Japan tied in nicely with the high school nuclear physics standards, as specified by the Michigan Department of Education.  Once we had decided our topic, we were able to talk about the kinds of objectives we wanted to create for our lesson, find resources, and design the lesson.  This is where the collaborative effort really started to be beneficial, as we were able to bounce ideas off of each other and choose only the best thoughts contributed by everyone.

Having the librarian, Sarah, present while planning the lesson really made things go much more smoothly and quickly.  She was able to provide us with several new resources that my group found particularly helpful.  One of my favorite things that Sarah showed us was the website todaysmeet.com, which is a backchannel that can be used during presentations in order to get feedback from an audience.  However, we used it to share resources with each other, avoiding the need to read off a long URL whenever we found an article or video to share.

During the lesson planning, my group dedicated a lot of time to discussing the variability of reading levels that may be present in a class, and how educators could manage that.  Sarah presented the possibility of using software that would read text aloud for students that may be struggling readers.  I did not know such a thing existed, so I was grateful that Sarah pointed it out.

In regards to the Brandon Center, I thought it was a great space for collaborative learning.  The booths in the back were particularly useful for four-person discussions.  There was plenty of room for four computers plus extra room for papers and whatnot.  I also liked having the ability to project one of the monitors onto a bigger screen for everyone to see.

Overall, I thought today’s lesson was a refreshing change of pace from our normal classes.  I learned a lot about collaborative lesson planning and web-based resources.  Most importantly, I learned to appreciate our librarians, as their information is invaluable!