How do I plan an ICT Lesson - 5 Basic Steps

Alright, here is a common question many educators ask me, how do I plan an ICT Lesson?

It is a valid and important question. Let me give 5 basic steps to help you get started.

Remember, these are just 5 basic steps. There are definitely many more steps and considerations to note and follow.

That being said, please do not feel demoralised or deterred from creating your ICT lesson for your class. Practice is important, and after a few rounds, many of these steps would become second nature to you, just like how you create your lesson plans or Scheme of Work for your regular lessons.

Here are my 5 steps to help you plan an ICT Lesson:

Step 1 - What is your lesson objective?

Most teachers get the wrong idea that for every ICT lesson, I must be able to teach and cover many topics in one lesson. We often call that the 'Shotgun' mentality, hard, fast and wide.

The truth is, you need to determine, what is your lesson objective first, before you can decide what topics or how you want to approach the lesson.

Let me give you a simple example:
Before you leave your house some questions you often ask yourself, am I going to exercise? or am I going out to party? or am I going to a wedding? Basically, why am I going out for?

From there, you know what kind of clothing to wear, isn't it?

Likewise, you need to ask yourself, I am going to conduct an ICT lesson, am I introducing a new topic? or am I going to reinforce an existing lesson? am I doing revision of past topics? am I getting my students to learn in a self-directed manner or collaborative? etc...

So first, define the objective of the lesson and then you will be able to scope your lesson accordingly. Shotgun mentality will not be effective compared to a 'sniper' mentality.

Step 2 - How many periods/How much time am I willing to commit to an ICT Lesson?

I commonly meet educators who thought that they only need to bring the class into the lab or special room once and conduct the lesson and everything will go fine. This is a very COMMON and SILLY mistake!

I bet you are wondering why I highlighted certain words in RED. This is because, it is a common and silly mistake.

Here is my reasoning:
Anyone can tell you, when planning for any event, don't you plan for contingency? No one plans that everything will go off perfectly. We should always plan contingency.

So now, how does that apply to my lesson planning?  Bringing your students directly to the lab to conduct your lesson on the day itself is too risky. Your risk wasting valuable periods if anything were to go wrong.

You need to ask yourself when doing your planning, how much time am I willing to commit to this ICT lesson?

What I recommend is that, you allocate a 1:3 ratio. 1 ICT Lesson to 3 sessions. Why so? Isn't that a waste of precious teaching time?

What I suggest is that you should have 1 session to get your students or yourself familiar with the teaching environment if you are not familiar with it. Meaning bringing your class there, conduct your lesson as an introduction lesson.

This has several benefits. Your get yourself or your class familiar with the tools before the actual lesson, thus not wasting precious time on the day of the actual lesson or activity. Additionally, it helps you identify issues or potential issues before it arises on the actual day. This will help you better adjust your lesson for the actual run.

After having your first session as an introduction lesson. and you have cleared any issues that arose (if any), you can conduct your lesson straight away. And because your students have been familiarised with the tools and/or environment, your lesson should go pretty smoothly.

The 3rd session is actually more for a spare lesson in the event that your students may need additional time to complete the task, or you may expand the scope due to the student's speed on completing the original activity.

So remember, you need to be willing to commit enough time to complete your ICT lesson. My recommendation? 1:3 Ratio.

Step 3: What resources do I have available to me?

Generally speaking, many ICT teachers thought that bringing their class to a computer lab is counted as an ICT lesson. This is a common misinterpretation of what an ICT lesson is. ICT lessons is not about using ICT in the lesson, it is about INFUSION of ICT into the lesson. I will speak more about the difference of this at a later post.

So how does using and infusion affect the way I plan my lesson? Resources are important because it affects your lesson outcomes. Sometimes using a PC is insufficient. So as you plan your ICT lesson, you have to ask your school or company, what resources do I have to make my lesson more effective or interesting? Mobile Phones, Tablets, Cameras, special learning facilities, are just some examples of resources that could help in your ICT lesson.

Let me give you one example of a lesson I once created. I was planning an outdoor lesson where students would go and take pictures of nature and come back and share with the class about what they have found, in a group setting.

Now in this scenario, using a traditional computer lab setting may not be the most suitable because of the way the computers could be laid out. Additionally, you may have trouble having everyone transfer all their photos to the computer. This would take a lot of time, which could be better used for other group activities.

So what did I do? I got a room that is setup for a group discussion setup. Every group would have a round table each. This would allow students to sit comfortably as a group. And I got the students to use iPads to take the pictures with, rather than cameras, this allow better sharing, ability to zoom in and I do not need the students to transfer the photos anywhere.

Try to be imaginative on using resources available to you. ICT lessons of course would require ICT tools, but there are non-ICT tools that affect your lessons too, such as seating arrangements and even venue.

Step 4: Know Thy Students!

Every educator should know the demographic or the type of students you are planning your lesson for.

Knowing the kind of students, will allow you to better plan the kind of ICT lesson best suited for them.

Factors to consider are:
- Age
- Learning ability (Fast Learner, Slow Learner)
- Discipline issues (if any)
- Financial Issues (If any)
- Learning disabilities (ADHD, Dyslexia etc)
- Others

Why do we consider these factors? You cannot expect students who are ADHD to read a wikipedia entry nor can you expect high ability learners to play basic games. You need to tailor your lessons to fit the ability of the learners.

Let me give you an example of this:
I taught a school in Singapore which had 3 class who are streamed as similar ability classes. All 3 classes may have been in the same stream, but their learning ability was different. So to best suit the ability, I came out with a standard ICT lesson, where I scaled the lesson based on the class ability. For the middle class, I conducted the regular lesson, for the higher ability class, I gave them slightly more to do, but still the same activity, and for the weaker class, I did the regular lesson but slowed it down for all of them to catch up.

Knowing your students will help especially when you are planning for lessons that introduce new topics or outdoor ICT lessons, just to cite a few examples. So... Know Thy Students!

Step 5: Plan realistic deliverables 

Some educators think that all students are very ICT savvy and can give them the moon, stars and sky.  The truth of the matter is that there are students who are extremely ICT Weak. I have even met a 13 year old student who didn't know how to create a new folder!

So when planning your lesson, don't assume your students know how to give you your deliverables with high expectation, unless you are very sure they are competent in the software/website/skills. Plan realistic deliverables because deliverables are the main cause for teachers exceeding their planned lesson time.
What you could do is set a tiered deliverable. Set a minimum target that you want your students to achieve and submit to you. But DO NOT tell them what the minimum is, that is for your own knowledge.

Rather, get the students to achieve the normal target that you will set for them. If for some reason they are unable to hit, then you can adjust your lesson accordingly and get them to submit the minimum target. Also do plan for a higher target deliverable, especially for classes that can do more, just as what I suggested in Step 4.

This is especially important when you are teaching skills. In the past, when I taught students photo editing using Adobe Photoshop, I used to set a target goal of 5 skills to teach the students during every lesson. But if I feel that the class cannot meet the 5 skills, I would teach at least a minimum of 3 skills for that lesson. For classes that could pick up the skills faster, I would add on 2 more skills. Ultimately this would affect the deliverables of the students.

So remember, your deliverables obviously are important, as they are proof that your lesson was conducted and it was effective. But you need to set realistic goals to go along with your deliverables. Set your expectations right so that you will not feel that your students have fallen short during your lesson.

I hope these steps and explanation helps you in your planning!

Originally posted at LeeAhLong.com on 11/06/2013