Work & Academics

Integrating Educational Technology in the Classroom

The Task: For this group assignment, we were supposed to develop three inter-related lesson plans, preferably multi-disciplinary, which included the integration of computers in some way.

The Inspiration: I made the proposal to my group based on my work at both the Education Enhancement Program (EEP) at Peoples’ Self-Help Housing as well as my work at the King Open Extended-Day (KOED) program in Cambridge. At the EEP, we had done a store-type project with several of the younger students, and they all really enjoyed the whole process. At KOED, I did several cooking projects with the students—pizza being one of them. In the process, I made broccoli converts out of at least six students.

The Lesson Plan Set “Introduction”: Everyone eats. Everyone likes to make money. This instructional plan appeals to these facts by engaging students in nutritional research, exercises in cost and profit, and advertising. Pizza was selected because it is a favorite food of many middle school students and thus has high appeal. The “store” format allows students to engage in learning in mathematics, language arts, nutrition, visual arts, and economics. The overall result is an engaging, student-centered, problem-based series of lessons incorporating several disciplines and integrating several technological applications.

The Lesson Plans: Download this PDF document to view the three lesson plans.

The Other Team Members: Marilee Warner and Christopher Wood.

A colleague wrote: I am attempting to do this project, but I have absolutely NO CLUE what I’m doing. I’m trying to use Microsoft Access to create a database, and I’ve even looked at a tutorial online. I’m just not sure if the information we’ve been instructed to put on there should go on a Table or Query or what!!! I’m sooo frustrated. I don’t know how to do this. HELP! Someone! Anyone! This is the only computer application that I’ve never used, and I am so confused.

I’ll try to help. Step-by-step, just to be on the safe side. (Sorry, I didn’t bother to make it pretty…) Targeted towards Access beginners like myself….

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