Part 5 of this series talked about how to climb the SAMR ladder when integrating technology into your curriculum. The last part of the article mentioned always, always, start with your learning objective. We are going to dive deeper into starting with your learning objective when lesson planning with technology.
To begin, we will talk about Simon Sinek's TED talk on Starting With Why (Edited version). Sinek talks about what it is that makes businesses successful. He points to one thing; each business knows why they do what they do and they sell that to you (see the video for further explanation). He says, "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." This is a very powerful statement and got me thinking about technology. Kids aren't "buying" what you do, they are "buying" why you do it. The kids aren't interested so much in the technology, but why are you using the technology. To put this into perspective, let's look at the why diagram.
When we are lesson planning, we should always start with the "why". This is the learning goal, target, objective, etc... Whatever your school calls it. Then we move to the "how". How do we meet the goal? What activities am I going to have my students do to meet the goal. The last step is the "what". What tools will I use to achieve the goal?
So often we see a flashy new website or tool that we think will work great in our classrooms. We figure out how to use it and what activities we can use it for in our class. We then take that tool and activities and try to crunch it into a learning goal regardless if it fits or not. If it doesn't fit, we get frustrated. This is where many teachers go back to, "the old way was easier". Well, it probably was because when you planned the "old way", you probably started with the goal in mind.
We need to lesson plan from the "why" up and not the "what" down.
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