a. Goal Setting Lesson Idea - Have students establish a goal for how long they are going to spend actively working on an online assignment. If you are a content teacher, this may be an assignment that you are assigning already for that class. If you are a study skills teacher you can ask students to pick one of their homework assignments to work on. Ask students to commit to setting a goal for how long they should work on the assignment without straying off task. Use the Leanincs time expectation feature to create a Learnics assignment for their chosen amount of time as the goal. When students open the Learnics assignment, students can track in real-time how long they are working online and also assess when they are going off track. Students will see confetti appear on their screen when their engagement goal is achieved. They can review their logged activity to see if they stayed on task the entire time.
a. Clean Slate Lesson Idea- This activity is designed to help students minimize online distractions by having students complete an assignment in a clean and organized digital work space. To accomplish this, select the next online lesson that you want your students to complete which will require students to access two or more different websites. Assign the assignment as a Learnics assignment so that recording of online activity begins with the launch of the assignment. The key to this activity is that all students should close all browser tabs and begin the assignment with a “clean slate”. The assignment should be completed by the student without accessing any unrelated or distracting materials. Students should look at the list of websites accessed in the “site data” heading of their Learnics dashboard to determine if they were successful with the clean slate challenge. This activity can be further enhanced by asking students to reflect on how their browsing activity changed knowing that they had to turn in a clean slate.
a. The 5 Whys Lesson Idea- This activity is designed to help students learn to ask questions about the content that they encounter online. Start the class with a discussion to brainstorm a question that starts with “Why”. If you are a content area teacher, this question may be related to your subject area such as, “Why are the 1920s referred to as Roaring?”. If you are teaching a study skills class you can let the students start with a question for a subject that they are interested in such as, “Why aren’t metal bats allowed in Major League Baseball?”. At this point you should have students launch a Learnics enabled assignment to begin recording their activity, then have students type their first why question into google and click on one of the first articles that appear. They should read to learn the answer to their first why question then come up with another why question based on what they learned or a related thought. For example, the student learning about metal bats might next ask “why don’t we want baseballs to have more velocity?”, then “why are most old baseball records now broken?” followed by “why do we ban steroids in baseball?” and so on. The goal is to really have students go down a rabbit hole of research and see where it takes them. After they have asked their 5 why questions and went to at least 5 different websites you should have them submit their Learnics data. You will now want to direct students to the section of Learnics that shows their google searches. You will want to stress to them how the curiosity to ask “why” can lead them to new ideas and cultivate their creativity. You can also ask students to state what they learned during each one of their why questions. Additionally, you could ask them to pick one of their “why” questions that they want to circle back to explore more thoroughly for their next research assignment.
4. Self Awareness of Learning Style- Reflecting on online learning activity helps students become more self-aware. Reflection can help students identify areas where they need to improve and develop a plan to do so. It can also help them recognize what's working well and continue to do more of that. Overall, reflecting on online learning activity can help students become more self-aware, improve their learning strategies, stay engaged, manage their time effectively, and set and achieve goals.
a. Learning Story Lesson Idea - This lesson will have students reflect on their online experience and tell a story about it using their own words. To begin, have students complete an online assignment that will require them to access information from a variety of websites. You can use a lesson related to your content area or check the Learnics Lesson Ideas tab for other resources. Have students use Learnics to record their activity during this lesson and submit their data when done. Next, direct students to review their own data in the Learnics Dashboard and describe or “tell you a story about it” in a paragraph. The story should be the process that they took to complete the assignment but the students can also add their own thoughts about what they were thinking or doing during the assignment. Here is an example for a middle school student who was working to answer questions about the constitutional amendments:
“I started the assignment by reading the directions in the google doc. I did a google search for amendments and found a website that listed them all. I found all the information that I needed there. I didn’t know how to read the roman numerals of the amendments so I did a google search for each numeral. I spent 10 minutes in the google document and 5 on the amendment website. I probably should have found another amendment website.”
These are just a few ideas for how the use of Learnics can open up brand new lesson ideas. Feel free to schedule a demo with one of our educational specialists to brainstorm new lesson ideas for your specific class.
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