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Planning a lesson plan or unit plan by pointing and clicking objectives and projects.

An important part of the role of any educator is that of planning learning sequences. Perhaps you are tasked with designing curriculum or more likely you are translating a mandatory curriculum into workable units of learning. The task is complex and there are multiple arrangements. The goal is to design units that connect students with learning in ways that are meaningful and relevant. A well-designed unit of learning fits seamlessly alongside other learning opportunities and the overall sequence of learning should match the learners developing expertise. As we plan units of learning we must consider a great variety of factors which impact the learning we design. Our knowledge of our students and where they are with their learning is crucial and a strong place to start. We also need to know what it is we are required to teach and have a grab bag of pedagogical moves that bring this content alive.

"Version 2.0 Moodle 2.0, our biggest release ever, is coming together after two years of development. It contains a huge number of core changes to the platform, most of which are designed to give 3rd party developers more flexibility, scalability and safety. The timetable is designed to deliver Moodle 2.0 in time for the new school year in the northern hemisphere and currently looks like this: * March 2010: Moodle 2.0 Beta release * April, May, June 2010: intensive beta testing and bug fixing (freeze on new features) * 1 July 2010: Moodle 2.0 production release You can track our current progress in detail on the Moodle 2.0 Planning document. Please remember that this document is frequently updated and details can change a lot! Draft release notes at Moodle 2.0 release notes. Please add notable items while they are fresh in your mind. The notes will be edited before the final release. System requirements Since Moodle 2.0 is such a major release, we are allowing ourselves some increases in the requirements. * PHP 5.2.8 is now the minimum version supported. (We are aware that several important linux distros are still shipping earlier versions like 5.2.6, but we need at least version 5.2.x for the new File API, and there are bugs in 5.2.7 and earlier that we could not work around.) This allows developers to write cleaner code using the more recent features of PHP, and will also improve user experience. * Databases should be one of the following: o MySQL 5.0.25 or later (InnoDB storage engine highly recommended) o PostgreSQL 8.3 or later o Oracle 10.2 or later o MS SQL 2005 or later * When upgrading to Moodle 2.0, you must have Moodle 1.9 or later. if you are using an earlier version of Moodle (eg 1.8.x) then you need to upgrade to Moodle 1.9.x first. New Community features * Community hub - Moodle.com Makes it easy for teachers to find other courses to download as templates fo

When we approach this task with key questions in mind, we focus our thinking on how we might plan learning experiences and opportunities that will have the impact we desire.

Vision + Skills + Incentives + Resources + Action Plan = Change Miss component and result is Confusion; Anxiety; Resistance; Frustraction; Treadmill.

Good find - that's something we need to factor into the equation. With staff too and not just students.

Donald Clark Plan B:

Sometimes, it seems everyone who ever went to school is an expert on education and has a plan to make it better. Actual teaching experience, years of professional learning and formal training are all easily swept aside. The result is an ongoing dialog around what schools should do, what teachers need to do more of or less of and how the academic success of the nation is linked to strategy x or y.

Despite this being a 'thinking' conference, despite us all being advocates for structured and scaffolded models of thinking, not one group had applied any thinking routines, utilised a collaborative planning protocol or talked about applying an inquiry model or design thinking cycle. It wasn't that we didn't know about them. It wasn't that we don't know how to use them. It wasn't that we don't value them. We had all the knowledge we could desire on the how to and the why of a broad set of thinking tools and anyone of these would have enhanced the process, but we did not use any of them. Why was this the case and what does this reveal about our teaching of these methods to our students?

A common challenge for students and teachers is how to develop a great idea for a piece of writing. Too often students struggle with the process of finding inspiration for their writing. They have a vague idea for the story they hope to tell, but all too quickly it transforms into a list of events with little or no detail. The goal here is to provide our students with a process to use during the planning process. The hope is that by identifying the type of thinking required during the early phases of ideation and to focus their attention on details, that the stories our students subsequently compose will be more enjoyable to read. Hopefully, this process helps.

If we believe that all learning is a consequence of thinking, then we should consider what types of thinking our learners are likely to benefit from at each phase of their inquiry. This is where the Understanding Map, developed by Ritchhart, Church & Morrison offers useful guidance. By contemplating the demands of each phase of our chosen inquiry model, we can plan for how we might scaffold thinking moves which will enhance our learners' learning.

For schools in Australia and many parts of the world, we are heading towards the end of another school term and year. That means report writing season. For the next few weeks, teachers across the country will be huddled in front of computer screens, writing reflections on the progress their learners have made. Mark books will be opened, assessments consulted, work samples will be reviewed. All so that in the first week of the long Summer vacation students can sit and read their report and make plans for how they will enhance their learning in the coming year.

With our goal of deep-learning in mind where do we begin and what learning opportunities might result in this? Having clarified our key terms of understanding, learning and deep, we can turn to a set of questions which might be of use as we plan the learning our students will engage in along their way.