Pre-Lesson:
Frontline Realities
What can affect your lesson before it even begins?
When it comes to integrating technology into lessons, the PAL working group identified some recurring issues they see on a daily basis. What they deal with on a daily basis shines a light on new complexities that arise and the host of digital considerations they bring to LBS delivery, whether face-to-face or online.
Take a look below at what our PAL working group members talked about:
Do any of these situations sound familiar to you?
We have Chromebooks in our class, but then there's the challenges of logging in and getting people connected with the passwords and usernames, and that's actually even before you open a browser or actually do anything. It's just a daily thing.
Regardless of our students' levels or the material we are using... there needs to be some prerequisite readiness from a technological view. Some of the basic digital skills should be there, [but they're often not].
It takes a lot of time to get students to sign in and get prepared, regardless of our students' levels or the material. Some of the basic digital skills should be there, but they're often not.
With our low-level students, a quarter of our lesson time is spent on helping with technology.
The technology doesn't always cooperate and it's very time consuming!
When students come in late—which is common with adult learners who have obligations—you find yourself having to repeat the lesson instructions and digital steps constantly.
Our adult learners, who trust us to be there for them, often ask us to help them navigate some online platforms with high-stakes implications for their lives.
We do help, and sometimes assisting learners with online issues they are navigating in their lives can eat into the start of class.
It is important, however, and we are often their only resource.
Continuous intake is always an issue, as new students entering class, online or face-to-face, need time to feel comfortable with the other learners and cannot jump in t
These daily realities can immediately impact the flow of the about-to-begin lesson and can be viewed as bottlenecks to flow and pace.
It may be helpful to anticipate many of these challenges and consider transforming the pre-lesson challenges into opportunities.
