Recently Ben Davies and I attended a Professional Development on the use of a Health, Driver Education and Drug Use Curriculum from Western Australia.
We were very happy with the PD and the content that the curriculum covered and are keen to see its implementation in our respective schools (Ben is at Lanyon HS and I am at Lyneham HS – opposite ends of town).
The curriculum was presented to each of the teachers attending in a folder that sequentially detailed all of the activities covered – a teachers dream. It was presented so thoroughly that its implementation into our own schools curriculum would be almost seamless. Throughout the PD Ben and I often conversed about where each of the activities would align in the Learn by Design framework. We found we used the LbD framework as a checklist to warrant legitimacy of the curriculum, wanting to ensure the content covered the 4 domains within Learning by Design before we would give it the final tick.
As a result we thought we would re write the proposed curriculum through the lens of Learning by Design and set to CG Learner to start documenting it.
This is what Learning by Design has become for me. It has made me understand that content presented to students needs to cover the 4 domains of LbD for it to be a true, expansive, learning experience and it is a tool I can use to ensure my presented curriculum is such an experience.
Ben and I found that as we entered the activities into CG Learner we were very conscious of the possibility of it favouring a particular domain and not exposing students to all areas. This would have been a good opportunity for us to identify gaps in the proposed curriculum and come up with supporting material and further activities to ensure the ‘roundness’ of the curriculum.
We were very happy to see that as we documented activities they began to fall into the different domains and the content really will be a powerful educational experience for the students. Being at a new school, I am treading lightly as to its actual implementation in classes, and will browse the Health curriculum within my school to see where this content can fit – if only in parts.
The use of CG Learner was powerful also. Having the document stored in cyberspace allows both Ben and myself to access it as we please. The ability for two teachers to document and develop curriculum while it is being taught in two different schools at different ends of town is fantastic. Effectively we will be ‘live-updating’ for each other as we progress at different speeds through the document. This then lends itself to curriculum development branching outside of the staffroom, outside of the school, outside of the city – even outside of the country – instantaneously.
We can attach and share resources we find suitable for each of the activities, and then both have access to them at the same time in different places.
