A teacher is supposed to prepare a lesson plan before going to class. A lesson plan gives a detailed description of the topic to be covered, lesson duration, the goal that the teacher intends to achieve and how to achieve them (Courey, Tappe, Siker & LePage, 2013). A lesson plan also gives a description of how the teacher will test if a student has captured the concept. It helps the tutor to conduct a lesson smoothly and cover the content in time. Just like other fields, education has embraced technology. Teachers are now using technology to prepare a lesson plan. Technology reduces the time used to make a lesson plan and makes it less complicated.
Argument
Technology helps a teacher to access a lot of information within a short period (Bell, Maeng & Binns, 2013). In the past, books were the only source of information for educators. Clarifying a point needed one to spend hours in the library and ask other teachers. Technology now allows the teacher to get any information from the internet or softcopy books easily. It is now easy to compare the work of different authors and thus, come up with a detailed lesson plan.
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"Lesson Plan Using Technology".
Using technology is less cumbersome. A teacher handles more than one class and may also be teaching two or more lessons. He or she is supposed to prepare more than three lesson plans per day. In the past, these lesson plans were kept in a file that a teacher had to carry while going to class. He or she was required to have a big space to store the files for different classes and various topics. A teacher can now use a laptop or a tablet to save all the lesson plans (Courey, Tappe, Siker & LePage, 2013). A teacher does not have to carry a lot of paperwork while going to class. Technology, therefore, helps to keep the environment clean as well as make teacher’s work less cumbersome.
It is easy to refer to previous lesson plans on the same topic while using technology. A teacher can, therefore, learn from the previous lessons by looking at the comments he made after the lesson (Bell, Maeng & Binns, 2013). The teacher will use the information to improve his or her teachings. For example, the instructor can use the resources that previously made the lesson enjoyable. He can also scrub off the methods that did not work and supplement with new ones. The teacher does not have to create new teaching materials like charts and diagrams as he or she can retrieve the old ones as long as they are still relevant. He can then use a projector to show them to students. Preparing learning materials takes a lot of time, and thus, the ability to retrieve previously used relevant resources helps to save time.
Counter Argument
On the other hand, technology can promote laziness. Some teachers can use the same lesson plans they previously used without making adjustments (C. Kim, K. Kim, Lee, Spector & DeMeester, 2013). This means that such a teacher will repeat the previous mistake and will never improve on his or her methods of teaching. Such a teacher does not bother to assess if the previously used materials are still relevant. Furthermore, retrieving information from the internet may make learning boring as this is the same kind of information that the students had come across if the teacher had asked them to search for information on the topic. The student will not be looking forward to the next lesson as they know what information the teacher will present. Again, students that were used to traditional charts and diagrams may find it hard to interpret the ones shown by the use of a projector (Mollaei & Riasati, 2013). Since technology entails the use of computers which stores information in soft copy format, the teacher cannot leave the charts and diagrams in class for the students to have a second look at them.
Conclusion
As much as technology makes lesson preparation less time-consuming and easier, teachers should consider using some traditional methods of teaching. For example, the teacher should ensure they still leave hardcopy charts and diagrams in class for the student to study them for more days.
