Instructional project reflection

We were able to quickly decide on a topic suggested by Latrece, teaching seniors how to sign up for and use Facebook. Her and I both had personal experience assisting older member of our family with signing up recently and felt this would be useful for seniors while being focused on using social media. I think the most difficult part for us in constructing this lesson was trying to find a way to have our pretend seniors follow along on a computer. Given almost everyone in the class already had a Facebook, no one would be able to start a new one because it is linked to phone numbers and email addresses. We didn't want this to be a lecture for our classmates. We felt that keeping people engaged would happen by having them participate in the signup process.

The easiest part of the design process was actually coming up with what we wanted to go over. We wanted our learners to have a Facebook with a profile picture, be able to find friends, and be able to post messages by the end of our lesson. We just came up with the exact steps to do this. I feel that the class was engaged in the lesson even though it was material they did not need. Everyone played their roles very well and brought up legitimate issues seniors would encounter during our lesson; such as profile picture problems, not knowing which keys are which, and concerns about privacy and information. I was surprised at how fast the time went and how easy it felt to actually go through the lesson plan. It did not feel like a presentation which was nice, I tend to be very nervous when presenting something. Teaching feels much more calm to me. 

To check out our lesson plan click here.