creating an ilesson

8/9/2019 Creating an iLesson

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A STEP-BY-STEP

GUIDETO CREATINGiLESSONS

STEP 1: Create your teacher profile

STEP 2: Pick a title for your iLesson

STEP 3: Define the iLesson

STEP 4: Summarise your iLesson

STEP 5: Plan the iLesson content

STEP 6: Produce the iLesson



This is the process to follow for creating iLessons on TeachMyself.org:

Step 1: Create your teacher profile

It's free and only takes two minutes. Simply click here or go towww.teachmyself.org/user/register and follow the instructions. Onceyou have logged in to your TeachMyself.org account then proceed tostep 2.

Step 2: Pick a title for your iLesson

If you are a professional teacher then your specialist subject areas willbe obvious to you, but if you are not a qualified teacher then you mightneed to think about what subject you wish to teach. You may feel youhave the specialist knowledge to teach an advanced subject, likeQuantum theory, medicine or Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Alternatively,you may decide to teach an iLesson aimed at younger children, whoare learning to read, tell the time, spell, subtract, etc.

Every iLesson must have a title, so once you have chosen your title goto the TeachMyself.org website and hover your cursor over the ‘BE A TEACHER’ menu option and click on the ‘Create an iLesson’ tab (this

option is only available if you are logged in). See fig 1 below.

fig 1: create an iLesson page

This should bring up the ‘Create iLesson’ page, which contains thisdocument at the top of it. On this page you will see a field called ‘Titleof iLesson’, please enter the title of your iLesson in this field see fig 2

http://www.teachmyself.org/user

http://www.teachmyself.org/user/register

http://www.teachmyself.org/user

http://www.teachmyself.org/user/register



Fig 2: place the title of your iLesson in this field

Note that whenever you see a little red star like the one in this picturenext to the words ‘Title of iLesson’, this is telling you that the field ismandatory and you must complete this field before saving the iLesson.In other words unless you put a title in this box the iLesson cannot besaved.

Step 3: Define the iLesson The next step is to go further in summarising your iLesson.

Target Age:First choose a target age range for your iLesson. As seen in Fig 3 thereis a drop down menu listing all the school ages from ‘Pre-school’ to‘18+ years old’, please select as many of these age groups as you feelare appropriate to your iLesson.

For example, a Geography iLesson teaching about the capital cities of Europe could be kept at a basic level and so applicable to children of 6,7 and 8 years old, or you could want to go into a lot more depth andtarget it at the ‘18+ years old’ age range. It is usually best not to justchoose a single age of children e.g. just selecting ‘12 years old’, but toinstead give a range of similar age groups e.g. 11, 12, 13 years old(multiple ages can be selected by holding down the ‘Ctrl’ key whileclicking on all your selections with the mouse)



Fig 3: use this menu to select the target age of students for your iLesson

Subject Area:Secondly, you must choose a relevant subject area(s) for your iLesson.

TeachMyself.org has provided a structured list of subject areas underthe three main groups of ‘Arts & Social Sciences’, ‘Maths & Science’and ‘Vocations & Life Skills’. If you find your iLesson does not perfectlyfit into a single subject area, you can select multiple subject areas.Please see Fig 4 as an example of what the list looks like.

Fig 4: use this menu to select the subject area of your iLesson

Tag your iLesson: To place a ‘Tag’ on an iLesson is like placing a label on it. These Tags(or labels) will help students search for the specific lesson content they

require. For example an iLesson might have a target age range of 15and 16 year olds, and have a subject area of ‘English Literature’,however you might also want to label it further with tags like‘Shakespeare’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘stage play’, ‘Elizabethan England’, or anyother tags you feel relevant. These ‘Tags’ can then be searched for bystudents to help them find exactly the iLesson they are looking for.



A Tag can be any word you feel is relevant, but as you type your tagsin the appropriate box (see Fig 5) the computer will try and match yourword to existing tags. When it finds suitable matches a drop down of suggested tags might appear. These are tags that others have usedand you are free to either choose one of these tags or carry on

creating an entirely new one of your own. You can include as manytags as you feel appropriate, just separate each tag with a comma.

Fig 5: enter tags (labels) that describe your iLesson

Step 4: Summarise your iLesson There is a section on the ‘Create iLesson’ page called ‘iLessonSummary’ where you will need to write an iLesson overview of yourLearning goal(s), see fig 6.

Fig 6: Write a brief summary of your iLesson to describe to students what it’s about

This summary of your iLesson will be the teaser text that students readto discover what your lesson is about. This is also important forhelping you define the scope or boundaries of your iLesson. Below aresome helpful suggestions that you should keep in mind when definingyour iLesson.

• Don’t try to make your iLesson too big: You can create asmany iLessons as you choose so don’t feel you have to makeyour iLesson topic too big, just pick a specific objective to beachieved by the iLesson, called the ‘Learning Goal’, and thenplan the iLesson to just achieve this specific aim.



• Create a specific and measurable learning goal: Try tomake the ‘learning goal’ as specific and measurable as possible.For example this Learning Goal is too vague:

“This is an iLesson which teaches mathematics”.

Make it more specific by addressing questions like what part of mathematics will you be concentrating on? What age of studentis your target age group? What measurable goal will thestudents be able to achieve after going through the lesson? So abetter iLesson summary might be:

“This is a Trigonometry iLesson aimed at giving children between8 and 12 years old an introduction to calculating the angles of triangles. At the end of the iLesson a student should be able

successfully complete the provided 10 questions.”

• Explain what the iLesson is comprised of: Include a brief overview of what teaching materials are used in the iLesson. Forexample part of your summary may say:

“The lesson comprises 3 short videos, a worksheet and somereading materials.”

• Remember your audience: You have already specified an agerange so imagine that your summary is being read directly by

that age group, or is read to that child by a responsible adult. Assuch the tone, length and types of words you use should beeasily understood and appeal to your target students.

• You can always come back and revise the summary: Youdo not have to create all of your iLesson in one go, you can saveand return to your iLesson and hence also edit this iLessonsummary before finally publishing the iLesson.

You may choose to create your iLesson in one go, however at thisstage you have created your iLesson framework and entered enoughinformation to save the draft of your iLesson and return to add and editcontent at a later date. To save your iLesson you just have to pressthe ‘SAVE’ button at the bottom of the ‘Create iLesson’ page (see fig7). If you also wish to publish your iLesson so that students can accessit then you have to tick the ‘publish’ box before pressing save, shownin fig 8.



fig 7: press the ‘SAVE’ button to save your fig 8: tick the ‘Published’ box to also publish the

iLesson. iLesson.



Step 5: Plan the iLesson content

Next take some time to plan your iLesson. It will save you a lot of effort

if you have a general overview of what the different components of thelesson are going to be and what the student is going to get out of it.For experienced teachers this will be easy, for new teachers this mighttake a little longer.

One can think of a lesson plan as telling the ‘story’ of the lesson, ordescribing the ‘journey’ that you want to take your students on. Therefore, in your planning you will need to concentrate on where youwould like to take the students (the lesson goal) and where in relationto that goal your students are currently. In other words to plan a journey you need to know where you are and where you are going to

finish. Hence, when planning your iLesson you need to consider whatlevel of knowledge your students have before the iLesson and whatadditional knowledge they should have after studying your iLesson.

Now you know where the students are starting from and where youwant them to get to, it is only left to think about the route you will useto take them along the journey. Each stage of your iLesson should flowlike a car journey, or story, with each part logically leading on to thenext. Deciding on the different parts of the iLesson will likely be anorganic process of thinking and rearranging until you are happy.

As part of this process you can have a look for existing teachingmaterials that you can also use in your iLesson. Remember iLessonscan consist of text, videos, documents, other web pages and audiorecordings. A quick search of the internet will offer a great manyexamples of potential lesson materials that are appropriately licensedfor your use, which means you will not have to create new materialsfor that part of the iLesson.

Below are some informal tips that you might want to follow to arrive atan ordered list of lesson components:

1. Search the internet for free supporting media that you can usefor either ideas or as part of your actual lesson. For example if you are creating an iLesson teaching the basics of the Frenchlanguage there might already be a lot of videos, documents andaudio recordings already on sites like Youtube, specialistlanguage websites, or numerous other sources. Usually thesematerials can easily become part of your iLesson.



2. Remember that younger students will need longer to graspconcepts and be less able to practice and revise the lesson ontheir own. So for younger students try not to be too subtle, orquick with the development of your lesson. Don’t be scared toconstantly reinforce the learning points you are trying to make.

3. Try and keep it as simple as possible. It is best to break long andcomplicated lessons into two, three or more separate iLessons,rather then forcing all the learning goals into one long iLesson.

4. If you are struggling, try out your iLesson plan on friends andfamily and get their feedback on it. See if they understand thestory/journey of the lesson.

5. As all iLessons have to exclude some relevant areas, wherepossible try to include suggestion for further study in case thestudent is struggling, or is interested in further research.

6. Remember that the student could be anywhere in the world andall that we know for sure is that they have an internet

connection. As such think carefully before making ‘off-line’materials essential for completing your lessons.

7. Remember that each lesson is like a story and will need abeginning, middle and end. So don’t forget to include anintroduction to the lesson and a conclusion or summary of thelesson.

Step 6: Produce the iLesson

Now you have a plan for your iLesson it is time to go ahead and createit. You will notice a section on the ‘create iLesson’ page that looks likefig 9.



fig 9: This is where you place the iLesson text and multimedia.

This section is where your will create the iLesson. It is just like a blankpiece of paper, you can click in it and begin typing any text you wish toinclude in your iLesson, just like fig 10. This boxed area can be madebigger or smaller by clicking on the bottom of the box (indicated by ared circle in fig 10) and holding down the mouse key as you drag themouse up or down.

fig 10: example of someone beginning to write an iLesson.

When you are ready to insert a piece of multimedia like a video, audiorecording or picture then you need to click on one of the ‘Apture’ linksat the top of the iLesson box. See fig 11.



fig 11: The two Apture buttons at the top of the iLesson box.

Apture is an independent tool that allows for the easy embedding of multimedia into web pages. There are two buttons you can choosefrom. The link button (fig 12) and the embed button (fig 13).

fig 12: the ‘link’ button fig 13: the ‘embed’ button

To link to a reference is to provide a button on your iLesson page thatwhen pressed will take the student to a different page or open thatpage in a pup-up. To embed a piece of multimedia means that it (thevideo, audio, document, etc) will actually display inside your iLessonpage so that students will not need to go to an external page to viewit.

When you click either the link or embed Apture buttons then a box likefig 14 will pop-up on your screen.



Fig 14: the pop-up box on pressing the Apture link or embed button

There is a central search bar in this pop-up box that allows you tosearch the internet for multimedia. Alternatively if you wish to uploada file or enter a specific url (web address) for a piece of multimediathat you have previously located then these options are also available.

Record Yourself You may not always be able to find the video, audio or document yourequire. In these instances you may have to create it yourself. Onceyou have recorded or created the file then it can be easily and freelyuploaded to websites like YouTube and Scribd, or uploaded through the‘Upload File’ option in the pop-up in fig 14. If uploaded to a websitelike YouTube then you can link or embed it using the Apture buttons.

That’s it! The only other decision to make is whether to accept any

offers of sponsorship that arrive. TeachMyself.org will not let otherspester you, but if we receive a sensible offer of sponsorship for youriLesson we will let you know about it. It is completely your decisionwhether you accept the offer of money or not. This is simply anincentive based scheme that we run, which allows teachers andschools to be rewarded for the quality of the lessons they create.



Every lesson is checked by the TeachMyself.org team to ensure it doesnot contain obscene or inappropriate content for children. However thisis usually done within 24 hours so that your iLesson will quickly beavailable to the students of the world.

For an experienced teacher this whole process could take minutes, butfor the less experienced it will take longer. However if you are willingto dedicate a bit of your time to helping us then I promise you we willcreate universal education by 2015.

If you get stuck and need help with any part of this process then youcan contact us by through the TeachMyself.org website.

Thank You & Good Luck

The TeachMyself.org Team

creating an ilesson

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