Monday, March 22, 2010

Miracle lesson plan

This is an iPhone application lesson plan for my French students in Terminale L. It worked like a charm, so it had to be noted. I searched a few times through the assistants in France site to find out where the original plan for this was, but I think it may have been a Google search I did a while back that brought up this amazing plan for my lycée-collègiens. In any case, this was not my idea, so I can't take credit for it, and I wish I had the original link to paste here (if you are the creator of this lesson, leave a comment and I will gladly put your name uo here!). But I do have the basics of the plan. Here it is:

1) Open the lesson by discussing what makes the iPhone different from normal phones.
2) Write special features they come up with on the side of the chalk/whiteboard.
3) Discuss what an application is. Then show them this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szrsfeyLzyg
4) Ask them what the applications did that were described in the video.
5) Then, tell them you'd like them to find a partner (if it's a big class, have them work in groups of 3). Explain that you'd like them to create their own apps, with 2 special, unique functions and a name for the app. Give students 10-15 minutes (if a 55 minute class) to talk with their partner(s) and come up with an original application that Apple would want to put on the iPhone.
6) Tell them that at the end of class (in the last 15-20 minutes, depending on the size again) each group will present their app. Have them write the name of each app on the board. After the last group has presented, have the class vote for whichever app they thought was the best/most unique/most practical.

I just tried this today with a group of 8 lycée girls, who dove right into the assignment and really were interested. You can adapt this lesson for any level, just tweak the number of functions you'd like for each application and help them out with their presentation if they're stuck with vocabulary.

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