Recently I had to put out a church sign. I had to write out the sign so I knew what I wanted, find each letter for the words, put the letters in the correct order to spell each word, and then put the letters in backward order (last letter, next to last letter, etc.) for each word on the sign.I constantly checked to make sure that the backward planning was resulting in the words being spelled correctly.
I realized that that is how good teachers teach. They figure out what they want their students to do, they make sure of all the skills involved, and they plan backward so that the students will learn letter by letter so they can be successful. They use formative assessment to verify the students learning
What learning sign have you put out this week?
Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle 
This week I am finishing up with data structures and templates used to create an ePortfolio experience for a college using the Open Source Portfolio. The Instructional Designers and IT staff at the college had some idea of what they wanted in the portfolio (pages in the portfolio for “Home”, “About Me”, “My path”, “My Accomplishments” and a resume). You would think that I would have all the “letters” I needed to build the sign for them! However, there have been a couple weeks of back and forth to iteratively improve the experience for students.
When working with technology (and a skilled technology staff) do you find that the “letters” form “on the fly”?
Sean,
One of you words jumped out at me “Had some idea”. I feel that the fault in education is just that. Teachers do not have specific ideas about what they want and therefore, they do not target all the activities. Likewise, they cannot help students since they have not gotten specific enough about what they are to learn.
No, good letters do not form on the fly. Careful planning is the key. I liken it to a play. Hours and hours of rehearsal (planning, preparing materials) before the audience (students) see the play.Then the audience can respond.
Harry