EDU 580

Educational Technology
Lesson Plan: Cosmic Time Line Integrated with Technology
Name: Colby Garrand . Date: 4/30/2018 .
Standards:
1.) New York State P12 Science Standards MS-ESS 1-4:
Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence from rock strata for how the
geologic time scale is used to organize Earth’s 4.6-billion-year-old history.
2.) ISTE Student Standards 3. Knowledge Constructor:
Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct
knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for
themselves and others.
3.) ISTE Student Standard 4. Innovated Design:
Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve
problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.
Lesson Objectives:
1.) Students will be able to examine the time frame of the universes life span.
2.) Students will be able to interpret the geological time scale or time line of the universe
through visual representations.
3.) Students will be able to construct their own time line of their personal life and compress
that time line into a small time scale.
Introduction to Learning Activity:
1.) Before the lesson begins, the teacher or instructor will prompt the lesson objectives on
the board either written on the board or through the projection system. The objectives
will also be posted under the Lesson Plan tab of the teacher’s website. The objectives
will be discussed in greater detail when that objective is being achieved during the lesson.
For example, when the class is working with the second lesson objective, the instructor
will explain what the geological time line is and offer resources for the students to
interact with and further their knowledge about the geological time line. During the
lesson, the teacher is already expecting the students to have a brief knowledge of some of
Earth’s most predominate time periods, from previous grades. The instructor will try to
their fullest to compress the information of this large time line into something that the
students already know pretty well at this point, a calendar.
2.) Since this lesson can be a fairly boring topic, unless the students are interested in history
or science, but the teacher will try to their fullest to make the lesson fun and enjoyable.
The biggest thing the instructor will do is providing interactive websites that causes the
students to “play” around with buttons can gets them thinking about the history of Earth
and Space without even mentioning those topics in the introduction. The instructor will
 also be providing the students an opportunity to use the paint function, something most
students use when they do not have paper or internet, on their computer. This gives the
students that enjoy arts and creating new images a chance to have a little bit of fun during
the lesson while still learning about the material. Now the challenge is still, how does the
instructor get the students interested in this topic. For this lesson, the biggest and easiest
way to get the students interested is done in two “steps”. One “step” is showing them the
Cosmic Calendar, an idea created by Carl Sagan, and what his idea was is turning the
entire life span of space, from the Big Bang to the present, into a single calendar year.
With that, and the additional information such as dinosaurs going extinct on December
29th, gets the students thinking about the time line of Earth and Space. The second “step”
is by having the students make their own time line or calendar about their own life. Some
students really enjoy talking about themselves and makes the lesson fun for them. For
others, they can start to connect major ideas like, “having my first boy/girlfriend occurred
on December 29th, just like how the dinosaurs went extinct in the Cosmic Calendar.”
Having two ways for student to get involved and thinking about the time line will spark
their interest into this topic.
Provide Information:
1.) The instructor will give the students information about the universes life span that has
evidence to support those important events that are evident in the universes life span, like
the creation of the Milky Way galaxy in the universe. While giving the students this
information, the instructor will try to provide the students a video section from either Carl
Sagan’s “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” or from Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos: A
Space Odyssey” where they talk about the Cosmic Calendar. From there, the instructor
will go into more detail and let the students know that we are working with this
information as it is compressed into that calendar time frame. Video link will be
provided for the students on my resource tab for additional uses later in the year and not
during this lesson. Video link for Carl Sagan’s version is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln8UwPd1z20. Video link for Neil DeGrasse
Tyson’s version is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShTxGumvbno.
2.) During the lesson, since this will be a lot of computer-based learning and working, the
students will have the opportunity to use the internet to look up definitions that they may
not know. However, the instructor will advise the class not to do that because those
definitions are not always accurate for the content. The instructor will ask the class to
raise their hand and the instructor will call on the students to ask their question or ask for
the definition out loud for the class. This is not to make the student feel ashamed for
themselves, the instructor is asking the students to do this because other students might
have the same question and that might help the “nervous or anxious” students who do not
like to ask for help, get the explanation they need. For this lesson, all of the explanations
that the instructor will give will be verbal explanations in a way that is not find in a
dictionary. It will be an explanation that the instructor hopes will be simple and to the
point so the student does not have to learn the extensive definition for the vocabulary.
Provide Practice:
1.) During the lesson, the students will have the opportunity to visit two websites that the
teacher will attach to the Resource tab on their website. The two links are
http://visav.phys.uvic.ca/~babul/AstroCourses/P303/BB-slide.htm, located under The
Cosmic Timeline link, the student just have to click the title and that will bring the
student to the website, and
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/time/timeline/entertimeline.html, located
under The BGS Geological Timeline tab. Each of these websites provides additional
information that ties into the overall objective, interpreting visual representations for the
time line of the universe. The first link is not an interactive website, but it does provide
the best visual representation of the Cosmic Calendar and this definitely hits the major
components of the time line of the universe. The second link is definitely more
interactive and ties into the life span of Earth. Each portion of the circle, but into 46
portions, each representing 100 million years. This ties into the second objective where
the students will create a time line of their life span into separate months. For example, if
the student is 12 years old, each month would represent one year. To go along with that
website, the students will also be allowed to use the paint function on their computer to
create those time lines.
2.) This lesson is intended to be completed independently for the students. Each student is
going to be working on their own computer and that will lead to a majority of the lesson
being completed independently. Since each student will have different life experiences
and not all the same age, so the created time lines will all be different. The teacher will
allow the students to work together when trying to calculate the time frame for each
month of a calendar year. That is a more challenging task for students to complete if they
are not strong in mathematics. But for the most part, the creation of the time line is to be
done independently.
Provide Knowledge of Results:
1.) During the time that the students are independently working on their timeline, the
instructor will provide verbal feedback to the students to encourage the students to further
their work and show the students that the instructor is interested and intrigued in the
student’s work. If the student is struggling, the instructor will help the student get back
on track, even if the student is falling behind, and let them know that if they do not get
through all of the material that the instructor is asking them to do, that they can work on
portions that the student does not finish at other times. The instructor wants to make sure
that the students can comprehend that the overall objective of universal time line and how
individuals compressed that time line to something that is readable for many individuals.
All feedback will be positive and definitely encouraging for the students. The instructor
will give verbal feedback to all students as the instructor is maneuvering through the
class.
2.) Throughout the lesson, the instructor will go around, while providing verbal feedback,
and start to record where the students are in in completing their time lines. After the
 students have completed their timeline, the instructor would like the students to call the
instructor over, through raising their hand. Once the instructor reaches the students, the
instructor will ask the students to state what each of the labeled portions are and how they
found out where those fall into the calendar time line. While the student is stating this
information, the instructor will be recording that the students have an understanding how
the information is translated into a time line that is not 100% accurate but still relates the
information into a sense that is understandable. Just like the time line of the universe into
a time line of a calendar. After the class has finished their “painted” time line or after the
class has had their discussion, the instructor will hand out the written feedback to the
student that it belongs to. This feedback will be encouraging and positive for all of the
students and will also provide additional feedback on areas that the instructor thinks the
student might need to spend more time on to grasp or comprehend the material.
Review:
1.) With a few minutes left in the class, the instructor will ask a few volunteers what they
interpreted from the Cosmic Calendar or about the time span of Earth. The instructor will
try to touch on the interpretations that might be note worthy if the students to not mention
them during the end of class discussion. Also, I will have a few volunteers state why
they thought the instructor had the students create their own time line after learning about
the Cosmic Calendar. The answer the teacher is looking for is “to see that the students
can correlate information that only they know into a time line just like how the
information that is known about universe is correlated to a calendar year.” This allows
the students to see their own creation as a useful tool that they made, that will potentially
see that all information can be compressed and correlated to other events or dates. The
instructor will also ask the class what the learning method, creating a time line and
scaling the information into that time line, used in the class can relate to other courses.
Methods of Assessment:
1.) Assessing how the students comprehending the material is challenging for the instructor
to do during this lesson. Since there is no clear evidence of any information being
handed in to the instructor, the students are only going to be assessed on their interaction
to the websites and their focus and commitment to the paint function when they are
creating their time line. This will be more of a participation assessment rather than a
graded assessment. As long as the students are interacting with the websites and with the
paint function, the student will briefly grasp the information and be able to interpret the
information from the visuals provided. Then while they are working in the paint
function, they are already working on their second objective just by creating that time
line and thinking about it in the perspective that each month or day represents a large
time scale. Besides the students working independently on the websites and paint
function, the class is going to have a discussion talking about what they thought was
interesting and fun to remember from this lesson. During the discussion, the instructor is
encouraging the students to interact with other students and discuss if they potentially
agree with what the students say or if they have something different to add to the class
 discussion. They will be assessed based off of their participation, possibly 5 out of 5
participation points for adding to the discussion in any way during the review portion of
the lesson.
2.) In this lesson, it is hard to assess a Tech Skills. The students are only applying their
ability to go to my website and click on a couple of links. From those links, being able to
interact with the websites that are provided, where one of them has more interactions than
the other, as well be able to use the paint function on the computer to create an image.
These are small or none significant Tech Skills that are skills that the students have
already used or played with before getting to the class. So, assessing those skills is
irrelevant because these are skills that the students already have and have not really
learned in this lesson. If I had to assess the students on their Tech Skills, it would be a
participation assessment to see if the students are interacting with the websites and paint
function.