Lesson Plan

by
Patricia Burwell
EDD 7007
Principles of Distance Education

Nova Southeastern University

June 13, 2008
Overview of the Lesson

Palloff & Pratt (2007) posit a set of guidelines should be generated by the instructor as a

first item of discussion in an online course. The guidelines should be loose enough to allow for

some debate and discussion, open to some degree of negotiation, and generated partly by

participants, particularly as they apply to how students will interact with one another, in other

words, students should be encouraged to develop a common set of ground rules for interaction.

The purpose of this lesson plan is to emphasize the need for good respectful “Netiquette,” when

using online resources including email. This can be done by sharing a set of faculty guidelines or

expectations at the start of the course and asking students to comment on or agree with them.

This forms a contract for learning.

Topic

The term “Netiquette,” is used to describe the guidelines for professional communication

when using the Internet. It includes information such as how often students will participate, and

possibly even the dates for when that communication should occur. Because of the misuse of

online communication such as cyber-bullying, which is when someone uses the Internet, cell

phone, or other device to send or post text or images to try to hurt or embarrass another person, it

is important for schools to promote proper online communication whenever students are using

the Internet (The Ad Council, 2008).

The way schools can encourage healthy online practices is by having teachers teach

students what the expectations are for online usage and by having teachers be vigilant in

enforcing those ground rules whenever they are using the Internet with them. Currently, many

teachers may have a vague notion of Netiquette but it is important for each teacher to know for

himself/herself what their ground rules will be with students so they can actively convey this

information with them whenever online instruction occurs in the classroom environment.
Goal

After participants have completed this lesson, they will integrate Netiquette guidelines

into every online lesson conducted with students.

Description of the Audience

The audience consists of a faculty/staff of elementary teachers at a local public school

who use the computer lab with students. Because the county has technology standards for

teachers and encourage technology usage, they all have some technology exposure and

experience. At a minimum, they all know how to turn it on, and navigate to find the applications

they need. They tend to use the computer for lesson planning and personal activities such as

emailing. Though all of them use computers, they come with varying degrees of information

about technology. It appears that new teachers tend to easily integrate the computer into their

classrooms and will provide support to veteran teachers. The county has listed appropriate

applications by grade for computer use. Teachers generally use their computer time by having

students use these ‘safe’ applications. There are other times, however, teachers are interested in

using the Internet with students but they (new or veteran) almost never introduce or monitor

proper online usage with students when using the Internet unless a problematic situation arises.

Learning Objectives

Given several samples of “Netiquette” guidelines for third, fourth, and fifth graders,

participants will create a list of (at least 7) guidelines for their virtual classrooms using the

Internet with at least 90% accuracy.

List/ Description of the Media (and Rationale)

 Here is a list of the media I propose to use with the rationale for using it:

Internet – Participants can obtain information housed in multiple, distant, and physically

inaccessible libraries around the world. It has a variety of media, up-to-date information,

navigation, idea exchange, convenient communication, and it is relatively inexpensive

(Smaldino, Lowther, & Russell, 2008). The reason I am using it is because it is readily available.

The audience understands and has experience with how to use it and the lesson is on this specific

media.

List of Activities
1. Begin with a Netiquette tutorial including what it is, the rationale for using it, some
samples of Netiquette guideline, and state the purpose of this tutorial and why it is
beneficial to integrate it into your teaching repertoire. (2 minutes)
2. Display various Netiquette Websites. The participants will decide which ones are
applicable to their virtual classrooms. (1 minute)
3. Encourage students to explore the various Netiquette Websites. (4 minutes)
4. Ask students to collect information that would pertain to their virtual classrooms (4
minutes)
5. Give the participants an opportunity to review their lists and make any necessary
revisions. (4 minutes)
Assessment Plan

The lesson planner will know that students learned Netiquette guidelines for proper

Internet usage after a list of at least seven guidelines is emailed from each participant. As a part

of the tutorial, they will be required to collect or make up appropriate Netiquette guidelines from

their online research. They will post these guidelines for the lesson planner’s review. This list

can, in turn, be used with their individual virtual classes.

Evaluation Plan

Participants will provide feedback by writing a response to one or more of the reflection

questions provided.
 When you are done, please take time to give me feedback and send it to my email located

as a link in the online lesson plan. You should base your feedback around the following

questions.

• Was the content of this lesson appropriate?

• Were the links easy to navigate?
• Did you have enough time to get at least seven guidelines for online users?
• Do you think you will incorporate proper Internet usage guidelines as a result of this
lesson? Tell why or why not?
• How will you support the proper use of Netiquette in your virtual classrooms? If you are
not planning to incorporate them, tell why or why not.
• After this experience, do you think Netiquette is an important aspect of online learning?
Tell why or why not.
• Feel free to give your impressions on any points that will improve the quality of this
lesson. Your feedback to this lesson plan is greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the
time to complete this brief questionnaire for my first Web-based Lesson.
Peer Reviewer

Thomas deQuesada peer-reviewed my lesson plan. The lesson plan developer addressed

all of the comments he made in the lesson plan. He mentioned the developer had a run-on

sentence in the overview and a grammatical error in the topic area so she corrected them. He

requested more specificity in the description of the audience and the assessment plan so the

developer added more information in these areas. Please find his comments in the attachment bar

of this email.

References
Palloff, R.M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for
the virtual classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Smaldino, S.E., Lowther, D.L., & Russell, J.D. (2008). Instructional technology and media for
learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
The Advertising Council, Inc. (2008). Cyberbullying Prevention. Retrieved July 24, 2008 from
http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=42