Help

Use the Smith Vocational Lesson Plan Database to create, store, print, and align your vocational and academic lesson plans.

Curriculum Objects

Functions

Privileges

View Options

Tips

CURRICULUM OBJECTS

The curriculum objects in the database are:

1. Courses: courses are simply collections of existing units.
2. Units: units are simply collections of existing lessons.
3. Lessons are what you teach and consist of:
   • Activities: the procedure(s) the students and teacher follow for the lesson.
   • Assessments: how you assess that the students met the lesson objectives.
   • Comments: reflections on the lesson by you or other teachers using the lesson.
   • Materials: what materials are needed and their cost.
   • Modifications: modifications you could use to meet each student's unique needs.
   • Objectives: what the students should know and know how to do after the lesson.
   • Resources: web sites, files, and/or text that is helpful to the lesson.
   • Standards: academic or vocational standards the lesson is aligned to.
4. Standards are the benchmarks and can be academic or vocational standards.

FUNCTIONS

The basic functions are:

1. Add a course, unit, or lesson.
2. Align a course, unit, or lesson to academic and/or vocational standards. For a course or a unit, the database looks across all standards in each lesson contained in the unit or course. You can use this function to perform a gap analysis. What standards are not covered that you wanted to cover?
3. Browse courses, units, lessons, or standards. Click on the unit, course, or lesson name to see the details of that object. Click on the standard ID to see the details of the standard.
4. Print courses, units, lessons, or standards. When you print courses or units, the database prints all lessons in that course or unit.
5. Search for courses, units, lessons, or standards.

PRIVILEGES

Each object in the database has ownership and privilege data associated with it.

The ownership data stored is:

• Owner: the creator of the lesson
• Department: the owner's department
• School: the owner's school
• District: the owner's district

Each or the following groups can have none, read, or read/write privileges on the object.

• Owner: the owner herself
• Department: other people in the owner's department at that school
• School: others at the owner's school
• District: others in the owner's district
• World: anyone in any district or school

The read/write privilege include the ability to delete an object. By default, objects are created with the following privileges:

• Owner: read/write
• Department: read
• School: read
• District: read
• World: none

You can change privileges by clicking on the Change Privileges link associated with each object.

VIEW OPTIONS

Due to the large number of curriculum objects in the database, you can specify a view option that limits what you can see. The following values are allowed.

• Owner: only shows objects owned by yourself
• Department: shows objects owned by yourself and those in your department
• School: shows objects owned by yourself and those in your school
• District: shows objects owned by yourself and those in your district
• World: show any object in the database (no limits)

Note that objects are still subject to privilege checks. You can only see objects that you have read or read/write privileges for.

TIPS

• You must select an object to print before printing it. Select an object by using browse and then clicking on the object's title.
• Don't forget to utilize the search function when there are large numbers of objects to browse. This is especially true of standards. Search on the standard's discipline to limit how many standards you see to that specific discipline.
• You can change your password or your view options by clicking on the appropriate link at the bottom of the screen.
• You must always click on UPDATE on the bottom of the screen to change information in the database. This is also true for each tab of a lesson.
• The view option of department allows you to limit your view to lessons, units, and courses owned by others in your department. The discipline of each lesson is not considered.
• If a teacher changes departments, schools, are districts, the ownership information is not changed. If it should be changed, contact a superuser at your school.
• After you add an objects, you are asked if you want to edit that object. Click OK if yes. Click cancel if you want the object added but do not wish to edit it at this time. You can always go back and edit the object later.