My decision to use Land Animals as the topic of my COATT unit was based on several factors. My host teacher and I discussed the most appropriate unit for me to teach, based on the topics left to address for the year. While I use technology on a day to day basis in my classroom, this topic had given me some specific ideas that would demonstrate our use of technology.

In the early childhood grades (though second grade), my emphasis for technology skills is different that it would be if I had, say, fifth or sixth graders. While I still use technology as a tool for addressing the content standards students are expected to meet, I emphasize exploration and early computer navigation skills, often using demonstration followed by individual exploration and work during center time or at home. With older students, I focus much more on student product and use less teacher direction. Some of my first and second graders had quite a bit of computer experience, but many had very little. While designing this unit, I made sure that I included enough personal exploration and growth time as well as the scaffolding necessary to support those with less experience. I was very careful to evaluate my use of technology during the unit; I have many skills in using technology that I did not take advantage of during the unit because I would have been "teaching the technology" moreso than the topic of Land Animals.

While developing this unit, I drew on my many previous experiences in using technology, including teaching my college professors how to set up online courses utilizing the Blackboard system. I have a fair amount of knowledge about online learning, and used guiding principals such as individual work time and readability of content presented electronically. I also integrated this project with my honors program thesis project: a classroom website designed to inform, teach, and build community in the classroom. I wanted to include the classroom website in this unit as well as find other ways to present with technology and encourage students to use technology creatively. The classroom website is available at http://www.classroomcorner.net. Feel free to look at the available areas of the site, but there are also password protected areas which are not available to anyone outside of my classroom community and school. I am careful to respect privacy and concern of families, and any pictures in public areas contain only children whose families have signed permission for their child's picture to be public on the site. The same goes for any pictures contained in the COATT portfolio.

My goals for the unit were to:

• teach students about the following topics concerning land animals: habitat, life cycles, ecosystems, food chains
• provide students with opportunities to observe me using technology and give them opportunities to work on their own with websites, CD-ROM's, and programs
• give students experience with learning from and creating with computers
• integrate my classroom website in a unit of instruction
• create websites for learning
• integrate websites in lessons and presentations
• motivate students and increase learning by providing information in several formats to reach different learning styles, including book and print, discussion, and electronic formats

My major steps in creating the unit were:

• look at the state goals for myself as a teacher and for the students (content and technology)
• plan the unit, in web form and detailed lessons
• plan the logistics of activities, including access to the appropriate technology when needed
• implement activities and lessons
• create websites (example 1, example 2) for student and family use

The students learned and accomplished the following:

• students accomplished unit learning goals for land animals: habitat, life cycles, ecosystems, food chains
• students developed appreciation for using computers and technology as a tool in their learning
• students learned website and computer navigation
• students learned to use new CD-ROM's