Virtual Exhibits Investment Program - Creating a Lesson

August 2011

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Your lesson should complement your LOC (Learning Object Collection) by containing questions and tasks which result in students learning more about the content.

Note: Your Learning Object Collection must be approved and published in the VMC Teachers’ Centre in order to complete your lesson.

The following steps outline how to complete your lesson:

  1. Familiarize yourself with the format of the lesson by browsing through the publicly available lessons already in the Teachers’ Centre.
  2. Make a draft plan of which content from your Learning Object Collection you want to focus on and what the student should learn about this content.
  3. Login to the Teachers’ Centre and browse through your Learning Object Collection, and bookmark all the relevant Media Files and Learning Objects you want included in the lesson by clicking ‘Add this ___ to my content’.
  4. From the section ‘The Studio’, go to ‘My Lessons’.
  5. Click on ‘Create a New Lesson’ and enter the lesson title and learning objectives. Once you’re done, click ‘Save & Continue.’ Note: The Private and Public options will be used once you have completed your lesson, and are explained at the end of these instructions.
  6. Add as many saved items from your ‘My Content’ section as you wish by clicking on ‘Add My Content’ and selecting the chosen elements. At the same time, add your own text to complement the content items by clicking on ‘Add My Own Text’. For example, the text can be an explanation of the lesson, background, activity or questions to answer. Note: The goal is to pair content items with text items which relate to each other (i.e. a content link to an image and text which poses questions about the image).
  7. Each time you add content and text items, they will appear at the bottom of the lesson. Use the small arrows to re-arrange the order of the content as you wish, moving items up or down.
  8. You can preview what your lesson looks like at any time by clicking on the ‘Lesson Preview’ button at the top of the page.
  9. Once you have completed the lesson, click 'Post.’
  10. You may go back and edit the lesson at any time. To do so, return to ‘My Lessons,’ find the lesson you wish to edit, and proceed by clicking ‘Edit’ to make your changes.

Private / Public Option

In order to fulfill the Investment Program requirement you MUST make your lesson ‘Public.’

The Public option allows you to share your lesson with the entire community of the Teachers’ Centre by making it available online for all to see. Allow some time before you see your lesson online since before the lesson is published, it must be approved by the moderators of the Teachers’ Centre to ensure it does not contravene our terms of use.

Note: Your lesson must be re-approved each time you edit your lesson.

The Private option allows you to keep your lesson private for your classes only. You must choose which classes you want the lesson to be visible to by checking off the appropriate box in the My Classes section.

  1. Go to My Classes
  2. Select the class you want your lesson to be available to.
  3. Click on the ‘Viewable Class Content’ link
  4. Under lessons, check of the box beside the lesson name.

Note: You must have a class created. If not, click ”Create a New Class” button and proceed with identifying your class.