You may choose to do I-Search units within two different content areas or have the students freely choose their topics.  You do not have to concentrate on the entire I-Search. You can choose to concentrate on a few of the strategies that fit the unit's need for learning support. If your school has another research process it uses, you may transfer what you have learned to the other process and carry out your collaborative planning accordingly.  Some topics lend themselves to technology and information literacy skill inclusion better than others.

Keep a journal of the planning process.  Reflect on your planning process with your colleague. What worked well and what needed improvement. How would you suggest improving where you discovered difficulties? As you know, collaborative planning does not occur in many schools. Why? What actions could you take to ensure that you and your school will not be in that category? We find it very frustrating when a graduate finds it too discouraging to establish a collaborative planning process. What will you do so that does not happen to you?

Identify and integrate into the units the appropriate information and technology literacy skills and strategies.  Of critical importance are the information and technology literacy skills and strategies that the students need to know to learn the content successfully.  What information literacy skills do the learning objectives for your units require your students to know in order to succeed?  How will you teach them and when within the unit?  What resources will you use?  How will you have them demonstrate that they know these strategies and can use them? This assignment requires considerable thought on your part. Please do not underplay this task.

Identify and describe the following components of the unit: Topic, Goal, Time frame, Student learning objectives, QCCs, Information and technology literacy skills needed to learn content, Teaching pedagogies to use, Teacher responsibilities in unit, Media specialist responsibilities in unit, Resources needed, Student assessment tools, Evaluation of unit process.  Make certain your planning worksheet has space for these elements on the sheet.

Post the final unit on the discussion board in a worksheet document form that includes these categories at a minimum. If your model includes more, add the model's additional categories to these.  If your model has fewer categories, add these categories to them. If you can co-teach this unit this term, you will have a chance to discuss the outcome within this class. Some of you will not be able to teach it this term due to teacher, content, testing, and time constraints.