A couple of years ago, my CWRL project group set out to determine how Second Life could be used in the rhetoric classroom. Starting with the tool, we tried to imagine an assignment that would fit--somehow--into our curriculum. Only one person in the group tried the assignment we developed. It was irrelevant to the rest of our courses.

I'm starting to find that it's easier to make lesson plans when I start with a goal than when I start with a tool. For example, I was thinking about how I could improve the way I teach the students about revision, when it struck me that with a wiki, we could all write a sample paper together, and I could lead them through the revision process step by step.

Sometimes we want to use technology so badly in our classroom that we introduce a tool (Facebook, blogs) hoping that our students will learn something by using it. Starting with a goal ("I want my students to be capable of revising their own work.") and working backwards toward a lesson plan makes so much more sense. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe call this method "Backward Design" in their book Understanding by Design.

Hopefully Cynthia Haynes will give us some insight into ways Second Life can be used in the classroom during her talk on Thursday (at 4 p.m. in the Sinclair Suite of the Texas Union). But in order to implement her ideas successfully, we first need to understand what it is we want our students to learn. Only then can we decide if Second Life is appropriate in our courses.