Using and Paying for Electricity: Finding Billing Information Online

Objectives:

• The learner will locate the nearest electric utilities pay center using the Internet.

• The learner will select, copy, and paste information from an Internet site to a word processing file.

• The learner will restate answers from questions using information found on the Internet.

• The learner will conjugate the past, present and future tenses of the verbs "pay," "owe," "receive" and "call."

Duration:

     2 hours

Materials:

• Appalachian Power Web site: http://www.aep.com/

• Paying Your Electric Bill in Person sheet

• Verb Conjugation sheet

Activities:

1. Teacher introduces the lesson by asking learners to respond to the following situation: "Victor did not pay his electric bill. Victor must pay his bill before 9 a.m. tomorrow or the electric company will turn off his power. It is now 4:30 p.m. Victor cannot get to the electric company's office before it closes. Victor's friend George wants to help. George goes to the Internet and says to Victor, 'No problem--I know what to do.' How will George help Victor?"

2. Teacher instructs learners to think about their responses without talking.

3. Teacher forms learner pairs and directs learners to share their thoughts.

4. Learners respond verbally as a whole class. Teacher guides discussion to the usefulness of the Internet, how to find billing information on commercial Web sites and the option of paying bills after hours at authorized "pay centers." 

5. Teacher directs learners to the Appalachian Electric Power Web site and distributes Paying Your Electric Bill in Person sheet.

6. Each learner uses directions on sheet to find the list of authorized AEP pay centers in the Roanoke Valley and locates the center nearest his/her home.

7. Each learner highlights the list of Roanoke pay centers and copies it to a word processing document.

8. Each learner provides written answers to the questions on the Paying your Electric Bill sheet.

9. Learners meet with partner, compare answers and make corrections to grammar, capitalization and sentence structure.

10. Teacher provides correct answers to questions.

11. Teacher distributes Verb Conjugation sheet, provides correct conjugation of the verbs "pay," "owe," "receive" and "call."

12. Teacher conducts completion drill using new verbs; learner says and writes responses.

Assessment:

Learners offer corrections to each other's responses, teacher visually checks learner work for completeness and accuracy.