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Effective Use of Technology In the Classroom?

Posted by kdawson on from the don't-say-an-apple-for-the-teacher dept.

postermmxvicom writes "I remember in college I had one professor who, in addition to being a great teacher, really took advantage of the technology in the classroom to illustrate the concepts for Calculus and Linear Algebra. Well, now I am the teacher. I teach Algebra, AP Calculus, and Physics in high school. This year I have gotten a tablet and a wireless projector. Now I can write on my tablet instead of the board, as well as use other applications. I want to utilize this tech effectively for teaching. Would you please share how you have seen technology effectively used for Math and Physics — either specific software or how that software was used (specific or general)?"

1 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. This will cause flames, but it is the best advice. by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    This will cause flames, but it is the best advice.

    Since your TabletPC has 1GB of RAM and a very capable Intel 950 Video. The first thing you need to do is pick up a copy of Vista Ultimate or Premium. The pen and TabletPC support in Vista is years ahead of XP running TabletPC Windows. (You might want to upgrade to 2GB of RAM, even with XP the performance difference for TabletPCs is noticeable when it is doing voice or handwriting recognition.)

    Next get a copy of Office 2007 OneNote. It will be your new best friend for writing, preparing notes, animations, videos, web content and even doing math in the application as you write.

    It is like Windows Journal on crack, as you can even voice record your lectures and include a copy of the Audio and notes in standard web formats for you students to download or even OneNote formats if you want the audio and writing to be in sync for your users.

    Office 2007 Word also works well with properly formatting equations and converting hand notes to type forms without losing your equation or notation formats.

    Since you are a teacher, you can get the Education versions of all this software cheap, and just Vista and OneNote 2007 will transform what you are doing with your TabletPC into a whole new direction.

    Also check out the Microsoft Education software constucts and Forums. There are lots of bright people doing what you are wanting to do and will have been suggestions for other software specfic to what you are teaching than the answers you will find on SlashDot, as most people posting here couldn't even give you 5 changes between Vista with built in TabletPC features and XP TabletPC, as most here run from MS technology.

    Yes I know I will get flamed on this, but for Tablet technology MS is the 'best' provider of an OS and basic software that makes the technology shine and work effortlessly.