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Effective Use of Technology In the Classroom?
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)?"
If my experience in High School still applies (and maybe it doesn't; it was a long time ago) you're going to turn out the lights to use that fancy gizno and half the class is going straight to sleep, the other half is going to be passing notes and shooting spitwads and paper airplanes around.
I suggest you compliment the technology there with a pair of night-vision goggles or something.
I think a major mistake teachers make is to discover new teaching technology and then invent a curriculum that uses them. This gets the process entirely backwards. If you try this, you're going to sacrifice learning in the interest of playing with your new toys.
... "this would work better if I can use my new gizmo." This is where the technology comes in. First find the problem, then find the solution.
You've got these new tools. That's great. Now forget about them. Design your lessons as you would. As you go, you're going to realize
So, what is the problem with a blackboard? Be precise.
Then, look at whether the technology will solve that/those problem(s). We're talking math here. Is the technology going to allow you to better explain some difficult concepts or will the focus end up being on the technology?
Blackboards work because blackboards always work. They don't need to be rebooted.
PowerPoint is very useful if the person using that tool uses it correctly. Unfortunately, most people use it incorrectly and write down every single thing that they're planning on saying on a slide. If you're going to do that, students will catch on and just think that they can get by with printing off the notes and skipping class because listening to the teacher will not help them understand the material any better. The catch is, they won't understand it at all. Active learning helps people learn and remember facts and concepts way better than passive reading or listening. That's why the best way to use PowerPoint is as a guide or outline to what you're going to talk about. It forces people to use more than one sense to take everything in, and if they want notes on everything important from the lecture, they have to write it down themselves and actually comprehend it in the first place.
If you don't know how you're going to use it to meet your classroom goals, maybe you should be asking yourself why you intend to use it at all.
"Because it's there" doesn't seem like a good reason for introducing technology into the classroom.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have two suggestions. (a) if there are things that you find tedious (e.g. marking) or difficult (e.g. sketches, if you aren't a good artist), look for technological solutions to those so that you can devote your time and energy to more important things and won't get tired and frustrated; (b) don't focus on your new toys. Instead, think about what ideas and skills you have a hard time getting across and ask yourself how you could improve in those areas. Sometimes the answer will be something your toys are good for, maybe a simulation for an experiment you can't readily do, but sometimes it won't be technological. It might just be a better derivation of a theorem or formula or a clever diagram. If you focus too much on your toys, you run the risk of doing things that you, and maybe your students, find cool, but that aren't really of much educational value.
Before even thinking about making a powerpoint presentation, (re)read Edward Tufte's wonderful essay Powerpoint is Evil.
It may be different for you, but seeing something up on the board doesn't help me learn. Graphics are great for illustrating a point, but in terms of equations and diagrams, I need to write it to remember it. Getting copies of the instructors notes just gives students a lazy way out, not a chance to participate more.
Use of blackboards/whiteboards works very well. The prof writes the equations down as he explains them, and the students handwrite them into their notes. The prof writing them down keeps the focus on the relevant part, and the student handwriting a copy helps fix it in their brains.
It ain't broke, and doesn't need fixing.
I find it stunning (and disturbing) that there is this notion that adding tech to the classroom is by default beneficial. This idea is complete rubbish and the studies are starting to mount that show this (see below). Especially when it comes to the hard sciences and mathematics. We know that 'dead poets society' ruined a generation of english teachers. IMO, technology is ruining a generation (or more) of science/math teachers.
/never/ seen it used properly) that they actually seriously detract from the class. In fact, people tend to do the exactly same nonsense with powerpoint that they do with the chalkboard i.e. write what they say. Yes, I can read, tell me/write on the board something I can't.
/. archives for the links). The conclusions were that all this tech actually largely prevents learning because the kids are distracted by all the "shiny objects" rather than actually paying attention to the content.
I've seen exactly ZERO tech used in class beyond an overhead that was anywhere near effective whether high-school or beyond. Hell, even when I taught *C++* I used the white-board a significant chunk of the time. Also, in high-school, that cover of darkness can prove to be a bad choice.
Powerpoint (and similar products) are so poorly used (I've actually
There have also been studies on using tech with kids (look through
So, my suggestion is to put away all of you expensive toys (that are proving to be less and less effective as time goes on), pick up a piece of chalk and actually teach them. After all, when it comes to Math and Science, all you need is quick sketches to get the ideas across, now don't you.
The problem with powerpoint slides is that someone recently figured out we're not made to read text off a slide and hear someone talk at the same time. We only have enough brain power for one, not for both. If you even try to -- and people instinctively will -- you'll go fuzzy brained and remember neither. So in effect showing powerpoint slides badly, can be in fact worse than not writing anything anywhere.
Now they figured that out for management presentations, and why you come empty-headed from of a presentation you were actually interested in. But I can't come up with any argument as to why it would work better in schools. In fact, it might be outright scary. Using powerpoint instead of a blackboard may well be _the_ most destructive thing one can do.
There are ways to use powerpoint well, like you'd use an overhead projector. E.g., to show charts, relevant illustrations, etc. E.g., in a biology class you could show a picture of a cell's structure as a slide instead of as an overhead projector foil. And leave people time to digest it, instead of forcing them to also take notes at the same time.
But a substitute for a blackboard it ain't. On a blackboard:
A) you're led to follow the current focus of attention, whatever word is currently being written. You don't just get a big word soup to get lost in and out of sync, you get to follow the cursor (hand with chalk) so to speak, at the same time you're hearing it. It works to reinforce what you hear, not to try to split your attention between two different texts.
B) the teacher is only human too, and he too would have trouble if he tried speaking one thing while writing something completely different. So there's a self-reinforcing mechanism to hold prevent it from becoming an attention-splitting device. As a subcase, if he takes some time to explain why he did something to a formula, he won't already start writing the next one.
C) it enforces _some_ structure, because a blackboard is all the space you can get at a time. Which also cuts back on distractions like flipping back and forth between charts. Which is a distraction. Everytime you go "hmm, this one we don't need.. next... nope, this one we'll learn next week... let's see the next one... nah, we don't need that... next... aha, here we are..." that's not just wasted time. That's a bunch of people who've either tried to read it fast and the next minutes will be busy figuring that out instead of what you say next, or (probably most) whose attention and focus went right out the window while you did that little powerpoint dance.
D) well, I hate to be mean to teachers (God knows they have a shitty job already), but it forces them to prepare that material instead of just borrowing someone's slides. And if they didn't know it too well, they'll at least recap it while they write it on the blackboard.
If you will, what I'm saying at points C an D is that I see it as the same as in IT: the better tools and languages we had, the more unqualified monkeys got hired to use them. I'm all for better tools and compilers, don't get me wrong. But in a lot of places the trend wasn't to do more with them, but to lower the baseline for the people hired to use them. And they'll feel the less of a need to learn what they're doing there. After all, the tool will do the thinking for them, right?
The same might just happen in schools. I can see some people (e.g., substitute teachers) going into a class with someone else's powerpoint presentation, but barely knowing what it's about.
Except in IT you have at least some reality check whether it worked or not. If it doesn't compile or doesn't run the test cases, you know you've screwed up. In teaching we might not even know it before we pump out a few generations of complete airheads, for no fault of their own. And for a change I don't mean just the dumb jocks and prom queens, because the powerpoint fuzzy-brain effect applies to nerds interested in that topic too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The key to using technology effectively is to not think about the technology. Think about how to convey information to students. How long does it really take for a concept to sink in? Actually doing math or physics is a skill; it takes practice (i.e. homework), and it is a process not an answer. If you can use technology to show the process in action at a speed at which students can absorb it, you are using technology well.
Never use technology to avoid taking time to write something. Guess what? If you don't write it, they don't have time to either. And if you provide notes, then they won't even take the time to listen--why bother, your students will think, when I can just read the notes?
What you want to do is take them through the process, slowly, with examples, showing how to do the manipulations and explaining why at each stage a decision is made. (If you have to deal with moderate numbers of students who no longer remember how to do algebra--and you almost certainly will--you may need to elect to leave them behind; if you have huge numbers of such students, you'd better go through how to do algebra again!)
Here's one way that I've used a tablet to be helpful. You can start with a well-designed picture or graph, then draw all over it while you're explaining a concept. You can show a short movie of an interesting phenomenon, then dissect the process, e.g. by taking out frames and scribbling equations on them.
One big mistake that people make is thinking either that computers are useless and shouldn't be used for homework, or in thinking that the fundamentals are useless and you should just teach people to do derivatives with Mathematica. It's a waste of time for almost everyone to do math by hand these days if they have access to a symbolic package. But they had better understand _exactly_ how the operations work and under what conditions they fail, or they're liable to have the symbolic package perform nonsense.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem with teaching is that students don't come in with the right background. And a tablet can't fix that.
--Rex
In terms of equations you are not supposed to remember it (mostly). You are supposed to understand it.
Chalk and board. Plus some props to demonstrate stuff. Seriously, computers don't _really_ help students really understand stuff.
Physics? Nothing beats a good 'ol number of balls, rods, ramps, tubes etc etc in demonstrating how stuff works. Watching virtual cars colliding on the screen doesn't really make students appreciate the nature of momentum and conservation of energy.
Chemistry? How does using some 3D software showing off molecules really compare to a good 'ol titration in the lab?
Biology? Disecting a rat just beats reading about rat morphology any day.
Mathematics? Take the students down to the beach and measure waves. Their height, period, variation in shape, speed etc.
Computers and other technology is useful for analysing and summarising the data, but get the students out of the classroom to gather the data.