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)?"

Comments

MIT has a cool device

[fmobus]

It is a interative screen-whiteboard with real-world physics. It's kinda hard to describe without a movie.

Re:Sounds like a good starting point.

[RealityMogul]

He could save his time and the students by prepping his examples, or whatever else he'd write on the board, before school. Then just pull up a saved slide so he doesn't have to spend all that time rewriting it for each class period. Consistent fonts would also mean better readability by the students. Color coding or other text attributes could also contribute to that. Animations would be cool, and maybe explain things better, but I don't think he'd be getting that far into it.

Re:powerpoint

[Technician]

Well powerpoint is the only thing usefull, my teachers ever used.

Invest in some old fashioned hardware. Hands-on physics teaches a lot of concepts to those who don't quite grasp concepts published in a book. Examples are a bicycle to teach force/displacement/speed relationships. The classic is standing a bike up and asking if the pedal low to the floor is pushed to the rear of the bike, will the cranking force move the bike foreward or will the gearing cause the bike to move backwards in the direction of the force and why?

Students that grasp these concepts early on are the ones to understand the conservation of energy and entropy. They will understand why you can't use a high speed motor of say 1 HP to drive a 1 KW generator fast enough to power the motor and have a few hundred watts of power left over. An electrical load on the generator provides a mechanical load to the motor. This is not over unity creating a perpertual motion machine.

Props such as a hand cranked generator or bicycle driven generator that can be loaded make a serious impression to early students. Cranking 60 watts is work. 300 Watts sustained is very serious work. This leads to an understang of torque/speed/horsepower relationships. Torque or speed is not power. Feeling power generation is better than most any PowerPoint presentation.

After the mechanical presentations, then go into lecture and detail such as going over an electric bill and figuring the typical days power use and how much work is delivered for a dollar.

Power economy and the hand cranked PC scale now come into view. Hand cranking your typical home PC or laptop and Monitor are now seen as beyond pratical. Energy conservation to fit the hand cranked energy budget now become a prime design consideration for future engineers instead of how to hand crank existing tech.

Hand cranking a 2 watt laptop is possible as well as a 60 watt laptop, but the 60 watt laptop isn't pratical as all the time will be spent cranking quite hard.

You were cheated in your physics class if they didn't do the blowgun/falling ball demo or used air hocky tables to show center of mass of spinning objects and conservation of momentium, elastic and inelastic collisions. In the 1970's we shot a lot of film of this on an air hocky table and took measurements from the photographs to calculate displacement of the objects photographed under a strobe light. The hands on stuff was the best.

risks and benefits

[e**(i pi)-1]

> Would you please share how you have seen technology effectively used for Math and Physics.

I'm both enthusiastic as well as sceptical (and wrote and talked about it [PDF]). Here are some major points for me:

• Using technology is like telling jokes. Some people can deliver, other better do not.
• Teaching is complex. Not everybody can handle the additional challenge of technology additionally to the organisatorial and pedagogical parameters. Most of us have experienced bad use of technology. I certainly have produced disasters myself.
• It is often not the technology which produces the failures but the lack of a backup plan. Technology often fails. The advantage of the "good ol blackboard" is that it always works. Even white-boards fail when markers are dry.
• Overuse of technology is like dishing up the same meals again and again. The benefits of technology can wear off, if the novelty is gone.
• I use the rule of thumb: technology can improve a lecture by 20 percent, but adds the risk to losing 80 percent. This risk makes the use of technology exciting and worthwile.