Our school (middle school / junior high) just installed digital projectors in all our classrooms, and bought licenses of powerpoint. As a teacher who knows something about tech, I'll repeat what a lot of other posters are saying: technology on its own does not improve teaching or learning. It's a tool. If you've got a bad lesson plan, technology isn't going to make it any better.
At the same time, I find it really useful for some things:
Easy-erase graphs.Project a blank x-y grid onto your whiteboard. (not your screen!) Draw, erase, repeat. No re-drawing of grids.
Fill-in reviews.Project your typed assignment complete with blanks. Kids can track more easily their own copies of assignments as you go through problems on the board.
Relational diagrams.At age 12, kids still have a hard time creating their own flow-charts and relational diagrams. Powerpoint makes it easy to create these for kids to visualize.
Ease of reading.If you've got to give notes, and write chicken scratches, a typed version is nicer.
Speed.Is it better to draw out molecules, turning your attention away from a group of social 12-year-olds, or simply project manipulable, coloured, 3-d molecules, while watching the class the whole time?
Pictures.You'd be surprised how many kids don't know what a moose looks like. Yes, really.
Prepared notes.All my notes are numbered; when a kid is out sick, they tell what notes they missed, and voila, print note-X to note-Y and I'm done.
I'm a math/science junior-high/middle-school teacher in Atlantic Canada. I've been a teacher through two different curriculums (see below).
Schools in Canada are not graded, nor rated, based on provincial or national testing; neither is funding dependent on any testing.
Students are never persuaded against an advanced course, unless they are unable to do it. (If they can only get a 50 in grade-9 math, they're certainly aren't going to do the high-school advanced-stream course.)
There is only one set of mathematics courses in grades 7 through 9; the old curriculum (pre-2002) had an academic and advanced. At that time, placement was determined by your performance. You could stay in the advanced courses if you could hack it.
High school has three streams: basic, academic, and advanced. Students who have coasted through junior high with bare passes may also end up doing the basic stream, mainly because they don't have the foundation (through lack of effort or otherwise). Students with moderate to severe learning disabilities would probably also do the basic stream.
Any student completing an academic or advanced stream can still gain University or College entrance. The advanced stream gives the option in grade-12 of Calculus readiness courses and AP courses.
In the past students were often told that a 75 in an advanced course is better than and 85 in the academic course, and so should do the advanced.
Canada still has problems, however. Our new junior-high/middle-school/7-9 curriculum has been adjusted to integrate analysis of concepts (eg. "Explain why 45 x 10^3 isn't scientific notation."), representing concepts in different ways (eg. "Represent y=2x-3 in words, in a table, in a graph, symbolically, and pictorially."), and solving in different ways (eg. "Use fraction circles to estimate 3/4 + 1/5."). The problem is that students don't get a full grasp of the mechanics of math before they are asked to analyse, discuss, and so forth. As well, the curriculum still covers the same content, though we (teachers) have to teach it several new ways, without any extra time.
The end result is that students often finish high-school without a full understanding of the concepts -- they often lack the mechanics. They can handle high-school tests and exams, but can't handle the university/college tests and exams. University expects rigorous understanding ("Factor x^2-5x+6 symbolically."), while high-school requires a different version of understanding ("Factor x^2-5x+6 using a table or algebra tiles.")
The Vickers Vimy just left here (Newfoundland) a few days ago. Awfully strange to see an old biplane flying where jets normally go.
This isn't the first reproduction of a voyage that passed through here. In 1497, John Cabot landed in St. John's or Bonavista. In 1997, a reproduction of his boat, The Matthew, left Bristol, England and sailed here for the 500th anniversary of the voyage. See http://www.matthew.co.uk/voyages/index.html.
Other interesting bits from Newfoundland:
The first transatlantic wireless signal was sent in 1901 from Signal Hill (St. John's) by Marconi to England. (Wikipedia, Nobel Prize Bio)
The oldest known establishment in North America was a viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows around 1000 AD. It is now a UNESCO world heritage site.
Canada Day, July 1st is also Memorial Day locally, as it was the day with the heaviest losses among the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. This was at Beaumont Hamel, during the Battle of the Somme. Every Newfoundlander who advanced was either wounded or killed.
Apparently the Shuffle may not be immediately compatible with linux tools already available. Gnupod apparently has trouble copying music to the shuffle.
According to the author of foo_pod for FooBar2000, there's the usual iTunesDB database, but also a new one, called iTunesSD. They haven't been able to completely reverse-engineer this one yet. It turns out it isn't sufficient to simply write to the iTunesDB database -- songs won't play.
Wasn't this already tried a few years ago? I remember seeing something nearly exactly like this.
They sent a (very similar) robot up the passage, got to the door, but somehow got stuck. IIRC, the robot couldn't get over some sort of obstacle, but could still see the door at the end. They ended with a problem: how did two iron spikes end up locking the door, so far inside such a small tunnel.
We once did something with Zope, but used it only as a backend to serve up pages. I coded a PHP/HTML-generating front-end which would pull (& parse to some extent) content from the Zope server.
Users could easily edit the right files from one location, with fine-tuned authentication & permissions. The PHP front-end allowed much better web-page control, and also could connect to a mysql server for other stuffs.
The reason for this was that we could separate the content (Zope) from the form (PHP). I guess where this really should go from here is to an XML backend with the parsing front-end. Herm.
I am a (Canadian) 7-9 science teacher. Computers (and calculators) in classrooms can be the bane of my existence. Some points:
The kids do a higher level of work. Remember when your only vehicles for expression were book reports and clay-filled shoeboxes?
Which is better: a student using a mouse to draw and color, or a student actually cuts-n-pastes and colors with (God forbid) crayons? Schools are lacking more in such hands-on activities.
Plenty of schools don't have laptops and still have lots of problems that - surprise - aren't being solved by anyone of their critics.
I don't think it's been claimed that laptops will solve school problems. They won't. We could complain about every issue in schools -- large class sizes, fewer resources, overworked teachers, insufficient buildings, etc, etc, etc. In this case, technology is the issue, and it can be a problem. It is easy to use it ineffectively, especially since it is believed that it can make people learn.
It doesn't work that way; the laptops are only a tool, and can't teach someone the skills independent of the technology.
They're buying 38,600 laptops at $300 each. That means $11,580,000 is being spent at a time when teacher shortages are happening everywhere. I would rather have a smaller class size with or without the laptops than a crowded class with technology being used ineffectively.
This is where graphing calculators can really shine. At this point the student has already learned how to add, and if not the point is irrelevant, since you aren't teaching addition any more, you're teaching Geometry or Calculus. At this point I think it's very helpful for students to be able to play with equations and see the results. Take the a simple line formula (y=mx+b). It's very hard for students to understand this equation and it's application until they see the graph. Sure you could have the kids plot things out by hand, but this is the kind of redundant busy work that tends to loose them. But with a calculator they can easily understand what happens if b changes or if m is a fraction. This is a very hard concept to learn if it can't be seen. This holds true for many other things as well. Understanding the interaction between sin and cos is very difficult until they understand the unit circle. Understanding the properties of these waves and of phase is also very difficult unless they can see the interaction. With a good graphing calculator as a tool students can learn more faster with, than without.
I agree that graphing calculators can help advance some learning -- but they still need to know how to draw a graph by hand! If they can press the right buttons and never know why they're pushing those buttons, and never know what the calculator is actually doing, they haven't learned anything. All their ability is dependent on the device, not on any knowledge they have gained.
Calculators should not be used to teach fundamentals; this means no calculators until junior high/middle school! They are useful to expand on what the students already know: Develop, not teach.
I will agree however, that seeing how changing the slope m or intercept b does help them visualize what is going on. They still need to know something about it first.
Take another look at your class. There will always be students who are better at using calculators or PDAs than others. Many students are afraid of math, others hate school but love technology. Use the students that know how to operate these tools and have them teach the others.
Certainly. The pit we have to avoid is using the technology for its own sake. If technology becomes the ends (A student learns how to use a graphing calculator) as opposed to the means (A student uses the calculator to...), then there is a much bigger problem.
And lastly, you have to realize that as an incoming teacher your teaching style, methods and attitudes will need to adapt to the learning needs of your students.
Of course! Too many people think that adding devices and PCs to a classroom improves the "learning environment". This is only true to an extent -- better teachers means a better classroom, with or without the technology.
I've just got to comment on this one. I'm a math/science teacher starting my first year in about two weeks. PDA's have got to be the worst idea ever. Calculators are the worst idea ever. Some specific points to make:
Number 1:
How many students can actually add/subtract/multiply/divide without having to turn to a calculator? Very few, and sticking more computers and PDA's into the classroom won't solve anything.
I've taught math classes using graphing calculators. Yes, they can do things nice and pretty and quick. There are two problems. The first is a practical one -- every single class the students have to be shown over again how to use the calculator. Second, they may know how to produce a box-and-whisker plot by pressing the right buttons, but do they have any deeper understanding of what they're doing and why they're doing it? Not really.
Number 2:
It's a whole lot easier for administrators to get their picture taken in a brand new computer lab with lots of stuff to show off, than it is for them to get their picture taken next to a brand new, innovative, and ground-breaking curriculum. We can't really expect the public to demand anything else. People are a lot more content when money is spent on something tangible that they can see.
Number 3:
Suppose we've got every student plugging away at their PDAs. Where's the collaboration? Group learning? Student-led learning? All I can see are a bunch of solitary students going through the motions on a device.
There's no disadvantage to having students work with (gasp!) pencil and paper and to work in groups, without depending on these external devices. Confidence (and academic performance) increases when students realize that they have knowledge and ability beyond a device.
Number 4:
Computers are tools; they're good tools. But we have to remember that they're just that. They don't "make" students learn. They may help develop understanding, but they certainly don't cause students to learn.
We have to require teachers to stick to their chalk. If we don't, it's all downhill from here.
My office is in one end of a hospital, which is still equiped with tubes. The hospital is about 30 years old, so the use of tubes isn't ancient.
The tube station I've seen was in the maintenance department, used mostly for zipping plans and specs about. The canisters were about 18 inches long, with rubber-stopped ends.
The stations are controlled by 70s-battelstar-gallactica-like buttons, knobs, and lights, used to select the destination of the torpedo.
The air can still be heard wooshing through the ducts.
Further, I think that Canada accepts the fact that the government is a good thing -- it administrates on a global level where people alone can't.
Too many people pass the buck and say "Well, parents should do this on their own. We don't need the government to do it for us." Excuse me, but can we expect every parent to do the job we hope they will do?
This is why we need government involvment in society.
And, Newfoundland gets enough attention, thank you very much.
Slashdot Mirror
At the same time, I find it really useful for some things:
I'm a math/science junior-high/middle-school teacher in Atlantic Canada. I've been a teacher through two different curriculums (see below).
Schools in Canada are not graded, nor rated, based on provincial or national testing; neither is funding dependent on any testing.
Students are never persuaded against an advanced course, unless they are unable to do it. (If they can only get a 50 in grade-9 math, they're certainly aren't going to do the high-school advanced-stream course.)
There is only one set of mathematics courses in grades 7 through 9; the old curriculum (pre-2002) had an academic and advanced. At that time, placement was determined by your performance. You could stay in the advanced courses if you could hack it.
High school has three streams: basic, academic, and advanced. Students who have coasted through junior high with bare passes may also end up doing the basic stream, mainly because they don't have the foundation (through lack of effort or otherwise). Students with moderate to severe learning disabilities would probably also do the basic stream.
Any student completing an academic or advanced stream can still gain University or College entrance. The advanced stream gives the option in grade-12 of Calculus readiness courses and AP courses.
In the past students were often told that a 75 in an advanced course is better than and 85 in the academic course, and so should do the advanced.
Canada still has problems, however. Our new junior-high/middle-school/7-9 curriculum has been adjusted to integrate analysis of concepts (eg. "Explain why 45 x 10^3 isn't scientific notation."), representing concepts in different ways (eg. "Represent y=2x-3 in words, in a table, in a graph, symbolically, and pictorially."), and solving in different ways (eg. "Use fraction circles to estimate 3/4 + 1/5."). The problem is that students don't get a full grasp of the mechanics of math before they are asked to analyse, discuss, and so forth. As well, the curriculum still covers the same content, though we (teachers) have to teach it several new ways, without any extra time.
The end result is that students often finish high-school without a full understanding of the concepts -- they often lack the mechanics. They can handle high-school tests and exams, but can't handle the university/college tests and exams. University expects rigorous understanding ("Factor x^2-5x+6 symbolically."), while high-school requires a different version of understanding ("Factor x^2-5x+6 using a table or algebra tiles.")
This isn't the first reproduction of a voyage that passed through here. In 1497, John Cabot landed in St. John's or Bonavista. In 1997, a reproduction of his boat, The Matthew, left Bristol, England and sailed here for the 500th anniversary of the voyage. See http://www.matthew.co.uk/voyages/index.html.
Other interesting bits from Newfoundland:
Anyone interested in Newfoundland or St. John's should read:
Apparently the Shuffle may not be immediately compatible with linux tools already available. Gnupod apparently has trouble copying music to the shuffle.
According to the author of foo_pod for FooBar2000, there's the usual iTunesDB database, but also a new one, called iTunesSD. They haven't been able to completely reverse-engineer this one yet. It turns out it isn't sufficient to simply write to the iTunesDB database -- songs won't play.
Searches on Google show nothing about the iTunesSD database.
...does this already, for the most part. They cover mostly indie stuff, but you can still find a few mainstreamers.
All tracks are 0.99$, and most albums are 9.99$. Streaming is limited to a few seconds only, though.
The site is flash-intensive, which sucks, but there's no DRM on their MP3 or OGG downloads. Downloads also include album cover art.
I like these guys for their offers -- sign up and get a semi-regular newsletter with free downloads / cheap offers.
This has already been fixed. The change was made in 2.3.2. You'll see this in 2.4, then.
Wasn't this already tried a few years ago? I remember seeing something nearly exactly like this.
They sent a (very similar) robot up the passage, got to the door, but somehow got stuck. IIRC, the robot couldn't get over some sort of obstacle, but could still see the door at the end. They ended with a problem: how did two iron spikes end up locking the door, so far inside such a small tunnel.
What's different and new this time around?
We once did something with Zope, but used it only as a backend to serve up pages. I coded a PHP/HTML-generating front-end which would pull (& parse to some extent) content from the Zope server.
Users could easily edit the right files from one location, with fine-tuned authentication & permissions. The PHP front-end allowed much better web-page control, and also could connect to a mysql server for other stuffs.
The reason for this was that we could separate the content (Zope) from the form (PHP). I guess where this really should go from here is to an XML backend with the parsing front-end. Herm.
I am a (Canadian) 7-9 science teacher. Computers (and calculators) in classrooms can be the bane of my existence. Some points:
The kids do a higher level of work. Remember when your only vehicles for expression were book reports and clay-filled shoeboxes?
Which is better: a student using a mouse to draw and color, or a student actually cuts-n-pastes and colors with (God forbid) crayons? Schools are lacking more in such hands-on activities.
Plenty of schools don't have laptops and still have lots of problems that - surprise - aren't being solved by anyone of their critics.
I don't think it's been claimed that laptops will solve school problems. They won't. We could complain about every issue in schools -- large class sizes, fewer resources, overworked teachers, insufficient buildings, etc, etc, etc. In this case, technology is the issue, and it can be a problem. It is easy to use it ineffectively, especially since it is believed that it can make people learn.
It doesn't work that way; the laptops are only a tool, and can't teach someone the skills independent of the technology.
They're buying 38,600 laptops at $300 each. That means $11,580,000 is being spent at a time when teacher shortages are happening everywhere. I would rather have a smaller class size with or without the laptops than a crowded class with technology being used ineffectively.
I agree that graphing calculators can help advance some learning -- but they still need to know how to draw a graph by hand! If they can press the right buttons and never know why they're pushing those buttons, and never know what the calculator is actually doing, they haven't learned anything. All their ability is dependent on the device, not on any knowledge they have gained.
Calculators should not be used to teach fundamentals; this means no calculators until junior high/middle school! They are useful to expand on what the students already know: Develop, not teach. I will agree however, that seeing how changing the slope m or intercept b does help them visualize what is going on. They still need to know something about it first. Certainly. The pit we have to avoid is using the technology for its own sake. If technology becomes the ends (A student learns how to use a graphing calculator) as opposed to the means (A student uses the calculator to
I've just got to comment on this one. I'm a math/science teacher starting my first year in about two weeks. PDA's have got to be the worst idea ever. Calculators are the worst idea ever. Some specific points to make:
Number 1:
How many students can actually add/subtract/multiply/divide without having to turn to a calculator? Very few, and sticking more computers and PDA's into the classroom won't solve anything.
I've taught math classes using graphing calculators. Yes, they can do things nice and pretty and quick. There are two problems. The first is a practical one -- every single class the students have to be shown over again how to use the calculator. Second, they may know how to produce a box-and-whisker plot by pressing the right buttons, but do they have any deeper understanding of what they're doing and why they're doing it? Not really.
Number 2:
It's a whole lot easier for administrators to get their picture taken in a brand new computer lab with lots of stuff to show off, than it is for them to get their picture taken next to a brand new, innovative, and ground-breaking curriculum. We can't really expect the public to demand anything else. People are a lot more content when money is spent on something tangible that they can see.
Number 3:
Suppose we've got every student plugging away at their PDAs. Where's the collaboration? Group learning? Student-led learning? All I can see are a bunch of solitary students going through the motions on a device.
There's no disadvantage to having students work with (gasp!) pencil and paper and to work in groups, without depending on these external devices. Confidence (and academic performance) increases when students realize that they have knowledge and ability beyond a device.
Number 4:
Computers are tools; they're good tools. But we have to remember that they're just that. They don't "make" students learn. They may help develop understanding, but they certainly don't cause students to learn.
We have to require teachers to stick to their chalk. If we don't, it's all downhill from here.
My office is in one end of a hospital, which is still equiped with tubes. The hospital is about 30 years old, so the use of tubes isn't ancient.
The tube station I've seen was in the maintenance department, used mostly for zipping plans and specs about. The canisters were about 18 inches long, with rubber-stopped ends.
The stations are controlled by 70s-battelstar-gallactica-like buttons, knobs, and lights, used to select the destination of the torpedo.
The air can still be heard wooshing through the ducts.
Further, I think that Canada accepts the fact that the government is a good thing -- it administrates on a global level where people alone can't.
Too many people pass the buck and say "Well, parents should do this on their own. We don't need the government to do it for us." Excuse me, but can we expect every parent to do the job we hope they will do?
This is why we need government involvment in society.
And, Newfoundland gets enough attention, thank you very much.
John in Newfoundland