I'm interested in ways to use technology successfully and thoughtfully in teaching. New and exciting technologies are appearing seemingly on a daily basis. I am looking for ways people have found the use of technology in their classrooms, or outside their classrooms, to be effective in teaching. If you have specific examples, horror stories, things that worked great, or things that you think have great potential, please share!
Have you had particular successes with clickers? Wikipedia postings? Blogs? Electronic blackboards? Challenges with any of the above?
If you think technology is not the answer for education, I'd like to hear from you too, particularly if you have tried and true methods you'd like to share.
If you have references to particular studies showing efficacy, or lack thereof, of use of technology in the classroom (i.e. clickers, powerpoint presentations, etc.), I'm especially interested in learning more about how specific techniques have been shown to influence learning.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Hey Renee, class members,
I have finally posted the
Powerpoint Tips document to the class Smartsite! But seeing your request for more references, I just cut and pasted the references at the end of that document here in case anyone is browsing here and wants more to look at online.
Most of these have to do with the controversy over Powerpoint and teaching.
• Atkinson, C. (2004b). Five experts dispute Edward Tufte on PowerPoint. Retrieved Dec. 20, 2004 from
http://www.sociablemedia.com/articles_dispute.htm
• Atkinson, C. (2004a). An interview with Richard Mayer. Retrieved Dec. 20, 2004 from
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/personality/richardmayer.html
• Bucholz, S., & Ullman, J. (2004, June/July). Twelve commandments for PowerPoint. The Teaching Professor. Magna Publications.
Retrieved Dec. 20, 2004 from http://www.magnapubs.com/issues/magnapubs_tp/18_6/news/596302-1.html
• Daniel, D. B. (in press). Using technology to ruin a perfectly good lecture. To appear in Perlman, B., McCann, L. & Buskist, B.,
(Eds.). Voices of NITOP: Favorite talks from the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology. American Psychological Society.
• Magna Publications. (2004, November). To Read or Not to Read PowerPoint slides. The Teaching Professor. Magna Publications.
Retrieved Dec. 20, 2004 from http://www.magnapubs.com/issues/magnapubs_tp/18_9/news/596791-1.html
• Paradi, D. (2003). Survey shows how to stop annoying audiences with bad PowerPoint. Retrieved Dec. 20, 2004 from
http://www.communicateusingtechnology.com/articles/pptsurvey_article.htm
• Tufte, E. (2003, Nov. 9). PowerPoint is evil. Wired. Retrieved Dec. 20, 2004 from
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
• Young, J. R. (2004, Nov. 12). When good technology means bad teaching. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 51 (12), A31.
I've used java applets to do simulations for homework problems. (Find them on the MIT OCW site under the course 18.03 Ordinary Differential Equations.) My reasoning? The point of graphing multiple equations using a computing package is to spot patterns in what the graphs look like. However, if the learning curve for the package is too high, then programming the equations distracts from the point of the assignment. Therefore, it's better to use pre-fab, interactive data. (The java applets on the MIT OCW site allow you to play with the numbers with various mouse-controlled dials and switches.)
I would rate my experience successful. Of forty student, some said it didn't add to their educational experience; a number found the java applets enlightening; one or two explicitly said they didn't like it.
Things I learned: only use reliable technology that is either intuitive or comes with a good manual. Otherwise students will hound you with questions. The java applets luckily satisfied these properties; after the first week, I received very few questions for help using them. Sometimes the java scripts would not work on a student's home computer, and I would need to go over it in office hours the next day.
Things I'd do again: I will definitely use this tool again. It helped me write problem sets (because I knew the answer right away and because playing with the applets frequently inspired questions). I'd ask my students for "tips for future students". I got gems such as "It helps to think about the problem before using the applet" and "I learned that you should read the instructions." Now I can say that a former student is telling them this (it's not just that I am stodgy).
Technology, to me, is a two edged sword. While it can be very eye-catching and appealing to pop culture as well as useful for some students, it can exclude a whole host of others.
Some technology I use but quite a bit of tech that you describe (clickers, chat rooms, java scripts, etc.) I can't use because it's not accessible or is extremely limited in its accessibility through the hiring of others or the purchasing of very expensive equipment that I generally can't afford. I am also keenly aware of how this progressive rhetoric put into practice tends to ignore the problems it creates.
For example, this blog is not accessible to me directly. In other words, I can't just pop on my computer any time I want and check everyone's blogs for this course on teaching. I've got to hire someone and then make appointments with them to read the blog to me. Then, I need to take notes on what was said so I can write a response and then I've got to make another appointment with this individual to post to the blog. What takes an ab a few minutes, at most, to do, takes me several hours over several days making this technology both exclusionary in terms of my being able to participate in a timely fashion AND in terms of the message that it gives me (the student in a class on how to teach) the unspoken message that I'm not wanted or welcome in the class or the conversation. Given the givens, I can think of a whole host of problems for myself and my students with various forms of technology -- in terms of access in relationship to economics as well as disability (many of my students can't afford the books for the course -- avg. cost of a used book in the field is between $10 - 15).
At the same time, I understand tech's appeal -- everyone's supposedly doing it, it appeals to the MTV generation, etc. I think we should consider how this rush to use all this "cool stuff" is affecting our students and I'm thankful that much of this wasn't in use when I was an undergrad because I couldn't afford the rush to progress in more ways than one.
Great points, thank you! It is important to consider who is left behind in the technology movement, and to remember that not everyone has equal access to technology. On that note, is technology use increasing or decreasing the education gap?
Post a Comment