COMPILATION: Instructional Technology for Science Classrooms

COMPILATION: instructional technology for science classrooms

Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 From: Tim Burgess Subject: Instructional Technology I have a rare opportunity to install the latest technology in new science classrooms. If anyone has experience with specific technologies and could share with me thoughts and evaluations, I sure would be appreciative. Some of the systems I am thinking of include: "Magic Board" vs. "Smart Board" systems Student response systems "Elmo" or specialized video systems My experience with these systems is limited so I would appreciate the comments of those who have used them (and are NOT selling them!) ------Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 From: Chris Filkins I don't know what your schedule is for requesting your new equipment, but I just accepted a position at the local university as an Educational Technology support staff for the university and local school districts. I will have access to just about anything I ask for, and might be able to give you some feedback on specific equipment that you might be looking at.

Up to this point, I have used quite a bit in my classrooms, including eInstruction's Classroom Performance System, which I was very pleased with -- easy to setup and use, and the kids loved it. It is a wireless student response system, and a good portion of my master's thesis was a pilot study on the effective implementation. I have seen some other systems out there, but have not yet had the chance to play with them in order to compare/contrast.

As far as video systems go, while an Elmo is handy, I think a digital camcorder is just as effective while having more use. When used with a computer with a firewire (IEEE1394 connection) and software as simple as Windows Movie Maker, I've had students recording all sorts of experiments to watch back in slo-mo to confirm or refute their arguments -- it's priceless when we do projectile motion. A digital camcorder connected directly to a computer can record right onto the hard drive, and that's great if you've got computers for every group. Otherwise, recording onto tape and then dumping onto the computer can be time-consuming, but there are some new other digital recording technologies out there.

If money were no issue, a high speed digital video camera can be an absolutely amazing tool. I demo'd an Olympus iSpeed high speed camera, and using speeds of 1000 frames per second, you can eliminate motion blur from nearly all typical experiments in the classroom, and using higher rates (I think it tops out at 40,000 frames/second), you can probably get the deformation of a golf ball on impact (of course you need a tremendous amount of light). It's about $25,000 last I checked, so that will probably stay in the realm of a dream for most of us.

1 COMPILATION: instructional technology for science classrooms

If you're looking at probeware, try out the new Pasco GLX datalogger. I used a set for a couple of months, and was very impressed with what they could do, and the portability - they're the ultimate piece of lab equipment, IMHO.

I'm jealous of the teachers who are going to get to be using these setups! If there's anything else I can help with, don't hesitate to drop me a line. ------

Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 From: "Park, Nicholas"

The "Smart Board" is useful for interacting with projected material -- for example, writing all over a JAVA applet or other simulation, drawing predictions of graphs on the board before running Logger Pro to collect the data - and saving both the predictions and final graphs to a file, etc. It has a tendency to be a more teacher-centered tool, though there is no reason students can't use it - they just have to do so one at a time.

Student response systems are very effective, especially in larger classes where it is hard to get students to speak up. When used with Interactive Lecture Demonstrations and opinion surveys (e.g. regarding inertia concepts), they are very powerful. They are also very good for warm-up questions at the beginning of the period. This again tends to be used in a teacher-centered setting, but with almost all of the students engaged.

I have also used a document camera - it functions much like a color overhead projector that doesn't require transparencies. It is very nice for doing demonstrations that are small in scale and projecting them (large scale) on a screen. ------Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 From: Charity M

I have a SmartBoard and it's fun to play with, but there's better technology out at this point. The SmartBoard is a small area to write on and not very portable. This year my school purchased several E-Beams. It basically makes any whiteboard into a SmartBoard. You can set the size of the sensor area as big as a regular whiteboard. It can be used with a projector for web searching, interactive Powerpoints, or writing on pictures or documents. The E-Beam can also be used without a projector, which basically allows you to save, print, or post on your web page anything you write on the board. It's small. It looks like a little boomerang with a cord sticking out. It comes in a small briefcase bag so it's easy to use for presentations away from school. The only annoying part is using the special marker holders that work as sensors.

Either with a SmartBoard or an E-Beam, it's fairly teacher-centered. The teachers who use them the most at my school are AP teachers. They like being able to save large, complicated problems from day to day