Recently I was speaking with a colleague about the challenges on integrating technology in to the classroom. The underlying theme of our difficulties was that about of prep work, planning, and even creativity required to plan such a lesson. I am not always that patient with myself.
I hope this blog can be a place for educators to share their thought in technology in education. While we may post to lament about the inevitable issues that can arise, think cheating, cyber-bulling, copyright infringement, plagiarism, etc., this blog is also intended to be a place to share inspiration. I hope this blog will come became a place to share any and all ideas- from how to help integrate technology into lessons, to how to teach students to use it effectively .
Here is idea number one: Recently a teacher in my department started using the
TI-83 SmartView. This amazing software allows you to project a giant image of the calculator on your projector so that you can instruct students how to use all of the calculators features. Generally I find when I am trying to do a lesson that requires me to teach the use of features of the graphing calculator, I waste 10 or 15 minutes running around the room trying to show students the right buttons and menu algorithms. The SmartView will surely save time, and allow me to get to "meat" of my lesson. I will be implementing this software into my room next week, so I'll be sure to post a follow up post on whether it's improved the efficiency of using the graphing calculator during lessons.
October 28, 2010 at 3:33 PM
I'm not even a math teacher and I think this is pretty cool. I know when I am trying to demonstrate something on our heartrate monitors I wish I could somehow put it on a large screen to walk my students through some of the steps taken to get to a certian area in the programs. Seems like this would be the same or simular to using a calculator. Now that's the kind of information we need to share with each other as teachers - making our jobs easier. 'working smarter not harder'
October 28, 2010 at 8:20 PM
SmartView has been around for many years, but most of the schools I have worked at do not have a site license. It is great for showing kids the keystrokes used to enter things on the graphing calculators. It is also great for making instructional handouts on using the graphing calculator.