Technology in Education

Today was the Day 3 of our MIT program, and the first one where I really felt like I was fully engaged. Not to say that Orientation wasn’t engaging, but today was our first day of class. This is what we came here for. Also, we’re starting to build some exciting relationships with the other people in our cohort, which is really fantastic.

Our first class (which meets until Friday) is Technology in Education. For me, this was a great way to start off the summer because I’m naturally technologically inclined. Having a dad who worked for Intel probably helped me develop that a little bit (thanks Dad). So, this class comes pretty easily for me. Which is fun, but also truly humbling because the professors know and ask me questions about it (some examples from today: “Can you show me what this Facebook thing is all about?” “Let me see your blog.” “I know you’re pretty good with this stuff. That’s why you’re in this group.”).

I feel pretty fortunate to have that technological background, because it means I’ll be more able to adapt to the cutting edge of educational technology when it comes to my school. Older colleagues may not be as able to incorporate the new tech, but I’ll be a resource for them. That starts now.

In my last post, I promised some links. Today we learned about several new educational technologies that we could use in our classrooms, either when we begin student teaching or in the future. Here they are:

• Thinkfinity: This is a search engine with links to all sorts of lesson plans and activities for the classroom. There are more than 10 “content partners” which provide Thinkfinity with these activities, and some of them are pretty darn cool. One that I thought was interesting was called “Star-Crossed Lovers Online: Romeo and Juliet in a Digital Age”. The site gives full instructions for a five-session unit based on modernizing Romeo and Juliet for today’s technology.
• Discovery Education Streaming (subscription required): This is a website that provides access to video files in almost every subject area. There is no time limit (unlike YouTube), and most videos are 30 to 60 minutes long. Also, the videos are almost always broken down into segments so that a teacher can show the entire thing, or just the selection he/she finds worthwhile. I watched a lot of videos in high school, but I never thought about where they came from. This website is probably not where my teachers got them, but it will be a great resource for me as I prepare to find sweet videos to show my students.
• WebQuests: WebQuests are online activities that prompt students to either do online research or use technological resources to create class projects. In the classroom, the teacher can either give each student the direct link to the WebQuest project or adapt it and present the information on an assignment sheet. Searching for WebQuests was easy for me because you can just plug in the name of a novel and find all kinds of great project ideas. Here’s a sweet example I found based on Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451.
• PhotoStory 3 for Windows: PhotoStory is a program that allows students to make quick slideshows with photos, text, voice recordings and automatically-generated music. I have good news and I have bad news about PhotoStory. The good news is that it’s a FREE educational tool (always good news for teachers). The bad news, though, is that because PhotoStory was developed and released by Microsoft, there is no version available for the Mac (which I use and highly endorse). Here’s a brief tutorial video I found:

• Qwizdom: Qwizdom is a brand of student-response system. Using the Qwizdom system (which is linked to PowerPoint), the teacher can flash a quiz up on the screen. Each student holds a remote that communicates with a receiver in the front of the room. When a quiz question appears, each student locks in their answers and sends it to the receiver. The teacher can then immediately see how many students picked each answer and flash an automatically-generated bar or pie graph up on the screen to show the students that information. The downside here is that the Qwizdom system is very expensive for a typical public school budget to swallow (roughly $1,500 for a set with 24 remotes). But if you get lucky enough to have access to a Qwizdom system, it’s a great tool. Students feel more locked in when they can use a hand-held remote instead of circling multiple-choice answers on a sheet of notebook paper.

Overall, some pretty cool stuff. Tomorrow we’ll be talking about SMART boards, blogging, Audacity and Inspiration. Hopefully I’ll have positive things to tell you about those systems as well.