Archive for the 'Transform' Category

PowerPoint: Transformed or Simply Electronic Version

Published December 1, 2007 Achievement , Assessment , assessment for learning , Exemplar , Power Point , PowerPoint , Standard , Transform Leave a Comment

Yesterday Tv was so bad that I finally end up at one of the music stations.  I realized that there was an older technology that I could have used – a radio.

I wonder how different the learning from our PowerPoints is  if we compare PowerPoint use to older ways of teaching.  Teachers have used chalkboards to present information. Teachers have used pictures to aid in the learning.  Teachers have shown movies (yes, we used to have movie projectors).  PowerPoint makes it easier to those things.  However, by itself PowerPoint does not increase student learning. What do you use PowerPoint for other than  agendas, notes, showing pictures, jumping to resources?

Do you use PowerPoint to help students to focus on the standard for the unit and to see their progress in the standard?  Do you use PowerPoint to scaffold information in a step by step process for the students so all can be successful?  Do you use PowerPoint to show exemplars? Do you use PowerPoint to provide practice exercises for them to assess how well they are doing in the standard? Do you use PowerPoint to celebrate their learning successes?  If you do those uses, then PowerPoint truly becomes a powerful learning tool for our students. PowerPoint aids you in transforming learning to success.

It’s not the technology but the teaching

Published July 5, 2007 Curriculum , Implementation , Instruction , Power Point , PowerPoint , Teacher , technology , Transform Leave a Comment

PowerPointUse

Technology is neutral.

I’ve seen two teachers in the same subject area on the same topic use PowerPoint very differently. One used it to display the outline about the topic. The other used is to present contrasting images about the topic for the students to analyze.

Technology does not magically transform the teaching learning process. A change in the teacher does.

Sometimes teachers see a new technology such as the Smartboard and they use it the same way as they did a chalkboard, they write on it. Sometimes when teachers see how a technology can be used, they accept the change in their teaching. A teacher who sees a Smartboard demonstration may then want her students to manipulate math shapes on the Smartboard.

How technology supports our school academic priorities will not change until we change how teachers use technology. How do you use technology? How has your teaching changed due to using technology?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

Still Trying to Transform Schools… Hopefully With Technology

Published November 12, 2005 21st Century Skills , Alan November , Benjamin Bloom , Curriculum , technology , technology integration , Transform 2 Comments

Alan November has a wonderful speech on the need to transform schools. He convincingly cites many business examples of Friedman’s The World is Flat. (MIT has a movie of Thomas L. Friedman giving a speech on his book.) Alan gives examples of how some schools are transforming to meet today’s world. Alan urges all schools to change.

I thought of Alan’s speech as I was going through some old books. I found one from 1989, Anne Lewis’ Restructuring American Schools (Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators). I remembered that the New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Schools (NYSCATE) had a “Restructuring & Technology Newsletter” for numerous years. Each of these had convincing arguments as to why and how schools should change.

As I began to think about the 1989 restructuring movement, I thought about the most famous example of why schools should change. A wonderful fable called “The Saber-Tooth Curriculum” by J. Abner Peddiwell (a.k.a Benjamin Bloom) tells about a curriculum that no longer served the needs of the school; tiger-scaring was a critical element of the curriculum even though there were no longer tigers to scare. His powerful 1939 tale could be told today. Unfortunately, this witty tale did not cause schools to change their curriculums.

Are schools finally ready to transform? Is technology going to be the catalyst or tipping point to make it happen? Do we show our colleagues that technology allows their students to work with students in other parts of the world just as easily as working with a class next door? Social Studies students can email paragraphs on what freedom means to students in other countries and those students can react. Science students can videoconference about erosion in the local geography of a place thousands of miles away. English students can use Skype to talk with students in other countries about a common theme such as discrimination in The Chosen. Math students can create web pages comparing local prices of common foods with students in other countries.

Transforming Schools…Hopefully, it will happen through technology.

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