« Formative Assessment – Student Responses and Observations of Learning
Formative Checklists- Useful or Not »

Simple yet powerful technology

Published January 24, 2008 Camera , Document camera , Smartboard , Video conference , Videoconference , technology , word process , wordprocess 1 Comment
Tags: , , , , , , ,

I believe that when a technology is simple to use, then teachers will use it.  Witness the Smartboard and the Document camera.  Simple technologies can be powerful technologies.  They do not require thousands of hours of professional development. They do not require long learning curves.  Teachers “get it” and can use them.   They can involve their students in that technology with minimal prep.  I think that often we over look simple technologies like word processing, digital camera, document  cameras, and smartboards. Let’s promote technologies that teachers can and will use instead of complex technologies that often require someone else to set things up like videoconferencing.  Let’s focus on what teachers have in their classrooms!

1 Response to “Simple yet powerful technology”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address
  1. 1 Adrian Kite April 2, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    Great blog entry.

    I am particularly interested in the use of document cameras (or visualisers as they are often referred) in education and there applications for supporting assessment. I believe a product that gives the ability to instantly share and discuss students work and also the ability to capture different stages of an individuals work is something which should be utilised more.

    Please feel free to look at my blog http://visualiserforum.blogspot.com/ at some of the discussion on the use of document cameras in UK education.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

« Formative Assessment – Student Responses and Observations of Learning
Formative Checklists- Useful or Not »

RSS Education with Technology

  • Do We Know the Students’ Exact Progress in the Learning Standards At Any Moment? November 17, 2009
    Every teacher should know at any given moment where their students stand in regard to state standards, state assessments, or even the “final”. We need to focus on our students’ learning progress and how we can help the students to improve from where they are to where we expect them to be. Waiting until the [...]
    hgtuttle
  • Assess students’ academic learning, not Web 2.0 technology November 12, 2009
    I thought that we have moved beyond focusing on the technology to focusing on student academic learning.  I thought that back in the 90s.  However, I find evidence even today that technology still has become the true focus rather than student academic learning.  Whenever I look at the rubrics for an Web 2.0 tool, I [...]
    hgtuttle
  • Wiki- Collaborative Notes Instead of Individual Ones November 8, 2009
    My classes use a wiki.  If the classes are sections of the same course, they share the same wiki. For example, my 8, 9 and 12:30 classes are all Writing and Research so I group them together on the wiki.  I  have been having students from each class take class notes and post them to [...]
    hgtuttle
  • Assessing Learning with Web 2.0: Social Bookmarking November 1, 2009
    I was talking to  teacher who was so proud of the social bookmarking his students had done. They had collected over 60 links about the topic they were studying. I asked him if they had agreed on what tags they were going to use; he said that they used whatever tag they wanted.  Next,  I [...]
    hgtuttle
  • Build a real class learning community October 30, 2009
    Teachers can create a class community such as everyone knowing two things about everyone else in the class without having a learning community where students continually work together to better each other.   Likewise, teachers can have students work together (Student A does this/ student B does that….) without really collaborating (interacting and chan […]
    hgtuttle
  • Show your students their success October 25, 2009
    When students receive a “C” on an assignment and then an “B” on the next, they know that their grade went up but they do not usually know why. And they probably do not know what new skill or strategy they need to move up to an “A”. An alternative approach is to use a learning [...]
    hgtuttle
  • Let’s Hear it for the Power of Technology! LOL! October 22, 2009
    I know of a person who does not have any technology in his room accept for a 70s looking overhead.  One day he decided to walk around  his institute and see how the teachers who had technology in their room was using it.  9/10 rooms were using the “elmo” type device to show a handout, [...]
    hgtuttle
  • Continuous Assessment October 15, 2009
    The British have used the term continuous assessment or assessment for learning for many years.  I like the term continuous assessment since it implies that students are continually being monitored and given feedback to improve. Continuous assessment differs from the “unit” test or “every five week” tests that do not provide feedback […]
    hgtuttle
  • Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, my book October 12, 2009
    My book, Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available at http://tinyurl.com/writingtuttle. The book provides a systematic approach of observing students’ written work, diagnosing ( strengths and gaps and identify strategies to overcome the gaps),  giving feedback, allowing time for growth and reporting the growth within your cl […]
    hgtuttle
  • How Many Formative Assessments Do You Do Each Period? September 26, 2009
    The only way to know how well the students are doing is for constant formative assessments or check-ins. If we do monitor students’ progress, then we have to have strategies ready to help the students who are progressing. I suggest that we should do three or more formative assessments each period.  At present I teach [...]
    hgtuttle

Blog Stats

  • 250,181 hits