More good uses for technology

I am currently observing a 7th grade special education science class for another course I am taking called Applied Research in Behavior Management. The teacher makes use of the Smart Board, which I have never used. It is pretty neat because when she is showing the students the Power Point, the students have a worksheet that correlates DIRECTLY to what she is presenting. She can also have the same worksheets that the students are doing up on the screen and have members of the class give the answer and then come up and physically "drag and drop" the answer into the appropriate space on the worksheet. This works extremely well for special education students because they do not have to copy the notes of the board themselves. They are guided through it with the aid of technology. That is pretty cool.

If my college ever gets Smart Boards, I would definitely try them out!

I also want to put in a "plug" for visualizers and something called TI-Smartview. Visualizers are basically like live cameras. They allow the user to project whatever is placed on the visualizer's base. This is excellent for a "show and tell" kind of lesson when students would benefit from looking at an object, but it is not feasible to pass it around or hold it up because everyone will need to see it at the same time. Now, TI-Smartview is a program that basically has the TI-34 screen and will allow you to record the key strokes so that students can see EXACTLY what was pressed. You can also see all different screens at the same time (the graph, the table, and the function). I have used both the visualizer and TI-Smartview to show my classes the calculator so that everyone can see exactly what was entered and how we got to the next screen.

I'm sure I have many other praises of technology. Keep on the look out for them!