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Home > Using Technology in the Classroom
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Using Technology in the Classroom
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by Arnold Pulda
Liaison for Gifted & Talented student programs
Worcester, Massachusetts
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| | This Q&A is a follow-up to Arnold Pulda's article "Women's History: A Quick Cyberguide."
Many AP teachers are interested in using technology, but they often don't know where to begin. Can you suggest some simple ways teachers might start to incorporate technology into their teaching and learning?
There is no better rule for teachers using technology, whether they are beginners or well practiced, than the old KISS rule: Keep It Simple, Sweetheart.
I suggest using a single online document during a class period. This allows you to help students "squeeze" a single source for its meaning and relevance to your current unit of study. Follow these simple steps to create a successful lesson plan: first, select your document; second, identify three or four concrete learning objectives; and finally, create a set of questions to lead your students into and through the document. I guarantee keeping your focus short and tight will help you create lesson plans that work.
A related piece of advice: require a computer-generated product from research done online. This brings closure to a unit, helps you in the assessment process, and gives students real pride of ownership over something that they create from start to finish. By now the old standby is a PowerPoint presentation; I also encourage students to use Inspiration (diagramming software) for subjects that require graphics. As often as we teachers make and see PowerPoint slide shows, we might be bored with them -- but students are not. And consider inviting parents and administrators to the classroom on the days students present.
Are there pitfalls that teachers should anticipate when they begin to incorporate technology into their teaching and learning? What are they, and how can they be minimized or avoided?
Teachers who are just beginning to integrate the Internet into their teaching often try to do too much. They might ask their students to find the meaning of life or at least the causes of the U.S. Civil War. A lesson designed for using online resources should have a clear and consistent structure, a definite time span, finite learning objectives that students can reasonably achieve in one or two class periods, and a short list of a few good, reliable documents and/or essays that the teacher has gathered. My advice: do not allow your students to search on their own for these resources. Such assignments tend to become an exercise in searching, not learning. The teacher should find and designate four to six high-quality sites that she has thoroughly vetted in advance. These sites will in turn have links to other sites that students can explore when they near the end of the lesson, in the section called "Extended Activities" or "Interdisciplinary Themes." Consult the lesson plans written and posted daily at the New York Times Web site (all Web sites mentioned in this article can be found in "More," below) for an excellent design that every teacher can use.
My suggestion regarding time in the computer room: you will often find that shorter is better. The attention of even the best students tends to wander, even when the content in front of them is challenging and engaging. I teach in a 63-minute block, and here is my schedule when planning online research for the entire class in the computer room: 10 minutes in the classroom to introduce the subject and set the objectives, 40 minutes in the computer room, and 10 minutes back in the classroom for students to report to the class on their findings and progress. This "sandwich" of activity works for me.
Is it a good idea to try to adapt one's current activities or lesson plans to an electronic or multimedia environment? Or it is better to rethink one's materials entirely?
Both. I teach U.S. History, so let me use a couple of examples from that field. The first example is a lesson that I have adapted to new media. When I teach, using conventional resources, the unit on the decision to build and then drop the atomic bomb, I always photocopy and hand out Einstein's letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt of September 2, 1939, in which the scientist proposed a program to research what was to ultimately become the atomic bomb. The letter can be found on the Internet, so in recent years I have been leading my students to that document online, where they find not only that letter, but links to the three other letters that Einstein wrote to FDR during the course of World War II, along with a depth and breadth of information and a variety of documents that simply cannot be accessed any other way. This is a case where the abundance and quality of information available on the Internet have enriched the lesson significantly; a link to my lesson plan can be found below.
An instance of a lesson where I have done electronic rethinking, and use online resources from the start, is in teaching the causes of World War I. The Web site of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration is a wonderful resource, bursting with documents of all kinds. There is also a section called "Teaching With Documents," where the archivists have created ready-to-use lesson plans framed around primary resources. One of these that my students and I like focuses on the Zimmermann Telegram. I have used this document and this lesson for a few years, and I have found that I need to tweak the lesson plan at nara.gov only slightly. This lesson teaches itself.
All AP teachers want their students to become better critical thinkers. How can technology help students improve their critical thinking skills?
When students engage raw documents, thinking occurs. Every year I teach, I am pleasantly surprised by the depth of analysis and the fresh interpretations that students apply, for instance, to propaganda posters in World War II. I have looked at Thomas Hart Benton's "The Sowers" dozens of times, but every year students point out to me something I never noticed, or an interesting twist, or a challenging hypothesis on why certain colors were used. Likewise with other documents that I lead students to, such as Jackie Robinson's handwritten letter to Branch Rickey when he learned that Rickey was moving from the Dodgers to the Pirates, and Rickey's long speech to the "One Hundred Percent Wrong Club" in 1956, reflecting on race and baseball and America at midcentury. When curious student minds collide with documents that are challenging, while a teacher acts as mediator, there is traction, and friction, and -- the most important product of all of this -- student-generated questions.
In the best of all possible worlds, what kind of technology would you like to see in every AP classroom? Why?
I like to see an island containing four to six computers tucked into a corner of the classroom. This allows the teacher to differentiate the curriculum by allowing and urging students to move over there, individually or in small groups, to conduct research and then report back on a subject, issue, question, controversy, or any item that students encounter and wish to investigate further. One of the computers should be connected by converter to a large-screen TV. Using that configuration, students can show the results of their research, the teacher can have the day's lesson objectives and resources presented in PowerPoint format, and students can make presentations for the entire class using PowerPoint, Inspiration, or other software. A SmartBoard (hardware that allows the presenter to create documents and make changes to the information displayed on it with the touch of a finger or stylus) with a dedicated computer and projector would be even better for such purposes. Technology should be integrated into teaching and learning as seamlessly as possible; electronic resources should be regarded as one more tool in the toolkit, not as ends in themselves. When students can move back and forth between conventional and new media-based information, we are approaching that goal.
In combination with this, I like a 20-station computer room, one per department. In this setting the entire class works on a lesson plan that is entirely online. Students work individually or in small groups, depending on many factors, first of which is the number of students in the class.
Can you suggest some resources for teachers who want to learn more about teaching and learning with technology?
In addition to the Web sites described above, I often use the following sites: the Library of Congress, History Matters, PBS, the Avalon Project at Yale University, the Crossroads Project at Georgetown University, Duke University's Scriptorium Collection, and the HistoryNet.
An indispensable resource for all teachers who care about integrating technology into their own classrooms is From Now On, an online publication written and published monthly by Jamie McKenzie. McKenzie is a former teacher and administrator who knows both technology and teaching, and writes about the issues, obstacles, and problems associated with bringing the two together. Subscribe at the Web site to receive the magazine free, sent to your e-mail account.
Another person who is both wise and smart about teaching and technology is Kathy Schrock. Her Web site, called the Schrockguide, is updated daily with fresh resources and tips. You can also subscribe to receive her Site of the Day e-mail newsletter. Schrock's site covers all disciplines and grade levels thoroughly, so teachers can find what they are looking for there.
A site that delivers all the tools for the wired teacher is Teach-nology. At the Web site you will find online lesson plans categorized according to subject, discipline, and curriculum; worksheets; advice on how to teach specific ideas and themes; rubrics; tutorials; and many other things that you can use today in your own work and Monday morning with your own students. This Web site, like the others listed above, will lead and link you directly to other sites of high quality for every academic discipline. As with all things Internet, abundance rather than scarcity is the rule here, so it's easy to get lost going from one good site to another. When that happens, remember my first rule: Keep It Simple, Sweetheart.
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