Education and Technology

We have had ActivBoards in some of our classrooms for 3 years. They were installed in 3 phases over the course of a year and a half. What I’ve seen from the technology side is that they work well, are easy to maintain and have very few real hardware issues. The problems that I have seen are more training and getting used to using the software and the board as a teaching tool.

We have many different levels of comfort in using the ActivBoards, from Tes the trainer who has been onboard from the beginning to Billy-Bob who is always technology challenged. That is not to say that the students are getting any different, better or worse education. They just get different experiences as it has always been in education. Remember wanting a certain teacher for the way  they taught? Same thing here, but the one common factor is that the kids love the ActivBoard. They are engaged, they like the technology because it is some thing that is from their generation and it is cool. While they enjoy using the ActivBoard, they are at the same time learning the lesson that is being taught with that same ActivBoard.

The trick to getting everyone moving along the same path is to give them something mutually interesting. Being engaged is important, it is a way to get their attention. It’s not the only step, but it is an important first step. The ActivBoards are a great step forward in teaching the new generation of students.

Neat trick wouldn’t you say?

Education, ActivBoard, Student Achievment

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Yesterday on Twitter Leo Babauta of the Zen Habits blog asked anyone to tweet him with a question about his area’s of expertise which is  kind of self help on achieving goals, productivity, being organized…. happiness, and successfully implementing good habits. I asked:

The reason I talk about this is something that a college Trigonometry professor once told me. He said, “the quicker you get your work done, the more  time you have to enjoy the important things in life”. So to apply that to students today, if they sit down, work on their studies, take them seriously for time that it takes to work through them then they will have more time to enjoy themselves. They may also enjoy school more because they didn’t get distracted, waste their time and not get their studies done. That leads to poor grades, lower self esteem from negative reinforcement and drop outs. Lets get our students to get it done, then they can play. I think it can work if we are positive with our students.

Technorati: Social Media, Productivity, Education

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