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Liberating Your Classroom Style Using a Tablet

Page history last edited by Tera Meschko 11 years, 8 months ago

Liberating Your Classroom Style Using a Tablet

 

Primary Presenter: John Flynt

Organization: University of Colorado Boulder

Role: Lecturer

Track: Research Presentation

Level: For Mere Mortals

 

Abstract: A teacher of college mathematics reviews how he converted his classroom from a traditional format involving whiteboards/chalkboards to use of a tablet in conjunction with a website equipped with software that provides access the lectures. “Clustering” can be tentatively assigned to this approach to teaching; everyone is focused on the screen and what is happening there. Preparation for such teaching is more intensive, but in time the process becomes efficient and fun.

 

Bio:As a lecturer in the Dept. of Applied Mathematics, for five years now, John Flynt have been developing a program, Digital Explorations, that involves students in developing games and applications for teaching and learning in largely STEM contexts. This activity has led him to explore many different uses of technology in the classroom, and as an extension of this, when honored with an ASSETT grant and a request to develop a new course for remedial mathematical studies in engineering, he decided to teach the course without using a whiteboard or chalkboard, one that incorporated a tablet and other technologies.

 

Description: This presentation reviews an effort undertaken during the 2011-2112 academic year, partly financed by an ASSETT grant, to convert a mathematics classroom to a digital format. There were several components of this activity. One involved using a tablet and completely eliminating use of whiteboards/chalkboards. A second was exploring approaches to preparing material that could serve as backgrounds for projection using a tablet. A third involved exploration of software that could supplement digitalized lectures. This included DyKnow, a software package that allows students to access notes on a real-time basis. This lecture covers all aspects of this activity: selection of software and hardware, supplemental tools (such as Matlab, SmartDraw, Photoshop, etc.); using online texts directly and indirectly; writing/printing/drawing/pointing on a tablet; strategies for encouraging interaction in the digital classroom. The lecture reveals that the future of mathematical and other teaching involves getting rid of blackboards and whiteboards and using digital tools. It reveals that the old approach to teaching math using “you-write/they-copy” (YWTC) is outmoded and wasteful. It challenges teachers to consider making the change to tablets, regardless of what subject they teach. It also proposes formats for transition. Use of wireless networks in classrooms gives teachers and students liberty to do away with the authoritarian classroom layout and to work toward clustering—where students and teachers gather in changing configurations to explore topics while being able to continuously project work for the entire class to share. Practice makes perfect: the presentation reviews some of the comical extremes that are probably best avoided if you adopt a tablet as a way of communicating with your classes.

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