It’s not easy to find the time to refresh long-standing lesson plans and experiment with new ideas in between teaching, marking, lesson planning, after-school clubs and perhaps even maintaining some sort of social life. Lots of teachers like to stick to what they know or, better yet, things that are absolutely guaranteed not to suffer technical problems - nobody wants to be left high and dry without a lesson plan to follow.
The use of technology in teaching has obvious benefits for students: “There have been quite a few cases with assessments where pupils using the MacBooks have actually performed better in that particular topic and test, possibly because they’ve engaged more in the topic” says Natasha Webb, a science teacher at Hall Green School, Birmingham. Incorporating ICT has a positive impact; students are becoming increasingly technologically literate and they respond well to the confident use of technology in lessons. Trying some unusual things can really pay off - for example, using Google Earth in maths lessons. It places problems in the context of the real world, and is surprisingly useful for a number of different topics. Learning about volumes, surface areas and estimations can be approached using famous objects and places. Students can find out the volumes of the pyramids, or estimate the size of the Amazon rainforest. The beauty of this is that at the very least all you need is an Internet connection and a projector . By capturing their imaginations and taking them on a mathalogical (I know it’s not a real word, but I think it has a ring to it…) quest around the globe, the chance of them retaining the information is increased.
Making podcasts is a great way to engage students. They are wonderfully versatile and can make any topic appealing. Why not try getting students to make a podcast about historical events in mathematics or the parts of the circulatory system? This is great as a revision task; the process of creating podcasts makes students consider information carefully and ensures they understand the topic. Students can even attach diagrams and pictures, so that the audio information is supplemented with useful visual aids. Giving students something interesting to concentrate on can work wonders with bad behaviour too - “There’s definitely an impact to using the technology". An example of this was seen with a particularly difficult year 10 group: “during the two weeks we used the MacBooks to make podcasts , they were fantastic” says Natasha.
The successful use of technology in one department often flows over into others. Hall Green introduced some Macs into their art department and the technology was quickly embraced by other subjects. “We use an awful lot of technology in science,” says Natasha. “Everyday we use the interactive whiteboard with the PC and, occasionally, we use things like data loggers”. It can bring out the best in pupils of all abilities and helps the teachers differentiate their lessons. “Some very low ability year sevens used the MacBooks with Comic Life to make comic strips about whether something would be living or non-living. They found some photos on the Internet and wrote speech bubbles to say whether they were alive because they were eating or breathing, etc.”
Using digital cameras is always popular and they can be incorporated into every subject, maths and science being no exception. Students can use cameras to make a record of experiments and results, including photos in reports to add visual prompts to their reports, which could make them easier to revise from later. Another good activity might be to send students on a geometric scavenger hunt around the school. They take pictures of different shapes which they can then cut out and use for demonstrations of tessellation. With some basic picture editing and copying and pasting, students can see how shapes fit together and make some interesting picture-patchworks for classroom displays!
There are lots of specialist software programs out there, particularly for maths, which help with demonstrations and provide interactive tasks for students. Autograph, Sketchpad and Cabri are great examples and are fantastic for graphical work and dynamic geometry; “I have the axes up and then get the boys to try and draw the correct graph on the board. Then it’s easy to superimpose the computer’s graph to see how accurate they were,” says Sandy Stewart, a maths teacher at King Edward VI Boys School, Stratford-upon-Avon. Web resources are always useful and, even better, many of them are free. “I often use the NRICH website to put up a problem related to a current topic” says Head of Maths at King Edward’s, Nigel Browning. The Internet is undoubtedly a useful tool, but students’ obsession with trying to access social networking sites and online games can be something of a hindrance, as many teachers will know.
As well as making learning more enjoyable and memorable for students, technology can also make teaching more enjoyable. As Natasha puts it, “The impact of using things like the MacBooks in my lessons has been fantastic. It just means that there are more fun things for the pupils to do, and it’s more fun as a teacher as well, to see pupils enjoying their lessons”.
Teacher’s choice – a list of useful websites:
NRICH
Autograph
Sketchpad
Cabri
BBC Bitesize
Channel 4 Learning
Google Earth Lessons