Effective Use of Technology In the Classroom?

postermmxvicom writes "I remember in college I had one professor who, in addition to being a great teacher, really took advantage of the technology in the classroom to illustrate the concepts for Calculus and Linear Algebra. Well, now I am the teacher. I teach Algebra, AP Calculus, and Physics in high school. This year I have gotten a tablet and a wireless projector. Now I can write on my tablet instead of the board, as well as use other applications. I want to utilize this tech effectively for teaching. Would you please share how you have seen technology effectively used for Math and Physics — either specific software or how that software was used (specific or general)?"

In my honest opinion

I would rather be taught with less technology when math is concerned.
I just feel that the blackboard is a much more fluid and natural medium to perform calculations. Also, I've seen those ELMO contraptions be a severe distraction, either because of having

MIT has a cool device

It is a interative screen-whiteboard with real-world physics. It's kinda hard to describe without a movie. [youtube.com]

Clickers

The physics department at my university has started using "clickers." They are small handheld devices resembling calculators that students can use to wirelessly answer multiple-choice questions an instructor poses via e.g. a slide on a presentation. Afte

Re:

"...so these are also useful for taking attendence in large classes."

"Ow can you 'aveny pudd'n, if you don' eat your MEAT??"

May I also suggest attendance in another semester of basic English, if you really want that physics degree to mean anything :)

HIGH SCHOOL?

If my experience in High School still applies (and maybe it doesn't; it was a long time ago) you're going to turn out the lights to use that fancy gizno and half the class is going straight to sleep, the other half is going to be passing notes and shooting spitwads and paper airplanes around.

I suggest you compliment the technology there with a pair of night-vision goggles or something.

cart before the horse

I think a major mistake teachers make is to discover new teaching technology and then invent a curriculum that uses them. This gets the process entirely backwards. If you try this, you're going to sacrifice learning in the interest of playing with your new toys.

You've got these new tools. That's great. Now forget about them. Design your lessons as you would. As you go, you're going to realize ... "this would work better if I can use my new gizmo." This is where the technology comes in. First find the problem, then find the solution.

In-class polling

One of the few things that I've seen that's been a good use of technology is using those in-class polling kits. You basically ask a multiple-choice question on a concept, then the class is polled. Once everyone answers, you can see the distribution and k

Re:

What makes the teacher think that one minute after he stopped talking everyone has captured and memorized everything? I was never subjected to such quick polls, and if I were I'd say "what do you want from me, I haven't had a chance to review my notes and

Apple Learning Interchange

If you use OS X then the Apple Learning Interchange [apple.com] is a really good resource site. It has hundreds of teacher-contributed lesson plans.

Ways to use the technology

One way the tablet is better than a blackboard is that you can save a written copy of your lecture, and make copies available to the students. That way they can spend their time paying attention to the lecture, instead of rushing to copy everything down. This can make the class more interactive.

The PC can be used, in general, to demo the physics and calculus principles through animation. It can be a useful teaching tool, just don't let it replace the hands on activities usually done in the lab portions of the course. Sometimes doing is better than seeing.

Re:Ways to use the technology

It may be different for you, but seeing something up on the board doesn't help me learn. Graphics are great for illustrating a point, but in terms of equations and diagrams, I need to write it to remember it. Getting copies of the instructors notes just gives students a lazy way out, not a chance to participate more.

Re:Ways to use the technology

but in terms of equations and diagrams, I need to write it to remember it.

In terms of equations you are not supposed to remember it (mostly). You are supposed to understand it.

Re:

In terms of equations you are not supposed to remember it (mostly). You are supposed to understand it.

Tell that to my high school trigonometry teacher. (Those were the days...) He expected everyone to remember every trig equation like they came up with it

Re:

You're like most people. It's how the brain works. We have to write it down or spend time "hands on" in order to learn. That's what the homework assignments and labs are for. There is a method to my madness...

One thing that really frustrates me is wh

The old ones are the best

Lecture: A period of time when the notes of the lecturer are transferred to the notebooks of the students without going through the brain of either.

As a student

I've had a professor that makes great use of his tablet, mostly because the notes are already written when he gets there, and if someone has a question he can write more on the fly.

This is at a post-grad level. I think high school math would benefit from

suggestion

I've always found it cool and educational when one can fiddle with the various factors in equations and see how it changes the shape on a graph. It gives one a sense of proportion and relationships.

sparsley

The problem with most of the technology is that it gives information too fast for most students. It's easy to whip up a whole bunch of slides, or pre-made note-sheets for a document camera, but it's much harder for the students to follow. When you're doing

Wrong question

If you don't know how you're going to use it to meet your classroom goals, maybe you should be asking yourself why you intend to use it at all.

"Because it's there" doesn't seem like a good reason for introducing technology into the classroom.

Two suggestions

I have two suggestions. (a) if there are things that you find tedious (e.g. marking) or difficult (e.g. sketches, if you aren't a good artist), look for technological solutions to those so that you can devote your time and energy to more important things and won't get tired and frustrated; (b) don't focus on your new toys. Instead, think about what ideas and skills you have a hard time getting across and ask yourself how you could improve in those areas. Sometimes the answer will be something your toys are good for, maybe a simulation for an experiment you can't readily do, but sometimes it won't be technological. It might just be a better derivation of a theorem or formula or a clever diagram. If you focus too much on your toys, you run the risk of doing things that you, and maybe your students, find cool, but that aren't really of much educational value.

Animations and 3D

In my university days, I understood a lot of calculus by visualizing an animated sequence (mean value theorem, limits, derivatives...). Animation is a great tool for these things. Same goes for numerical analysis.
Also (from the same days), linear algebra can be (often / sometimes) simplified to a 2d / 3d projection which can be displayed easily by a computer. Forget that you CAN'T draw in 3D or can't animate in 2D on the board - the computer can.
And of course - physics, chemistry, geography, history - omg, history would be so cool to learn with a projector, if done correctly (not just clips - diagrams, arrows on the world map describing population movements, pressures, wars) - all of the "real world" sciences are much more fun when working in the real world. Even political science (if your school offers it) can enjoy the benefits of a projector, even if only as a video machine (watching Marting Luther King Jr. making his speech for example).
However - I don't think that a projector is a "magic wand". It conforms to the equation "invest more time, reap more results". If you invest the proper amount of time preparing good material (and not only video clips), your students would enjoy it immensely.
Just my 2 bits.

May I ask?

Would you please share how you have seen the professor you mentioned in passing, use technology effectively for Math and Physics lessons? Go into detail.

Nice question; some ideas

As a physics professor, I often find myself asking the same kind of question. Sadly, I'm way behind you with your tablet and wireless projector, but you are definitely inspiring me with that kind of gear. Here are a few ideas:

I try to use Mythbusters sub-episodes every so often as teaching tools. As most of us know, it's pretty entertaining and, while a little too seat-of-your-pants to serve as rigorous science, it definitely captures the scientific spirit and frequently inspires teachers and students alike. We'll typically watch some part of an episode, discuss the principles involved in the myth, and try and do some calculation related to the episode (e.g. number of ping pong balls to lift a boat off the bottom of the bay, terminal velocity of a penny, etc.). With your setup, you can nicely embed the parts of the video into a presentation then use the tablet to lead a real-time discussion of various topics of interest. As you probably know, there are many nice physics videos out there which can be used in this way. I also can suggest using a nice plotting calculator with your setup to quickly demonstrate ideas like Taylor expansion, Fourier decomposition, basic plotting, etc.

There is some software available out there that will analyze video motion using basic mechanics tools (CM motion, rotational motion, vectors, motion diagrams, position versus time, etc.). You give it a few anchor points on the real video capture and can step it through the motion but with all the vectors and graphs superimposed. Although it is a cool idea, sadly, the version I tried was old quite clumsy (made more clumsy by the laptop/AV setup). However, with your tablet and wireless, you may have more versatility if updated software exists.

There are several intriguing student grading/evaluation systems out there that use bar codes (for example, here [barcodeclass.com]). I know at a glance this sounds rather sinister and 1984-ish, but with student-customized bar codes (not tattooed on their foreheads, but rather printed on their papers), I think this can be used quite well to facilitate quick grading of quizzes with real-time feedback and histograms, class participation credit, and other creative classroom data organizing solutions. This could be made especially effective with the mobility provided by your tablet and wireless.

Anyway, all the best with your pending projects.

Wrong question

Asking "how can I use technology" is always the wrong question. Your goal is not to use technology, its to teach. The correct question is "How can I increase the amount my students learn?" or perhaps "How can I increase the number of students who learn?". When you look at solutions to this technology *may* be part of it, but it probably won't be.

For physics, the thing I always found best was lots of real world examples. Don't explain mechanical advantage- set up a pulley system and let them lift a car. Don't explain pressure- show it to them by lying on a bed of nails without being cut. The more fantastic the example, the better. About the only thing that I ever really found technology useful for in physics was to show the effect of changing parameters in equations, and you can find plenty of java applets on the web that do that.

Blackboard is best

Use of blackboards/whiteboards works very well. The prof writes the equations down as he explains them, and the students handwrite them into their notes. The prof writing them down keeps the focus on the relevant part, and the student handwriting a copy helps fix it in their brains.

It ain't broke, and doesn't need fixing.

None

I find it stunning (and disturbing) that there is this notion that adding tech to the classroom is by default beneficial. This idea is complete rubbish and the studies are starting to mount that show this (see below). Especially when it comes to the hard sciences and mathematics. We know that 'dead poets society' ruined a generation of english teachers. IMO, technology is ruining a generation (or more) of science/math teachers.

I've seen exactly ZERO tech used in class beyond an overhead that was anywhere near effective whether high-school or beyond. Hell, even when I taught *C++* I used the white-board a significant chunk of the time. Also, in high-school, that cover of darkness can prove to be a bad choice.

Powerpoint (and similar products) are so poorly used (I've actually /never/ seen it used properly) that they actually seriously detract from the class. In fact, people tend to do the exactly same nonsense with powerpoint that they do with the chalkboard i.e. write what they say. Yes, I can read, tell me/write on the board something I can't.

There have also been studies on using tech with kids (look through /. archives for the links). The conclusions were that all this tech actually largely prevents learning because the kids are distracted by all the "shiny objects" rather than actually paying attention to the content.

So, my suggestion is to put away all of you expensive toys (that are proving to be less and less effective as time goes on), pick up a piece of chalk and actually teach them. After all, when it comes to Math and Science, all you need is quick sketches to get the ideas across, now don't you.

Some, probably

Obviously, adding technology to a classroom is not inherently beneficial. The mere presence of a bunch of transistors in the room will not improve the students' comprehension. But it's also a bit premature to dismiss it completely. Socrates strongly dis

I have no idea how to apply this but...

I have learned more math and physics as a result of self-guided programming than I ever did in school. I remember a few years ago I was working on a simple vector graphics system for a video game I was making, and I finally understood the point of converting between cartesian and polar coordinates. Then I added physics to the program and picked up ideas like velocity along the angle of impact vs. the tangent. Recently I was working on a program to find color differences, and had to scale certain 0-1 values into a curve by using various exponents.

These are all simple things that I should have picked up in school. Things which I'm sure were explained but without any practical (or even impractical) application. So I only had the vaguest recollection that they were even possible. But the moment I encountered a programming problem that I wanted to solve, yet required this kind of knowledge, I vacuumed it up.

That may not be what you mean by "using technology" in the classroom, but it's what came to mind for me.

Cheers.

Educational research

I completed my teaching qualifications (Math and IT, high school) in 2005 and did a little bit of research into this. I'm sorry I don't have time to find links but here's what I found:

* When small groups or individual students were given wireless voting devices and some of the lesson was interactive (i.e. "So, what does everyone think will happen when I drop this metal into water?") the students enjoyed and recalled the lesson better.

* When *anonymous* brainstorming software was used, student participation is significantly improved. (Improved participation in general has been linked to better learning for decades)

Check out the ERIC database, I think some articles are available with full-text and you can get some pretty cool ideas just from the abstracts.

teach WHY people should study Algebra

Hello,
    You have the misfortune of being a high school teacher. You are probably very limited in what you can actually teach because the course work must be all rigidly defined, especially now in the era on 'No Child Left Behind' and the federally enforced overemphasis on testing.

    You have the additional misfortune of being a teacher of a subject that all students must master to get their HS diploma but less than 1% will ever use in their future lives. I work on the margin of the tech industry and I've used high school algebra only once in thirty years. Had to sit through hundreds of hours of classes in it and hundreds of hours of homework which for me was like carving concrete with a teaspoon.

    For algebra (assuming for the sake of argument that it is worth learning), the best tool would be any program that allows the students to move the terms around the equation by clicking, highlighting, and dragging. Then the software should let them know if the resulting equation is equal to the original one. And if not, why not. Also, software that puts simple values into the x and y variables and quickly lets them know whether the equation balances or not. Plus an animated tutor program that shows the steps for solving complex equations. A program with hundreds of solved examples, not just two or three solved examples.

    For calculus, I recommend bringing a dog, a thermometer, and a gun to class. Shoot the dog and put the thermometer into it. Take readings over the next few hours to show how the heat loss of a recent corpse follows a specific natural log curve and how forensic pathologists use these formulas to determine time of death.

    For logarhythms, measure the distances between the frets of an electric guitar to show how each distance is 2 raised to the 1/12 power from the previous fret and how this formula makes possible tuned scales.

    If any of these things work, then consider getting a television show to teach math through iPod instead of in a public school.

risks and benefits

> Would you please share how you have seen technology effectively used for Math and Physics.

I'm both enthusiastic as well as sceptical (and wrote and talked about it [PDF] [harvard.edu]). Here are some major points for me:

• Using technology is like telling jokes. Some people can deliver, other better do not.
• Teaching is complex. Not everybody can handle the additional challenge of technology additionally to the organisatorial and pedagogical parameters. Most of us have experienced bad use of technology. I certainly have produced disasters myself.
• It is often not the technology which produces the failures but the lack of a backup plan. Technology often fails. The advantage of the "good ol blackboard" is that it always works. Even white-boards fail when markers are dry.
• Overuse of technology is like dishing up the same meals again and again. The benefits of technology can wear off, if the novelty is gone.
• I use the rule of thumb: technology can improve a lecture by 20 percent, but adds the risk to losing 80 percent. This risk makes the use of technology exciting and worthwile.

Use as little technology as you can

The key to using technology effectively is to not think about the technology. Think about how to convey information to students. How long does it really take for a concept to sink in? Actually doing math or physics is a skill; it takes practice (i.e. homework), and it is a process not an answer. If you can use technology to show the process in action at a speed at which students can absorb it, you are using technology well.

Never use technology to avoid taking time to write something. Guess what? If you don't write it, they don't have time to either. And if you provide notes, then they won't even take the time to listen--why bother, your students will think, when I can just read the notes?

What you want to do is take them through the process, slowly, with examples, showing how to do the manipulations and explaining why at each stage a decision is made. (If you have to deal with moderate numbers of students who no longer remember how to do algebra--and you almost certainly will--you may need to elect to leave them behind; if you have huge numbers of such students, you'd better go through how to do algebra again!)

Here's one way that I've used a tablet to be helpful. You can start with a well-designed picture or graph, then draw all over it while you're explaining a concept. You can show a short movie of an interesting phenomenon, then dissect the process, e.g. by taking out frames and scribbling equations on them.

One big mistake that people make is thinking either that computers are useless and shouldn't be used for homework, or in thinking that the fundamentals are useless and you should just teach people to do derivatives with Mathematica. It's a waste of time for almost everyone to do math by hand these days if they have access to a symbolic package. But they had better understand _exactly_ how the operations work and under what conditions they fail, or they're liable to have the symbolic package perform nonsense.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with teaching is that students don't come in with the right background. And a tablet can't fix that.

    --Rex

Applets...

The http://www.fi.uu.nl/wisweb/en/ [slashdot.org]">Freudenthal institute have a large collection of java applets for secondary/high school education. There's lots of others out there too.

Spreadsheets also have enormous potential for teaching algebra concepts - particularly for getting over the idea of variables and functional relationships (after solving pages of simple "if x + 5 = 7 what is x?" equations, kids often get hung up on the notion that "x" is always a specific number...) Set up simple formulae in a spreadsheet, hide the formulae and have the kids reverse-engineer the formula... [1] Although a web browser might let you download a few :-)

Some Thoughts, and Some Software

Congratulations: you've got some of the potentially most interesting classes to use technology in - but that potential will be wasted if you just use the tablet and projector to show Powerpoint slides.

When you're designing your class, think: what can the tablet do that would be useful that could not have been done without it. Powerpoint fails this test miserably - an overhead projector would do just as well.

Here are some possible uses that do pass the test:

• Use symbolic math software to help students visualize the math, and to explore interesting problems that cannot be handled without it. Mathematica [wolfram.com] is everybody's pet favorite, of course - but I would argue that it's grotesquely overpowered and complex for most of what you'll need. Instead, take a look at something like Ron Avitzur's Graphing Calculator [pacifict.com] - the name doesn't do justice to what is a particularly elegant little program.
• For Physics, use the tablet to analyze physical data. One of the best uses here is to film objects in motion, then transfer the video to the tablet (or get a cheap webcam and record directly on the tablet), and analyze the results frame-by-frame - your students will come out with a much better understanding of motion. A free package for video analysis is Physmo [sourceforge.net].
• For more sophisticated experiments, check out what the folks at PASCO [pasco.com] have to offer - their sensors are reasonably inexpensive.
• If you do a Google search, you'll find a wealth of Java applets that simulate concepts in Physics - when contextualized by discussion, physical experiments, and "what if" explorations, these can be tremendously useful. Without this framework, though, they are no better than the film loops of old.

One last suggestion: don't hog the tablet - let your students use it too. You can set up a problem, and invite students to come up and work through it individually or in groups, showing their thought process to the rest of the class. The students will learn much more, and everybody - including you - will have a lot more fun.

Good luck!

Chalk

My best professor, and by "best" I mean I actually learned the most from him then from a textbook, and keep the knowledge today, did not even use a whiteboard. He used white (or yellow) chalk on a blackboard. It was how he did it that mattered.

* Come into class, place yesterdays work in front of him, sit down, copy the blackboard into your notebook. You have five minutes so write fast.

*Professor flips the board. Five minutes starting now.

*Spend the rest of the class discussing and explaining the facts in great depth. Professor points at someone every other minute and asks a question on the material. Asks hard questions. If you can't keep up in notes, you had better ask someone to copy, because he will not slow down. If you can't keep up in the critical thinking portion, get the hell out and accept a fail.

* Professor handed out copies of that nights questions, due at the beginning of the next class.


I was blessed to have that man's class twice in my life. Once in high school, the other in my junior year of college. I tell you, it was that man's pep that kept us awake and going, and his zest for the subject. It was highly infectious.

And as for a textbook in that class? He thought that the point of the class was half facts, half how to think with the facts... He was the textbook. At the start of the first class, when he explained how each class was going to be until the end, he gave all of us a list of books on the subject we could read. Each one was a fantastic read, not a dull one among them.

Good old fashioned technology

Chalk and board. Plus some props to demonstrate stuff. Seriously, computers don't _really_ help students really understand stuff.

Physics? Nothing beats a good 'ol number of balls, rods, ramps, tubes etc etc in demonstrating how stuff works. Watching virtual cars colliding on the screen doesn't really make students appreciate the nature of momentum and conservation of energy.
Chemistry? How does using some 3D software showing off molecules really compare to a good 'ol titration in the lab?
Biology? Disecting a rat just beats reading about rat morphology any day.
Mathematics? Take the students down to the beach and measure waves. Their height, period, variation in shape, speed etc.

Computers and other technology is useful for analysing and summarising the data, but get the students out of the classroom to gather the data.

Collaboration

Math is not my forte, but I hold an MA in Technology Education. The most imporant thing about using technology in any discipline is not to use it solely as a projector. Small group collaboration is the key to technology integration. Students work in teams, with technology being only a portion of the overall task. For example, there are before-computer-use task, during and after. Students need to know how to create algebraic symbols on the computer, which in it's own way, is a good learning tool that is only loosely related to completing the Algebra task, yet improves the technology skills of the student. Groups can work together to figure out the keystrokes ON THEIR OWN, with a little guidance from the teacher. Create a list of tasks, technology and math related, that must be accomplished by the teams. Create a rubric for each task that clearly outlines the quality expected for each task. Before long, students will forget they are even using technology, while at the same time they'll be learning how to use technology. And surprise, they'll even start getting the math part too!

A great reference for better tech teaching is the International Society for Technology Education (ISTE)'s NETS standards found at iste.org

Blackboards Have a Purpose

As some see it, the main reason blackboards are used in math/physics is to get the teacher to slow the hell down. The only outcome of technology is teachers who fly through equations too fast for students to copy them.

A set of tools for quantum mechanics

The Physics Education Group at Kansas State University has made a set of tools [ksu.edu] for teaching quantum mechanics. Some of them involve computer simulation of wave packets, etc. This helps for visualizing the (rather complex) ideas behind quantum mechanics. I interacted with these tools while taking an undergraduate physics course (intended for non-majors). They really worked well.

Re:powerpoint

Well powerpoint is the only thing usefull, my teachers ever used.

• Review this information about use of commas as punctuation [wikipedia.org]
• Consult a dictionary [reference.com] for the correct spelling of 'useful'
• See you tomorrow!

Sounds like a good starting point.

So, what is the problem with a blackboard? Be precise.

Then, look at whether the technology will solve that/those problem(s). We're talking math here. Is the technology going to allow you to better explain some difficult concepts or will the focus end up being on the technology?

Blackboards work because blackboards always work. They don't need to be rebooted.

Re:Sounds like a good starting point.

He could save his time and the students by prepping his examples, or whatever else he'd write on the board, before school. Then just pull up a saved slide so he doesn't have to spend all that time rewriting it for each class period. Consistent fonts would also mean better readability by the students. Color coding or other text attributes could also contribute to that. Animations would be cool, and maybe explain things better, but I don't think he'd be getting that far into it.

Re:

That's all pointless. Study pedagogy (or at least sit through a few boring meetings) before giving advice. Slide shows are just about the best way to get students to not engage the material.

Technology has a very limited role in high school physics and ma

Re:

That's all pointless. Study pedagogy (or at least sit through a few boring meetings) before giving advice. Slide shows are just about the best way to get students to not engage the material.

Methinks you are being subjected to badly designed slideshows th

Re:Sounds like a good starting point.

I always found that a combination worked best.

• Notes should be prepared beforehand and given as handouts. Nothing is a more tedious time waster than having students copy text and formulae from the board/screen. Long notes should be organized in sections with numbered headings for easy reference.
• Worked examples are best written out as they are explained. A presentation that reveals each step as you explain it is almost as good, and can actually be better if the expressions are very complex. Highlight the changes in each step.
• Complex diagrams should be prepared beforehand. The presentation should be prepared in such a way that important parts can be highlighted.
• Simple diagrams should be drawn as they are presented.
• If you find that your presentations consist mainly of titles and bullet points, delete them and start over. The information in such slides is best handed out as notes. Save your presentations for visual material such as diagrams and worked examples.

I find that this method makes the students do enough of the work to keep them focused. Sufficient preparation leaves no time during which you are writing and they are sitting there, bored. Handing out long notes makes sure the slow writers aren't left behind.

The problem with powerpoint...

The problem with powerpoint slides is that someone recently figured out we're not made to read text off a slide and hear someone talk at the same time. We only have enough brain power for one, not for both. If you even try to -- and people instinctively will -- you'll go fuzzy brained and remember neither. So in effect showing powerpoint slides badly, can be in fact worse than not writing anything anywhere.

Now they figured that out for management presentations, and why you come empty-headed from of a presentation you were actually interested in. But I can't come up with any argument as to why it would work better in schools. In fact, it might be outright scary. Using powerpoint instead of a blackboard may well be _the_ most destructive thing one can do.

There are ways to use powerpoint well, like you'd use an overhead projector. E.g., to show charts, relevant illustrations, etc. E.g., in a biology class you could show a picture of a cell's structure as a slide instead of as an overhead projector foil. And leave people time to digest it, instead of forcing them to also take notes at the same time.

But a substitute for a blackboard it ain't. On a blackboard:

A) you're led to follow the current focus of attention, whatever word is currently being written. You don't just get a big word soup to get lost in and out of sync, you get to follow the cursor (hand with chalk) so to speak, at the same time you're hearing it. It works to reinforce what you hear, not to try to split your attention between two different texts.

B) the teacher is only human too, and he too would have trouble if he tried speaking one thing while writing something completely different. So there's a self-reinforcing mechanism to hold prevent it from becoming an attention-splitting device. As a subcase, if he takes some time to explain why he did something to a formula, he won't already start writing the next one.

C) it enforces _some_ structure, because a blackboard is all the space you can get at a time. Which also cuts back on distractions like flipping back and forth between charts. Which is a distraction. Everytime you go "hmm, this one we don't need.. next... nope, this one we'll learn next week... let's see the next one... nah, we don't need that... next... aha, here we are..." that's not just wasted time. That's a bunch of people who've either tried to read it fast and the next minutes will be busy figuring that out instead of what you say next, or (probably most) whose attention and focus went right out the window while you did that little powerpoint dance.

D) well, I hate to be mean to teachers (God knows they have a shitty job already), but it forces them to prepare that material instead of just borrowing someone's slides. And if they didn't know it too well, they'll at least recap it while they write it on the blackboard.

If you will, what I'm saying at points C an D is that I see it as the same as in IT: the better tools and languages we had, the more unqualified monkeys got hired to use them. I'm all for better tools and compilers, don't get me wrong. But in a lot of places the trend wasn't to do more with them, but to lower the baseline for the people hired to use them. And they'll feel the less of a need to learn what they're doing there. After all, the tool will do the thinking for them, right?

The same might just happen in schools. I can see some people (e.g., substitute teachers) going into a class with someone else's powerpoint presentation, but barely knowing what it's about.

Except in IT you have at least some reality check whether it worked or not. If it doesn't compile or doesn't run the test cases, you know you've screwed up. In teaching we might not even know it before we pump out a few generations of complete airheads, for no fault of their own. And for a change I don't mean just the dumb jocks and prom queens, because the powerpoint fuzzy-brain effect applies to nerds interested in that topic too.

Re:

It was referenced here on slashdot http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/04/131924 7 [slashdot.org]

Re:powerpoint

PowerPoint is very useful if the person using that tool uses it correctly. Unfortunately, most people use it incorrectly and write down every single thing that they're planning on saying on a slide. If you're going to do that, students will catch on and just think that they can get by with printing off the notes and skipping class because listening to the teacher will not help them understand the material any better. The catch is, they won't understand it at all. Active learning helps people learn and remember facts and concepts way better than passive reading or listening. That's why the best way to use PowerPoint is as a guide or outline to what you're going to talk about. It forces people to use more than one sense to take everything in, and if they want notes on everything important from the lecture, they have to write it down themselves and actually comprehend it in the first place.

Re:powerpoint

Before even thinking about making a powerpoint presentation, (re)read Edward Tufte's wonderful essay Powerpoint is Evil [wired.com].

Re:powerpoint

Well powerpoint is the only thing usefull, my teachers ever used.

Invest in some old fashioned hardware. Hands-on physics teaches a lot of concepts to those who don't quite grasp concepts published in a book. Examples are a bicycle to teach force/displacement/speed relationships. The classic is standing a bike up and asking if the pedal low to the floor is pushed to the rear of the bike, will the cranking force move the bike foreward or will the gearing cause the bike to move backwards in the direction of the force and why?

Students that grasp these concepts early on are the ones to understand the conservation of energy and entropy. They will understand why you can't use a high speed motor of say 1 HP to drive a 1 KW generator fast enough to power the motor and have a few hundred watts of power left over. An electrical load on the generator provides a mechanical load to the motor. This is not over unity creating a perpertual motion machine.

Props such as a hand cranked generator or bicycle driven generator that can be loaded make a serious impression to early students. Cranking 60 watts is work. 300 Watts sustained is very serious work. This leads to an understang of torque/speed/horsepower relationships. Torque or speed is not power. Feeling power generation is better than most any PowerPoint presentation.

After the mechanical presentations, then go into lecture and detail such as going over an electric bill and figuring the typical days power use and how much work is delivered for a dollar.

Power economy and the hand cranked PC scale now come into view. Hand cranking your typical home PC or laptop and Monitor are now seen as beyond pratical. Energy conservation to fit the hand cranked energy budget now become a prime design consideration for future engineers instead of how to hand crank existing tech.

Hand cranking a 2 watt laptop is possible as well as a 60 watt laptop, but the 60 watt laptop isn't pratical as all the time will be spent cranking quite hard.

You were cheated in your physics class if they didn't do the blowgun/falling ball demo or used air hocky tables to show center of mass of spinning objects and conservation of momentium, elastic and inelastic collisions. In the 1970's we shot a lot of film of this on an air hocky table and took measurements from the photographs to calculate displacement of the objects photographed under a strobe light. The hands on stuff was the best.