Teacher Interview
When people are prompted with the term chemistry they think science, when people are prompted with the term science they think technology. With that piece of insight it would be easy to conclude that chemistry and technology go hand in hand. Well, that is what I believe, as a teacher only having one year of experience, and come to find out so does a colleague of mine, who has fifteen years of experience.
Discussing classroom technology with my colleague ended up giving me more insight about the available technology for classroom use than I know what to do with. The multitude of options range from older technology of over-head projectors, alcohol-based thermometers and televisions to newer technology such as computer/video projectors, laptops, avers, clickers, and digital probes. It is evident that the amount of technology is not an issue in chemistry, but which technology to use is the problem. All the different options seem to hold a viable purpose. Both the over-head projectors and avers work fabulously when working numerical problems with a class, but unlike the over-head projectors, aver are wonderful for displaying real-time demonstrations so that all students can see from there vantage points. The availability of laptops for entire classrooms is wonderful for students that need to do research projects, class presentations (which work well with computer/video projectors), and any type of digital experiment.
Continuing with digital experiments, the use of digital probes is a wonderful advancement for chemistry. The time spent diligently recording and plotting data is now completed automatically, which allows for increased efficiency and reliability. The pieces of technology I described were common features in both my colleague’s and my own lesson plans. The uses of clickers however, were non-existent in my lesson plans and were frequent in my colleague’s plans. After discussing how students enjoyed the use of clickers for material review, quizzes, and test enticed me to use them next semester. My colleague stated that students focused more and became more involved when the clickers were present. Evidently having some form of technology holds students’ interests compared to only using textbooks. This is very obvious with the immense amount of technology students have access to in there everyday lives. Luckily for my colleague and for me our school district strongly supports the implementation of technology in the classroom.
Post a comment