Technological Failures
I have fallen way behind my intended pace of at least three posts a week. I blame technology.
My school district is one that has been in the news for years, because we issue laptops to all students in high school and middle school. Initially these were iBooks, but the district made a very popular switch to the Dell Inspiron 600M this year (at least for the high schools - the Apple contract with the middle schools ends this year, and it is still not known which platform the county will choose for the next four years of middle schoolers).
There was some negative press about ditching the iBooks after a 4 year initiative. Well, no, there was some negative press about the stampede that occurred when the district offered the old student iBooks at $50 each.
But the public showed little concern about any glitches with the platform shift. Teachers and students were largely enamored with the new Windows machines, too, making naysayers look like the Cult of Mac - you know the type.
So now we have these new machines, and the Dells are for the most part faster machines than the iBooks were, and they have MS Office instead of Apple Works, which makes it easier for most people to get anything done. But they didn't manage to put on every last little bit of software that would be needed by every last little teacher, including the software for the PASCO probeware my school purchased over the last few years. We have a full lab set of motion sensors and force sensors for mechanics labs, plus an assortment of probeware for temperature, absolute pressure, sound level, light intensity, magnetic field intensity, and probably some other things I can't remember off the top of my head.
In other words, after the school spent a few thousand dollars on making our physics labs easier to do and easier to understand, the district took away our ability to use the equipment. I know it was not intentional or malicious, and frankly everybody is very sympathetic and concerned, but that doesn't change the fact that right now my students in the Class of 2005 are doing labs that are no more technologically advanced than those I did when I took the class 15 years ago. What's the point in having a laptop in the science classroom if you can't use probeware? It is very frustrating for me, because the last two years of probeware were such an improvement over having students plot position vs time by hand, or use spring scales and stop watches, with their great capacity for inaccuracy and error.
In fact, I have been spending many extra hours retrofitting all of my lab documents to the technologies of 1950... leaving very little time to sit here and blog about the teaching techniques that would make life easier for science teachers everywhere. Suffice it to say that I am a member of the Cult of Probeware. As the year progresses, I will share more of my experiences about using probeware to teach, both at the high school level and university (we used LoggerPro and video capture there, and I was hoping to start incorporating those technologies this year, but no dice - maybe next year).
Incidentally, I have seen Vernier probeware demonstrated, and I can't really see any difference between Vernier and Pasco. If you start to incorporate either into your science classroom and you have the appropriate software available, you will find that students learn more, and faster.
My school district is one that has been in the news for years, because we issue laptops to all students in high school and middle school. Initially these were iBooks, but the district made a very popular switch to the Dell Inspiron 600M this year (at least for the high schools - the Apple contract with the middle schools ends this year, and it is still not known which platform the county will choose for the next four years of middle schoolers).
There was some negative press about ditching the iBooks after a 4 year initiative. Well, no, there was some negative press about the stampede that occurred when the district offered the old student iBooks at $50 each.
But the public showed little concern about any glitches with the platform shift. Teachers and students were largely enamored with the new Windows machines, too, making naysayers look like the Cult of Mac - you know the type.
So now we have these new machines, and the Dells are for the most part faster machines than the iBooks were, and they have MS Office instead of Apple Works, which makes it easier for most people to get anything done. But they didn't manage to put on every last little bit of software that would be needed by every last little teacher, including the software for the PASCO probeware my school purchased over the last few years. We have a full lab set of motion sensors and force sensors for mechanics labs, plus an assortment of probeware for temperature, absolute pressure, sound level, light intensity, magnetic field intensity, and probably some other things I can't remember off the top of my head.
In other words, after the school spent a few thousand dollars on making our physics labs easier to do and easier to understand, the district took away our ability to use the equipment. I know it was not intentional or malicious, and frankly everybody is very sympathetic and concerned, but that doesn't change the fact that right now my students in the Class of 2005 are doing labs that are no more technologically advanced than those I did when I took the class 15 years ago. What's the point in having a laptop in the science classroom if you can't use probeware? It is very frustrating for me, because the last two years of probeware were such an improvement over having students plot position vs time by hand, or use spring scales and stop watches, with their great capacity for inaccuracy and error.
In fact, I have been spending many extra hours retrofitting all of my lab documents to the technologies of 1950... leaving very little time to sit here and blog about the teaching techniques that would make life easier for science teachers everywhere. Suffice it to say that I am a member of the Cult of Probeware. As the year progresses, I will share more of my experiences about using probeware to teach, both at the high school level and university (we used LoggerPro and video capture there, and I was hoping to start incorporating those technologies this year, but no dice - maybe next year).
Incidentally, I have seen Vernier probeware demonstrated, and I can't really see any difference between Vernier and Pasco. If you start to incorporate either into your science classroom and you have the appropriate software available, you will find that students learn more, and faster.
posted by Wulf at
6:03 PM
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