Technolgy in the Classroom Does Help Chlidren Learn Better

The Preliminary report of the research study by Marzano that I referred to in my last post is now available.

The following excerpt was taken from the Executive Summary:

“The average effect size for all 85 independent treatment/control studies was statistically significant (p < .0001). When corrected for attenuation, the percentile gain associated with the use of Promethean ActivClassroom is 17 percent ( ). A reasonable inference is that the overall effect of a 17 percentile point gain is probably not a function of random factors that are specific to the independent treatment/control studies; rather, the 17 percentile point increase represents a real change in student learning.” An average “real change in student learning” of a 17 percentile point gain caused by the Promethean Activclassroom is remarkable and vastly exceeded my expectations. Additionally, the conclusion states, “The meta-analytic findings suggest relatively large percentile gains in student achievement under the following conditions: · a teacher has 10 years or more of teaching experience · a teacher has used the technology for two years or more · a teacher uses the technology between 75 and 80 percent of the time in his or her classroom · a teacher has high confidence in his or her ability to use the technology” The “relatively large percentile gains in student achievement under the following conditions” caused by the Promethean Activclassroom is a “29 percentile gain.”


To get the details from this report and other helpful information from Promethean, go to www.prometheanresearch.com .

Super Science Sites

Children learn best through play. The following interactive science sites make learning fun. Reinforcing skills with games keeps my students asking for more. Most of these sites work well on interactive whiteboards like the Activboard.

FossWeb has a variety of engaging activities for grades k-8. The simulations help students apply skills that they may have learned. They can also be fabulous tools to introduce a topic and get students excited about a new concept. The Rube Goldberg simple machines simulation is my favorite.

Edheads has simulations on the topics of human body, simple machines, weather and more. These interactive actives require students to follow a story and complete an activity. The weather activity had student learn about weather prediction and then predict the weather as if they are doing a weather report on the news.

Bitesize offers short activities on living things, materials, physical processes. I love the fact that you can inbed the activities on a website or blog. I will defiantly be adding a few to my class’s Moodle.

Scholastic’s Magic School Bus has much more that simulations. There are games and a large number of resources for students, teachers, and parents. This site is a wonderful compliment to the informative book series.

Argosy’s Visible Body is the most intriguing site I am sharing. It is billed as “the most comprehensive human anatomy visualizing tool available today.” Students will be amazed with the 3D images of the body. You can look at any part of the body from any angle. Activboard using health teachers will be in anatomy heaven.

It is time to put on your lab coat and enjoy!

ActivInspire is Inspiring:I love my Activboard

One of the biggest influences for change in my teaching is the interactive white board. We have 2 different brands in our building. I was one of the fortunate ones to be trained in how to use both. I liked the Promethean Activboard. I have been using Activstudio and Activprimary all school year. I favor the Activstudio and even my second grade students can with move easily through the tools and activities.

Recently Promethean has released a beta version of their next upgrade; ActivInspire. I love that Promethean works to continuously update their products. I read the prometheanplanet forum regularly and have seen many of the requested changes addressed in the Inspire software.

I thought I might walk you through some of the changes and encourage you to try the program yourself.

ActivStudio V3

ActivInspire

The first change that I see and like is the size of the images in the library. It is much easier to see exactly what the image is and you can now read the labels.

The next change was having many browsers to help you quickly build a flippage. The library is not just a library anymore. You can use the browser to help you do a variety of tasks that would take many clicks through menus, but now only takes one or two clicks.

The browser helps with pages, layers, teacher
notes, properties, actions, and voters.

The two browsers that I have found most helpful have been the layer browser and the property browser. These to browsers alone have saved me hours of time and most likely a case of Carpal Tunnel.

The facts that all the pieces that you need to work with are right there for you to see. I no longer need to click through four or five steps to get an object the way I want it. The layering browser has helped me get objects in to the correct layer so that tools like the Magic Ink will work correctly. Before I was always guessing and

hoping that I had the object in the correct layer.

One more plus to the Inspire software is that you can control what tools are available on the objects. You could not do this with v3. It is great to be able to put your most used icons on the screen. My younger students feel very empowered when they do not need my help to change the look of an object.

I also like how the actions turn on and off. You can click an object with a hide action and it disappears. You click the object again and it reappears. I also like how you can now move an object with an action. This saves a lot of time when you are creating a flipchart.

I have found a few things that I do not like very much.

The first change that I noticed that I did not like was that the library no longer has icons showing the different types of images. My younger students relied on the icons to find the files that they wanted to use. The library in Inspire is just the files and word labels. This makes finding a picture much more difficult for young students. There is also no search for items in the library. Both the students and I like to use the search mode to find just the right picture to go with concept we are trying to share.

Another problem is the teaser Promethean has put in this version of software. The duel pen function is shown. The problem is that it will not work. To use the duel pen function you will need special pens and special filmware to get it to work. I am pretty sure that my district will not spend any more money for my classroom when so many other teachers are still using overhead projectors.

I use actions a lot in my flipcharts. I have had a hard time finding many of my favorite actions. Several of the actions’ names have changed a little. I was eventually able to find what I needed. I do like the alphabetical order of the actions. I have been frustrated with one particular action. When I want to use the action “another page” I have to guess what page I want. I would like to be able to see a picture of the pages just like we can see pictures of the object, groups, and text.

I have been going back and forth between both V3 and Inspire. I do not like that anything I save in Inspire will not work in V3. I worry that come March I will have flipcharts that will not work because the demo will run out and the new version will not be made available as a free upgrade. I hope this will not be the case. I would like to use Inspire full time. Of course, I would like some of the glitches worked out.

As you can tell from this very long post I have turned into an active geek in a very short period of time. My students are benefiting from my love of the new technology and are eager to do the activities that I have created or downloaded from Prometheanplanet. They are also starting to create their own flip charts.

You can get your chance to try out ActivInspire by going to http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.16615
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.