Monday, November 15, 2004

Pros and Cons of PowerPoint

Microsoft's PowerPoint slideware has recently come under criticismfrom educators, a segment on National Public Radio, and a piece in Wired magazine. PowerPoint's detractors suggest that slideware teaches children to think in "bullet points" rather than in depth and to value flashy effects over information.

Most students and educators can explain what can make many PowerPoint presentations bad- the speaker simply reading off of the slides, visuals such as graphs that don't actually convey information, and having to sit in a dark room while staring at repetitive slides.

I feel that PowerPoint can actually be one of the most helpful types of software used in the classroom. I wasn't introduced to the experience of a PowerPoint presentation until my science classes at Governor's School. I usually found that these presentations helped me to keep up with lectures my teachers were giving since I am a visual learner and my mind tends to wander while listening to a speaker with no visual cues. In college I have seen a clear difference in my own performance in lecture-based classes and classes that combined lectures and PowerPoint. I generally understand a lot more in classes with PowerPoint presentations because they help me know what information I need to put in my notes. PowerPoint could be a good way to guide elementary school students as they learn to take notes for themselves.

In high school we also had to give a PowerPoint presentation to teachers and students as part of our annual research project. I value this experience because it taught me about presenting information in a way that targets multiple cognitive styles and about how to determine which information was most important for my audience to take away from my research- a skill that will be valuable when I am a teacher. I also came to appreciate one of PowerPoint's features- the ability to print out slides onto overhead transparencies- when I was preparing my presentation for the Virginia Junior Academy of Sciences and they informed us that unlike other institutions that had hosted VJAS in the past, UVa was NOT supplying computers or projectors. Using PowerPoint, I was able to make transparencies that would hold the audience's attention.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Using Primary Sources in the Classroom: The Valley of the Shadow Project

In my analysis of the Valley of the Shadow project, I focused on the Virginia Studies program. I think it would be great for teachers to incorporate resources from this project into a Virginia Studies curriculum. The first SOL for Virginia Studies states that “The student will develop skills for historical and geographical analysis including the ability to a.) identify and interpret artifacts and primary and secondary source documents to understand events in history; b.) determine cause and effect relationships… g.) interpret ideas and events from different historical perspectives… [and] i.) analyze and interpret maps to explain relationships among landforms, water features, climatic characteristics, and historical events. This seems to be a group of standards that are referenced for the entire Virginia Studies course, and The Valley of the Shadow project is an ideal resource for ensuring that instruction about the Civil War upholds those standards. As a digital archive of primary sources from Virginia and Pennsylvania during the Civil War era, the Valley of the Shadow project allows students to understand the perspectives of actual people living before and during the war through letters, diaries, government records, newspapers, maps, images, timelines, church records, and speeches.

The project’s website is divided into three sections: the Eve of War, the War Years, and the Aftermath. The section on “the Eve of War” fits VS.7 by allowing students to examine primary sources for evidence of the differences between Pennsylvania, a northern state, and Virginia, a southern state to better understand the issues that led to the Civil War. The archive includes Census and Tax Records, which students could use to search for information on Virginia slave owners as well as free blacks in Augusta County, Virginia. The section on “the War Years” gives students a wealth of information regarding Virginia’s role in the war. Students can understand what life was like for soldiers and their families using the resources on the website, and read letters like the one from Jesse Rolston, Jr., to Mary Rolston from May 9, 1863, which details Mr. Rolston’s involvement in the Battle of Fredericksburg.

VS.8 states that “The student will demonstrate knowledge of the reconstruction of Virginia following the Civil War by a.) identifying the effects of Reconstruction on life in Virginia, b.) identifying the effects of segregation and “Jim Crow” on life in Virgiia; [and] c.) describing the importance of railroads, new industries , and the growth of cities to Virginia’s economic development.” Students can access letters, diaries, Freedmen’s Bureau records from Augusta County, maps displaying how people voted in postwar elections, photographs from the Confederate burning of Chambersburg, and other resources to learn about Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. This project could be very valuable to teachers because they can be sure that all of the primary sources on the website are real.

Friday, September 10, 2004

my experiences with technology

Until high school, I had no experiences with technology outside of the classroom. Then my family got a computer and dial-up Internet service from AOL. I became interested in making websites and blogs (these days I post on and read posts at a livejournal group for Elementary Education majors) and have made increasingly more advanced pages- first using free services with templates and then working from the templates to learn more about HTML programming language. More recently I have become experienced with the program Ulead PhotoImpact, which is similar to Adobe Photoshop and allows one to manipulate digital photographs and other images. I am still the only one in my family who uses the computer and Internet. In college I use a Macintosh iBook, so I’ve had to learn to use a slightly different OS. I most commonly use computers for e-mail and writing papers, but it is probably telling of the fact that I’m a college student that my favorite programs on my iBook are iTunes and AIM!

I learned to work with computers in elementary and middle school, at first mostly by playing games and using Paint, and by high school was experienced enough to teach others basic computing skills. In high school I attended the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School for Science and Technology, a half-day program which accepts students from area public high schools. In the morning, I took computer, science, and math classes at the Governor’s School, where I used much more technology than I would have gotten to use at Staunton River. All first-year Governor’s School students are required to take Computer Applications and Technologies. In this class my basic skills were refined when it came to using search engines, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and HTML and I was introduced to the creation of JAVA applets and the concept of a Local Area Network. Technology was integrated into everything we did in our science and math classes, from using computers in an interface with calculators and chemistry instruments such as titrators to using mass spectroscopers and chromotographers. For some classes, we had to use the Internet to get our homework questions or handouts for classes, similar to UVa's Toolkit. The Governor’s School is also equipped with SmartBoard technology.

Here's a link to a picture of me with one of my favorite teachers, Gwen Sibert, at an RVGS Project Forum. She was very influential in my decision to be an educator and a big advocate of technology in schools, as you can tell by her awesome virtual classroom. This next link doesn't really involve technology, but look, it's me measuring a plant!

At my home high school, Staunton River, there is a computer lab and 16 PC's and 30 laptops for students to use (with teacher permission as part of a class activity), but the only class in which computer technology was used daily was my journalism class, which used Adobe PageMaker. I also used PageMaker as a co-editor of the school lit mag.

In many cases in today’s schools the students are just as technologically-savvy, or more so, than their instructors. If technology is made more of an everyday part of school, students will be more excited about learning- at Governor’s School such opportunities could make a laboratory experiment seem much less boring. Students who tune out of lectures with overhead transparencies pay attention to video clips and hands-on use of technology. One of my biggest concerns is the problem of “Old-Fashioned” teachers who are so concerned about plagirism that they don’t allow students to use the Internet for research. This gives technology a stigma, associating the Internet with mistrust.

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

new blog

Hi, I'm Heather. I created this blog as part of EDLF 345 at the University of Virginia. The class blog is here.