Week 10

Vendor demonstration reflection

Speaking with the vendors showing their products in the Education building on Nov. 14^Th, I had the chance to speak with representatives from SMART, Frontrow, 2learn.ca, Microsoft, and Polycom.

I have to say I was most impressed by the offerings of Polycom, and SMART, but 2learn.ca seemed to offer very helpful material, and Frontrow's hardware was impressive. I found Microsoft's offering to be lacking.

Amy Lynch from SMART gave a demonstration of the utility of SMART technology in the classroom, from manipulatable geometry lessons and visualization of math concepts like common factors, to class participation feedback, and the various products smart offers to schools. The interactivity of the SMART boards was very impressive, and I would love to have such a resource available in a classroom. The ability to have up to four people manipulating the objects on the board with both touch and pen is amazing for classroom engagement and maintaining interest in the lesson. In addition, SMART offers lessons custom-tailored to SMART boards for download from their site.

Theresa Paltzat from 2learn.ca showed an interesting compilation of resources that 2learn has available on their webpage. The page is expertly set up to allow teachers to search for and access lessons, images, and other content that may be helpful to what they are teaching. There are a wide variety of lessons available, which I would certainly look to for inspiration on creating lesson plans as a new teacher.

Leanne Duncan from Frontrow was demonstrating their Juno lesson capture device, which allows both for the lesson being presented to be recored with microphones, and placed online for the benefit of students who may have missed the class of want to review it later, the device comes with a microphone for the teacher and two others to be passed around to the class to respond to questions or make comments. The sound once captured is easily converted to audio file format to be put online. The device certainly does what it promises, but I have trouble seeing myself using it in practice. The ability to post up lessons in text form is already so simple and free that I'm not sure i could justify the expense of a Juno system for the benefit of an oral version of the same lesson.

Polycom's video conferencing technology, which they demonstrated for us via a live link to Karin Davidson-Taylor at Ontario's Royal Botanical Gardens was stunning. Far more than a Skype analogue, their technology delivered stunning resolution over the university's WiFi, and had many advanced features such as multiple cameras to track speakers as they moved, or to switch quickly between different speakers. Also Karin showed us how she could use Polycom's systems to provide a green-screen for herself, and feed computer monitor data to it. Also she could switch the feed to a zooming camera she used to show us some insects. The applications of this technology in the classroom are readily apparent, in that a teacher can bring in professionals in the field that the lesson is discussing via video conference. Outside of the class, this technology is already used for administrative conferences and enabling discussions and demonstration of material when distances are too great to travel or weather does not allow it. Polycom stated that their products are already in use in over 95% of Alberta school districts, and as such I would be delighted to make use of them given the opportunity.

Week 9

Activity 9.3 - Using a LMS (Course Sites)

Announcements is a great communication tool within Course Sites, as it allows the teacher to remind students when tasks are going to be due, and the period for which they appear to the students is easily set up, so that the teacher can input all the deadlines at the beginning of the semester, and they will appear and disappear for the students as the year progresses. For the students this tool serves as a helpful reminder when things are due, and would save them having to ask the teacher should they forget.

The Tests tool appears to be great for online evaluation of assignments, especially in answer-based courses like physics and math. The ability to have the students work at their own pace, and submit answers online which are then instantly graded is a great time-saver for teachers, and allows students to have immediate feedback on how they did, and what areas they may need to focus on more.

Course Sites has a very simple and easy to understand system of Folders in its course organization area, where teachers can place items such as copies of worksheets handed out in class, illustrative diagrams to help students understand material, and more. The benefit to the students is that they can always get fresh copies of course material, so they are not hung up if they lose a sheet, which is bound to happen. For the teacher this saves time photocopying more handouts.

I like Course Sites' ability to have teachers embed web links, as especially for science and math, in my experience, there are incredible amounts of resources online to help students with numerical assignments, methodology, and problem solving. This resource would greatly benefit students who struggle with the material or are simply stuck on a tough assignment.