Clayton Paul Willms

A few years ago, middle school students here who were starting a unit in science might have reached first for their textbooks. Today, they gather around computer screens in groups of four and five. Instead of looking at illustrations on a printed page, they watch video clips of scientific phenomena in motion. And rather than toting home a heavy book to study, they carry worksheets on their class activities. (Zehr, page 1)

The use of increasingly inexpensive hardware such as computers and projectors to connect a classroom to the information superhighway will most likely continue to increase. This is likely be the case due to the following factors: a) as stated earlier, the continuing decrease in the cost of implementing technology, b) an increased awareness by teachers and administrators of how technology is becoming more and more integrated into our lives, c) an understanding that using the internet and world wide web is increasingly becoming the only economic way for schools to stay current in what they teach.

The delivery of a lesson for student's today must be given in a relevant manner. Student interest and enthusiasm for the content of lessons and projects is an important part of the equation for increasing student achievement. When a student’s interest is peaked, he or she is more willing to follow through with, remember, and apply the knowledge to their life.

The first thing I noticed about this graph when it came out was the relatively high number of students who thought that the projector was of no help in understanding the concept of a lesson. I was quite dissapointed when I saw it because I wanted it to be more of a success than what the graph showed. Of course, the questionaire itself did not undergo the scrutiny of peer review and the population sample is such that the actual statistics would not 'hold up' for the purposes of projecting the results on a broad number of students. Regardless, I have to ask myself, why? I ultimately do not know but can speculate a few reasons why this might be.

The other thing that surprised me is the disparity between girls and boys, especially in regards to 'helping somewhat' and 'helps a lot.' This has helped to change my thoughts on how boys and girls think differently. It has changed what was probably an incorrect assumption that boys are more visually stimulated than girls. If you asked me to predict, I would have said that the two colours should have been flipped. I even went back and recounted all the data.

As in the first term, I have a graph that is really not much help as it told me what I assumed before. Although, looking at the analysis above, this is probably a good thing to have once in awhile. I know that I use the projector often. The students, for the most part, know this as well and recognize it being used.

I hate that there is a small blue wedge here. It wasn't hard to reconcile that this is statistically insignificant. One student on an anonymous survey clicking on desperately worse could happen as a result of any number of reasons. Again, it could be Ockham's Razor and simply be that the result is the way the student feels about the implementation of the projector. It could be an accidental click. It could also be that the introduction of the projector or completion of the survey came at the same time as a project or assignment that was disliked.

Part of the way through the term, I received an email from Gary Toews about an interesting site called tinychat.com. The idea behind the site is to create an instant chat room to meet in cyberspace. There are no moderators or passwords. People don't need a user ID. Just go to the link, change your nickname from guest to something else and chat. The 'places' to meet are endless because the site just creates a chat room at the URL that you specify.

I adjusted some of my field study plans to incorporate this method of feedback as it seemed to be more efficient. I placed a link on our classroom website for the students to meet at so I could ask them some questions regarding the use of the projector in the classroom. I kept the option open to students on a volunteer basis, hoping that the prospect of chatting with their teacher would bring out enough volunteers. The two times to join online were 4:30 and 6:30 on the same evening. The first session was quite full with between 10 and 14 students online at once. The second session was much smaller with only 4 - 8 students on at any given time. Each had it's own positives.

I did a few test runs to record the data. Tinychat.com allows for you to save the chat session in a text file format so I typed a number of test sentences, saved the file, and opened it to see what the result was. It was a neatly formatted file with the nickname and content that the person typed into the chat (me). I thought, "Great!" This will be easy.

When I opened the text file from the first saved session, it was completely blank. I still don't know what happened. I jotted down a few thoughts about the feedback from the session though so it wasn't a total loss. The first session itself had some other severe problems. The main problem is that there is a big difference between classroom management in the physical world and classroom management in the virtual world. The raw data link above gives a hint about what was endured during the chat sessions. I had thought ahead about how to manage the students in the chat room but it's amazing how the physical presence and facial expressions a teacher can make affect the management of a class. Without those tools, it's virtually (no pun intended) impossible to maintain control.

That being said, there were a number of excellent comments made by students that gave me some insight into how they see the projector as having made a difference. Some of the themes that came through in analysing the graphs above and the data from the chat room experiment are below.

After the initial wow factor of having a new piece of hardware in the classroom, students became quickly unaware of it's use. This came out as a theme when looking through the data for our chat room discussion. It was difficult for the students to answer about how the classroom changed as a result of the projector being integrated into our daily routine.

"Let's discuss a hypothetical situation. It's the first dayof the school year, and you are preparing for the arrival of your newsixth-grade music class. You have never met these children before, but you havegood reason to believe that at least some of them may be a tad rambunctious.How would you go about introducing yourself and your subject matter to theclass?

Chris Brewer, a formerelementary school music teacher who is now head of LifeSounds, a consultingfirm that offers training and resources for the use of music in classrooms andelsewhere, says it's a good idea to put students in the thick of the actionimmediately, before they have had a chance for second thoughts. "I'd havea piece of music playing as they come in." she says, "something thatrelates to whatever the topic is that day and that sets their energy level and,most important, gets their attention. Once you've got their attention, you canlead them into asking questions about what they're hearing."" (Randall, page 1)

"We can watch Youtube videos." This was highly appreciated by many students. It is really easy to find a video on Youtube that works as a anticipatory set for lessons. They immediately perk up and pay attention and really do catch on to what the lesson is going to be about.

"It is easier to see...things are not just black and white." This type of comment was made multiple times and shows the student's interest in seeing examples of things we are discussing as color photographs or video, in addition to the worksheet or textbook we are working with. It was very quick and easy to find photographs or videos that explained what the lesson involved. The amount of examples that we could go through in just a few minutes would never be able to be matched by a text.

"The textbook will fade, and maybe blissfully,"says Peter W. Cookson Jr., the director of the Center for Education Outreachand Innovation at Teachers College, Columbia University. "The idea thatbooks are passé and everything is going to be multimedia — it's penetrating theeducation publishing field tremendously, and it's going to transform it." But whether schools should embrace such a transformation is another question. Most experts — including many who strongly advocate technology in schools — say districts should think carefully before dropping their textbooks, if they decide to do so at all. (Zehr, page 2)

This is one of the major themes or things that I have come to understand further throughout the entire program. It is still a topic, though, that warrants discussion and revision. It is easy to fall into the trap of technology itself becoming the reason to use technology. Having a digital projector in the classroom does not make me a more effective teacher. If not used correctly, it only adds monetary value to the classroom. When used in conjunction with the many other teaching tools available to me, it becomes an excellent addition to my classroom. It is an another piece to the puzzle of differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all my students.

My laptop and I are inseperable. It has become my greatest tool in both my teaching career and my own personal learning journey. Because so much of my professional and personal life are recorded and investigated through the computer, the projector has become a natural fit in my classroom. Part of the reason that students became so used to having the projector as a part of daily school life is because I found it so easy to integrate. Never did I have to remind myself to be sure and use the projector for my field study. It immediately became the logical next step in using technology to enhance the learning in my classroom.

It has common, easy to use features that you use everyday. Actions like showing the students examples of the things that we are discussing in class, finding a YouTube video that introduces a lesson, and finding a website (mid-lesson) that helps give the lesson credence and make it current.

It has tools that save a teacher time. There is no more need for me to run off and search for a television and DVD player to show a video to the students. The projector & computer combonation allow me to show many videos quicker and easier than before. This does not solve the VCR problem that continues to plague our society. Transitioning from one widely used format (VCR for nearly 20 years) to another leaves a wasteland of discarded products in it's wake. There is a large collection of excellent instructional film that is still kept in VCR format and so the use of a 'rewind' button will not end soon.

It also saves time in a daily routine sense. I have moved my homework board completely online. This saves a good chunk of whiteboard real estate and makes my planner time more efficient. No longer do I have to erase yesterday's homework, write the new homework up on the board, and rewrite it on the website blog for parents. Now I simply turn on the projector and type out the homework immediately into the homework blog while the students copy it down in their planners for signing. This sounds like a small thing but it really does save a large amount of time over the course of one week (5 minutes x 5 days = nearly a half hour of extra prep), not to mention it helps me to avoid forgetting to actually fill in the homework blog each day because I do it now as a part of our planner routine.

It's quick and easy to loan out to a friend in need. A number of times throughout the last term, I encountered teachers who were in a technological bind that was solved by loaning out my projector. Often, it was simply that both of the school's TV's were booked already and they really wanted to show a video for their lesson. The projetor's of today (at least, the Epson W70) is very easy to move around and setup. Even if you have less than five minutes, it is not a problem to get the projector up and running for a lesson. Find some white wall or whiteboard space, plug the power cord to the wall, the video cord to the classroom computer, turn on the Epson and it will do the rest. It even automatically adjusts the keystone to the surface you are shining the content onto. I know this is a common feature on today's projectors but it really is helpful for a non-technical staff.

It lessens the need for a huge toolbox. If the projector is a swiss army knife, the computer lab could be considered this toolbox. I found that my computer lab bookings dropped significantly over the term and when I thought about why, it turns out that I often came in there simply to use the projector for greater depth in a lesson.

Sometimes the projector just takes up space. Ok, this doesn't really fit with the swiss-army knife metaphor (unless it's on of the gargantuan ones with tools like fry pans and coffee makers built into it. The reality is that my desk, in times of high stress or anxiety, becomes a haven for random bits of paper including school daily announcements, student journals, my day plans, and other assorted pulp products. The digital projector sometimes just gets buried in the mess of everyday school life. It went through bouts of disuse, like many tools do, only to rebound with a vengence and be rarely turned off.

One of the unexpected problems I encountered was where to shine the picture. I would expect that many classrooms would not have such a problem and, indeed, I did not expect to have this problem with my own. I made a diagram of the problem so I could think spatially (see picture below). A few of the configuations I tried over the past few months are:

a) Having my teacher desk at the front of the room near the exit with student desks in groups throughout the rest of the classroom. The projector sits on my desk and shines onto the corner of the whiteboard behind me. This configuration worked well when it came to being near the classroom phone (which is beside the front door), being close to the the teacher cupboard, and having a brilliant white surface to shine the picture onto. What was also nice was I could use a whiteboard marker to make notes over top of the images that were shown. It didn't work as well in regards to the following. The classroom is quite long and narrow with the whiteboard at the narrow end. This, in combination with the whiteboard not being a large surface, created a relatively small area for the projector image. below. The last one is how it is settled now. I think that it is a setup that works well and addresses the many needs of classroom space. (Side Note: I wonder if my students know the reason behind the classroom being switched up so often...do they think I'm just raving mad?)

b) Having my teacher desk at the back of the room with the projector still on it and shining against the area marked 'Free Wall Space.' This configuration also has student desks brought into rows pointing at the board. This is a much more comfortable setting for myself and I believe for my students because I am not the focus of the room. My desk and the projector are closer to the back. The teacher desk is also perpendicular to the class to give a more open feel when a student is approaching. It also gives me back my whiteboard real estate, which I greatly missed in configuration (a). The negative is that students have to turn in their desks so that they can see what is being projected. This is fairly minor, though, especially when I take into consideration that a greater number of students are closer to the image itself and that the image is much larger than the previous configuration.

This issue of classroom space that was brought up is an important one that, again, should be revisited from time to time in our reflective practice. What is the most efficient use of classroom space? How can I balance the practical issues of student and teacher movement, student work displays, and safety with the ideological and pedagogical concerns like defocusing the teacher desk and creating a student focussed seating plan. As it is with many important issues, there is no one correct way.

This field study changed much more over the course of the term than my previous. I found this hard because I was continually getting down on myself for doing things incorrectly or not following the plan I made. It took a long time for me to remember that the field study process is about the journey itself more than the end result and that the journey will often result in making changes to how I thought things were going to go. In hindsight, I don't know why this bothered me so much. How often do plans we have in our own teaching schedules go arwy? We deal with problems and solutions each and every day. The following points are my conclusions about why it was hard for me to get over my action planning changing so much.

a) I didn't put the same time and effort into creating my field study plan for this past term. It's no wonder things changed over the course of the field study when it hasn't been thought through to the same level as before. A good chunk of the summer term was spent on building the action plan for the fall term. What's more is that it is completed with colleagues and mentors in the immediate vicinity. It is amazing how valuable that time is in hindsight.

b) The field study was vastly different in nature from the first. This study required a greater amount of personal reflection and analysis of my own teaching habits and classroom routines. The last field study was a more practical look at the effects of a specific skill when taught to children. I went into this study expecting much of the same routine of observation and feedback. To get meaningful results was quite different.

5) How do my lessons change between the two different groups of students I teach? How can I be sure that each group is getting the same experience? Should that even be a concern? Is it important that each group have the same experience? What methods do I use to make sure that each class is taught in the method that best benefits the group?

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Ausburn, F., & Ausburn, L. (2008, October 1). Send Students Anywhere without Leaving the Classroom: Virtual Reality in CTE. Techniques: Connecting Education and Careers, 83(7), 43-46. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. EJ815425) Retrieved March 29, 2009, from ERIC database

Danzi, J., Reul, K., & Smith, R. (2008, April 1). Improving Student Motivation in Mixed Ability Classrooms Using Differentiated Instruction. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED500838) Retrieved March 29, 2009, from ERIC database.

Randall, M. (2007, December 1). The Exuberance of Youth: How Teachers Can Tap into Their Students' Natural Energy and Make It a Positive Force for Learning. Teaching Music, 15(3), 30. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. EJ781797) Retrieved March 29, 2009, from ERIC database.