Throw open your File Cabinet
February 23, 2010 cool gadgets, science, teaching strategies 1 CommentPodcast: Episode 42 (26:28 minutes)
Technology Focus: interactive slate, classroom website, Jing, iSpring Free, PowerPoint, flash, virtual science experiments
Curriculum Focus: chemistry
Join Andy Allen, seasoned science teacher at El Diamante High School in a discussion on how technology has become a catalyst for learning chemistry. In his 24 years of teaching, Andy has stayed on the forefront of classroom technology to promote teaching and learning. Early in his career, Andy grasped the idea that technology made a huge difference in classroom teaching. He began in the dark days of HTML coding by building his own website (http://sciencegeek.net). It was a powerful tool for his students to access information on assignments, virtual experiments, current events related to the content, and practice benchmark tests. Andy’s website gets over 2,000,000 hits a month. The real 
“aha” moment came when Andy started receiving online comments from teachers and students across the globe. They were thrilled to piggy-back on his ideas and he was thrilled to contribute back to the profession. “I always appreciate that teachers threw their file cabinet open and said, ‘my resources are your resources.’” Rather than a zero sum game in a high-stakes testing world, Andy believes that as teachers we should be open to contributing ideas to our profession … to avoid the “we win – you lose” way of thinking.
Andy’s website has helped him clarify a complex subject matter with well chosen graphics, animations, and web applications that open a virtual chemistry set to his students. He uses a free PowerPoint plug-in from iSpring Solutions that converts PowerPoint files to web-friendly flash (.swf) files. The application is called iSpring Free. Once installed, it adds a new menu item in PowerPoint that handles the conversion and web publication.
Two new tools Andy added to his “teacher tool-belt” were Jing and a Qomo Tablet (interactive wireless slate). Jing, a free online application that provides screen capture, allows Andy to annotate complex chemistry problems on the computer and save them as a flash video, which he then uploads on his website. This resource has helped many students who find the lecture good but need a refresher or for students who miss the lecture. One student missed an entire week of Stoichiometry problems (Greek for story problems from hell) and after viewing the Jing-videos for a few hours, he was able to catch up and stick his test.
The Qomo tablet has been single biggest change to his teaching. The tablet allows Andy to dissect student work for the whole class to see to paint a clearer picture of the learning target. Andy states, “Part of the problem with the ‘sage on the stage’ is that the front of the classroom is really perceived as a stage.” In that position, you can’t monitor what the students are doing and the students who struggle the most tend to gravitate toward the back of the classroom. This tool now provides Andy with critical proximity to monitor the students’ progress.
Another side benefit of the tablet is that students themselves who would normally be reluctant to come to the front of the class to demonstrate a solution are now eager to grab the board and “teach” the entire class from the safety of their own seat. Using Bluetooth technology, you can tether multiple tablets to bring multiple voices forward in the discussion.
Andy expands his “give one – take one” idea with a story of a successful scientist who as a high school student got excited about chemistry. Now he’s “giving back” to his roots with a generous donation of an Atomic Absorption Spectrometer … modern equipment found in a CSI lab.
From his own experience and his deep understanding of how students learn, Andy shares how technology tools are essential in any classroom.
