Symbolism

Evelyn Christoph's French class returned today for more experimentation with projection and the TabletPC. As part of the class on poetry, she brought up a picture of a painting to discuss its symbology. Immediately, the students responded by asking "can we just draw on it?" and they got up to the whiteboard and identified with markers the symbols it contained. Then they went back to the poem and used the same technique to locate its symbols. Evelyn described this great teaching moment as a fortunate accident of using the projector to bring richer meaning to the classroom discussion and to provide for greater involvement from the students.

Students Too

Today a student came to see me to ask if she could use the big screen to show a PowerPoint she had created for her English class. After a bit of technical difficulty we finally got it to play. Creative interpretation of literature, creative use of PowerPoint, and a little creative tech support.

This Week in Phillips Hall

• French classes watching French TV news over the Internet on the big screen.
• English classes viewing Shakespeare videos.
• AP Exam preparation and practice.
• Peer-editing of grammar and vocabulary on the projector.
• Japanese class recording audio and comparing it to native speaker audio.
• Spanish class Internet research on vocabulary and current events.

The Beats

The Beats class watches Kerouac et al. on the new plasma screen.

Japanese and Chinese AP Exams

Teachers and students prepare for the first-ever Internet-based AP exams in Chinese and Japanese.

Tablet PC Pilot Group

The TabletPC pilot group meets in the experimental classroom for their weekly meeting. The Academy is testing out a few mobile computing devices to see how well they integrate with the Harkness classroom. Here are some of the pilot participants, all on wireless connection, taking notes on their Tablets.

Instructional Technology Moments

Evelyn Christoph, technology committee representative for the Modern Languages department, has been testing out the "experimental" classroom this week with her French classes. The experiment involves trying out some new equipment now, since Phillips Hall is slated for a major renovation in Summer of 2009. It doesn't seem so, but that date is just around the corner and we need to get teacher/student input now to help inform choices of design and technology for the renovation.

This term, teachers will have access to plasma displays, projectors, TabletPCs, document cameras, and various room control systems.

Evelyn had what I described as an "Instructional Technology Moment" when she projected a drawing of a figure on the whiteboard and invited her students to come to the board and label the figure. The class came alive!

Open for Business!

We have recovered from the floods of last summer in the basement of Phillips Hall and have just opened a new lab and experimental classroom space. It is a very popular location for students, teachers, and classes. Here instructor Becky Moore holds a writing workshop with her English students.