Seeing clearly: multimedia stations allow teachers to engage an entire classroom on a subject, using the Internet, DVDs and PhotoShop through a projector. (Special section: presentation systems).Seeing a teacher who's comfortable using a multimedia projector and all the associated hardware and software is like watching a master chef whip up a spectacular meal--amazing to watch, but the real pleasure is in the synergistic results. Multimedia projectors connected to laptop or desktop computers, document cameras, VCRs and DVD players are becoming increasingly common in K-12 classrooms. Many districts are installing the technology in every classroom, rather than relying on portable units or special multimedia rooms. This is happening not coincidentally as the projectors--which are typically the priciest single component in a multimedia setup--are becoming smaller, brighter and cheaper. A medium-range projector that might have cost a district $4,000 two years ago is tagged at less than half that now, industry sources say. The following profiles give a thumbnail sketch thumbnail sketch n → esbozo thumbnail sketch n → croquis m thumbnail sketch thumb n → of how multimedia hardware and software are being used in three districts around the country. Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township In Indiana, the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township is a school district located in Indianapolis, Indiana, serving Wayne Township in western Marion County. It is known for its high school, Ben Davis, which was founded in 1892. Rex Haviland's Introduction to Mass Media class at Ben Davis High School Ben Davis High School (BDHS) is a 3-year high school in Marion County, Indianapolis, Indiana. It has a student enrollment of 2,940 as of 2005, and a staff of 178. Ben Davis was first established in 1892. The current school building was constructed in 1965. is taught exactly the way he'd dreamed of teaching it before Wayne Township Wayne Township can refer to multiple places:
With the technology station--the district calls them PresenStations--Haviland is able to teach in every moment. "If there was a word students couldn't pronounce I'd have to say, `Let's listen to the news tonight and hear how Tom Brokaw Thomas John Brokaw (born February 6, 1940 in Webster, South Dakota) is a popular American television journalist, Previously working on regularly scheduled news documentaries for the NBC television network, and is the former NBC News anchorman and managing editor of the program pronounces that,' before they could tape a newscast," Haviland says. "Everything was displaced by at least a day, a lot of the time the educate-able moment was, `I'll get that to you tomorrow.'" Now, if there's a question about pronunciation, Haviland projects an online dictionary onto the screen at the front of the classroom. With a sound function, students can hear the word pronounced correctly instantly. Haviland also uses the Internet capabilities extensively when teaching his students about advertising. And when they present an advertising project, the students are at the PresenStation showing their demographic research and presenting sample ads created in Microsoft Publisher Microsoft Office Publisher (previously and commonly known as Microsoft Publisher) is a desktop publishing application from Microsoft. It is often considered to be an entry-level desktop publishing application, differing from Microsoft Word in that the emphasis is placed on or PhotoShop to the class. "What we're trying to do is create a classroom of the 21st century that combines all the attraction of what's available today with the learning styles of the 21st century learner," says Pete Just, the district's technology project supervisor. He spearheaded the project that has seen the installation of more than 300 PresenStations in his district, 135 at the high school level and about 180 in four elementary schools. The technology--which cost about $7,000 per room two years ago--includes a ceiling-mounted Dukane projector that is connected to a Videolabs FlexCam document camera, an Internet-connected IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) Thinkpad laptop, a JVC JVC Victor Company of Japan (or Japan's Victor Company) JVC Jewelers Vigilance Committee JVC Jesuit Volunteer Corps JVC Jet Vane Control (directs VLS-launched missiles) JVC Jonker-Volgenant-Castanon VCR VCR: see videocassette recorder. VCR in full videocassette recorder Electromechanical device that records, stores on a videotape cassette, and plays back on a TV set recorded images and sound. and a telephone. "The killer app A software application that is exceptionally useful or exciting. Killer apps are innovative and often represent the first of a new breed, and they are extremely successful. For example, in the late 1970s, the VisiCalc spreadsheet was the killer app for the Apple II, providing reason is that computer connected to the Internet. Instead of taking your students to the computer lab, you can quickly pull something up on the Web and use that as a hook. You can get the students talking about something that's happening in the real world," Just says. Administrators at Wayne Township, which has more than 14,000 students in 14 schools, coined the word PresenStations to communicate their goal behind installing the technology. "People were calling them teacher stations, but the idea was not to have the teacher be the sole user," Dunne says. "What we're trying to do is move toward a more cooperative learning cooperative learning Education theory A student-centered teaching strategy in which heterogeneous groups of students work to achieve a common academic goal–eg, completing a case study or a evaluating a QC problem. See Problem-based learning, Socratic method. model. We want to use technology to change paradigms, to teach in the most effective way, to engage the students, and increase student performance in the long run." Howell Township Howell Township may refer to:
Michael Waters, an eighth-grade social studies teacher in Howell Township, NJ., was teaching a lesson about rock throwing in rebellions; he wanted to show a DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. about the Boston Massacre Boston Massacre, 1770, pre-Revolutionary incident growing out of the resentment against the British troops sent to Boston to maintain order and to enforce the Townshend Acts. The troops, constantly tormented by irresponsible gangs, finally (Mar. . No problem. Using the Epson PowerLite 5300 projector that's permanently installed in his classroom and an air mouse, he was able to start the movie without leaving his desk. But the lesson truly became interactive when he was able to pull up breaking news on the Internet about the Palestinian uprising in Israel and stone-throwing events in Northern Ireland Northern Ireland: see Ireland, Northern. Northern Ireland Part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland occupying the northeastern portion of the island of Ireland. Area: 5,461 sq mi (14,144 sq km). Population (2001): 1,685,267. on the same screen. Then he displayed maps locating each area. "Before this he would have been pulling down a map over there, showing a film over here, pulling out newspapers. With just a computer and a projector all those things were at his fingertips "Fingertips" is a 1963 number-one hit single recorded live by "Little" Stevie Wonder for Motown's Tamla label. Wonder's first hit single, "Fingertips" was the first live, non-studio recording to reach number-one on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in the United States. ," says Joe Dunne Joseph John "Joe" Dunne (born Dublin, 25 May 1973) is an Irish former professional footballer. He played professionally for Gillingham and Colchester United and made nearly 280 Football League appearances in a 13-year career. , district supervisor of information technology. Dunne also mentions the time he sat in on a first grade class that was keeping track of the weather using a simple spreadsheet Simple Spreadsheet is a web-based spreadsheet program written in JavaScript, HTML, CSS and PHP. It features formulas, charts, formats, cell/row merging, cell locking, keyboard navigation, etc. and icons for sun, rain and clouds. The teacher asked one child to create a graph of the last month's weather for Dunne. "This first grader said, `Do you want to see it in a pie graph or a bar graph?'" Dunne says. "These six- and seven-year-olds were talking so intelligently about the data. That's something that couldn't have been done before." Howell Township spent $8 million in 1999 to equip each of its classrooms with permanently mounted projectors and computers with CD-ROM CD-ROM: see compact disc. CD-ROM in full compact disc read-only memory Type of computer storage medium that is read optically (e.g., by a laser). and DVD capabilities. The projectors alone cost $1.4 million, the rest of the budget went for other hardware, infrastructure, telephone systems and creating high-speed Internet access in each room. The district, has also gone to great lengths to train and support its staff. Most of the district's continuing education continuing education: see adult education. continuing education or adult education Any form of learning provided for adults. In the U.S. the University of Wisconsin was the first academic institution to offer such programs (1904). programs are taught by teachers from within the district and focus on new ways to use the technology and adapting existing lessons to the technology, Dunne says. Howell Township plans to open three new elementary schools next year, and each classroom will be equipped with updated versions of the presentation units that feature faster computers and brighter projectors. Projectors prices are decreasing dramatically each year, even as the number of lumens each provides continues to increase, says Jodi Maugham, project manager for Epson's video projector technologies. "If they paid $4,000 for that two years ago, you could probably get similar technology for about $2,000 now," Maugham says. New features are also being built in at lower price points, such as allowing more than one computer to connect to each projector and increasing the number of audio and video outputs available, Maugham says. Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Area School District Charlotte Kordek's school district isn't fortunate enough to have mull/media presentation setups in each classroom, but her school makes innovative use of the technology in combination with its distance learning capabilities. Kordek, the technology administrator for the 7,000-student, nine-school K-12 district, used to be a biology teacher. Not surprisingly, it's the way science teachers can use the technology that excites her most. Often, elementary school students sit in on a Webcast of a chemistry or physics lab at one of the district's high schools. The elementary students are seated in their school's learning studio, where the live video image from the lab is projected onto a screen using a HP projector. Each elementary student is seated at a computer so while watching the experiment they are able to record and graph the data on their own. "Elementary kids don't have the ability to manipulate a Bunsen burner Bunsen burner, gas burner, commonly used in scientific laboratories, consisting essentially of a hollow tube which is fitted vertically around the flame and which has an opening at the base to admit air. A smokeless, nonluminous flame of high temperature is produced. and a test tube, but that doesn't mean they don't like to see it," Kordek says. "It's like watching Mr. Wizard, but everything is happening before your eyes instead of asynchronous Refers to events that are not synchronized, or coordinated, in time. The following are considered asynchronous operations. The interval between transmitting A and B is not the same as between B and C. The ability to initiate a transmission at either end. television. The bottom line is the kids just love this stuff. This is their media." Kordek gets excited when talking about how the Web site www.cellsalive. com allows students to watch animations of biological operations like mitosis. Projecting this video onto a screen is much more dynamic than showing the stages in stagnant diagrams. "The most crucial thing now is you can add dimension to objects you couldn't animate with a chalkboard," she says. The district first sought parity among all its schools by building the learning studios and distance learning capabilities. Then they added the technology on a departmental basis, with the business department first. "Business departments definitely need them because of the software they're trying to teach," she says. "Trying to teach it on a chalkboard or a whiteboard is tough. With the projectors you can manipulate it on the screen for everyone to see." Getting teachers to accept and embrace the technology wasn't difficult, Kordek says, once the district began conducting the majority of its in-service training using the computers and projectors. "Once you start modeling the technology, that is key," she says. "You can talk about it until the cows come home, but once [teachers] see it in action, it's not a sell. They just know." PROJECTORS Barco, www.barco.com BenQ, www.benq.com Boxlight, www.boxlight.com Canon, www.canonprojectors.com Christie Digital Systems, www.christiedigital.com Dell, www.dell.com Digital Projection, www.digitalprojection.com Dukane, www.dukane.com Eiki, www.eiki.com Epson, www.epson.com Fujitsu General America, www. fujitsugeneral.com Hewlett Packard, www.hp.com Hitachi America, www.hitachi.com Infocus, www.infocus.com/education JVC, www.jvc.com/pro Lumens, www.mylumens.com Mitsubishi, www.mitsubishipresentations.com NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. , www.necvisualsystems.com Optoma, www.optoma.com Panasonic, www.panasonic.com Philips, www.philips.com Plus Vision, www.plus-america.com Sanyo, www.sanyo.com Sharp Electronics, www.sharplcd.com Sony Electronics, www.sony.com/education 3M, www.mmm.com Toshiba, www.toshiba.com View Sonic, www.viewsonic.com Rebecca Sausner, rdsausner@ yahoo.com, is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn, N.Y. |
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