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Texas Long Range Plan for Technology: Educator Preparation and Development

As I began to read the Educator Preparation and Development section of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology, my first thought was, “Why am I just now reading this? It is 2009 and this was written in 2006!” But as I continued through the reading, I realized that my administrators are definitely aware of this plan and have been targeting this topic at our teacher in-services over the past few years. Last summer we had a 3-day staff development in June where we were introduced to technologies that are now available at our school that included C-scope, streaming video and a new website template that each teacher was required to use in creating their own web page that is linked to the school’s site. In February of this year, we had a 2-day in-service that focused on using technology in the classroom that emphasized Web 2.0. The vision states that “Teachers must be able to prepare students for their future in a manner that assures that all students will not simply survive, but truly thr...
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Academic Software: PowerPoint as an Authoring System

As I read through chapter 6, I was reminded of one of my favorite things to do with PowerPoint – using hyperlinks to create interactive tutorials or quizzes. With a little extra time spent planning a PowerPoint, you can create buttons to represent multiple choice answers for a quiz or create a tutorial that gives immediate feedback to the user letting them know if they have chosen a correct answer or not. I also enjoy creating short timed quizzes for my math students. I include all of the instructions within the PowerPoint as well as the fact that they will have 2 minutes per question or 5 minutes to do a multi-step problem and then let the PowerPoint do all of the work for me by using rehearsed timings. I usually make the 1st slide with a warning stating that a quiz will begin at the tardy bell. This is a great way to get the students settled in quickly. I have also created Jeopardy simulations. I split the class into 3 or 4 small groups and play “Team Jeopardy”. This also requires th...
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Academic Software: Tutorials and Drill-and-Practice

Academic software is readily available to most all math classes in the form of tutorials and drill-and-practice. The high school math departments across Texas purchased new textbooks in the 2007–2008 school year. I was allowed to preview textbooks that had been adopted by the Texas Education Agency and was amazed by the amount of digital resources available with each textbook. I am currently using a Houghton Mifflin precalculus book for example. It has a free companion web site available to all students found at http://college.cengage.com/mathematics/larson/precalculus_limits/1e/student_home.html that has a general resources link containing note-taking pages for every section of every chapter in the textbook that students can use to follow along with my lectures and/or the textbook to help them summarize the section. Another useful tool found under the general resources link is the math graphs link. This link allows you to print graphs that are contained in the exercises so that you c...
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