As the Dean of Advanced & Applied Technology and a teacher of technology, I have used technology in the classroom for as long as I can remember. So, I am creating this blog for a couple of reasons. First, as an opportunity to write down some of my "best practices" and share them with any who care to read this. Second, as a record of history, to see what has been done in the past and begin to speculate on what we can do in the future.
In 1986 I had just graduated with a BS in Management Information Systems from the University of Southern Mississippi. I went to work for a company in Birmingham, AL as a trainer of their proprietary software. This software worked on Remittance Processing equipment, that is, equipment that optically and magnetically read a remittance, which is a bill and its corresponding check. Each bill has a scanline that contains specific account and billing information that is read optically and then the check is read and encoded with an amount that the operator keys in. A company might have a "lockbox" where they process multiple company's bills, so they would use the same equipment with a different program for each company's scanline. I taught them how to write the individual programs. The software was written in a "pseudo-code" that when compiled would translate into Pascal for its final compilation and resulting .EXE file. This was a two week class and even though we worked on computers, the coolest piece on technology that I used in the classroom was a portable whiteboard that could scroll between 5 different screens. What made it even more amazing was that you could print one,two or four screens on a piece of thermal paper. It was clear enough so that a decent copy could be made and distributed. Even though it had 5 screens, you could only print the first four, as they passed by the built-in scanner. Also, black ink worked best.
The first Teaching Tip in Technology: From the early days with this white board, the first tip is: Remember that the teaching is what is important, and that the technology should be a tool to enhance or improve the teaching. At the time, this whiteboard was cutting edge. Everyone wanted to see it and use it. But the importance of component in the two week training course was not the whiteboard, but the information that allowed customers to create working programs that their companies would use.
Join me again for another Teaching Tip in Technology.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I like the part where you stated teaching is important and technology is a tool.
ReplyDelete