Mr Bass Online

One of the roles of my new position is to observe teachers as they use technology in their classrooms and try to come up with ways to incorporate the techniques and technologies that they are using into other classes. Today I had the opportunity to sit in on a Math class that was using the TI-Navigator calculators by Texas Instruments. While students can use these devices as a calculator, there is also a polling system software that is included allowing students to send the teacher the answers to whatever question is posed to them. In this particular class students were working with order of operations. The teacher had two projectors set up in his room. One was hooked up to a Smartboard and the other was projected on a screen. Problems were posed on the Smartboard and students were to solve the problem and submit their answers. It created a non-threatening environment for students to answer questions and at the same time, gives feedback to the instructor as to the level of understanding of the class.

All students were engaged and actively working on each of the problems that were presented. I participated as well, and as my math skills may not be stellar, the technology was fun to work with. I’m interested in exploring some other applications of this system. Maybe a foreign language class working with vocabulary… While the benefits for math class are clear, I think that there are some other applications for this as well. The Texas Instruments site has lots of applications for this in a variety of subjects as a part of their activities exchange section so I’m sure that there some great ideas there.