Teaching with Tablet PC\'s

Movie about How I teach with tablet PC’s

Andrew French — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:21:18 +0000

Dyknow 5.2 is a great improvement!

Andrew French — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:21:41 +0000

Faculty have uploaded 5.2 and the crashing problem we encountered last year is gone. Students in class are having fewer crashing problems (1 person twice). I am getting more comfortable using added features, and the new version works really well with PowerPoint files. the slide animations in PowerPoint are preserved in the DyKnow presentation, so I can do the “controlled release of information within a slide content, exactly like PowerPoint.

Semester 3 with Dyknow and tablets

Andrew French — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:33:20 +0000

Well, we are starting our second year, and now that we have an encrypted wireless network we are having far fewer problems with access to the servers. We have 26 tablets in the hands of students and the archive on our Moodle site is working well. I still am having trouble with voice capture, with the bluetooth. . . but in comparison to year one, it is a dream.
Analytical Physics (PHYS 167) and a couple of labs in physics are also using tablets this year, Aaron Miller in 167 has a full class of 26, all with tablets.

Oh, and the local paper (Jackson Citizen-Patriot) ran a story on my class in today’s paper!! (See link below)

Some recognition for tablet teaching at Albion

Andrew French — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:26:18 +0000

http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2009/08/new_tablet_technology_appealin.html

11 Reasons Tablet PCs Are Better…

Melinda Kraft — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:47:08 +0000

Here is an interesting article by Jim Vanides, as featured on today’s Digital Learning Environments newsletter from www.techlearning.com.

Why does it seem that I am always complaining on my blog?

Andrew French — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:11:59 +0000

Well, this evening the extended desktop feature crashed on my tablet, it even told me it stopped working that it was going to try to find a solution. . . Did it find one? No. So that meant what I was projecting was my desktop, which meant when I tried to invert the screen to be in tablet mode to write notes for lecture, what was projected was upside down!! Which meant that if I inverted my computer so that screen one was right side up, when I went to screen two, it was upside down! ARRGGHH!!
Reliability, seems to be the key to success with this technology and I do not know why my vista computer keeps forgetting my presets, and that there are three different places you have to check because the HP Presentation button does not completely talk to the Vista Control panel for desktops. Coming up on the end of the second semester and I am still frustrated by these things!! Yes, this semester we have had only two crashes from students verses 8 last semester, and I have had difficulty only three times out of 35 lectures, but you know what? Chalk is reliable 100% of the time and if students and faculty cannot rely on having everything work every single time. . . .

Today April 6

Andrew French — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:49:52 +0000

Dog days of Orgo:
Well this morning it was clear that it sometimes does not matter what or how you teach, if the collective attitude of the class is that they don’t want to engage, they won’t. Students this morning clearly were NOT prepared, they “read”, they said, but they were NOT interested in being engaged. They wanted me to stand in front and lecture. Most frustrating.
I used group control for the first time which seemed okay, I wonder if the students just were so burned out by last weeks exam that they are trying to catch up on other classes or just wanted to rest from chemistry.

American Chemical Society Meeting

Andrew French — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:18:49 +0000

Well, our American Chemical Society meeting went without a hitch. We are still here in Salt Lake City, but my poster on Sunday Evenign got some good comments and I met with folks who were interested in our assessment plan. They were interested in how were were measuring student attitudes and correlated to student competance. A picture of the poster is below.

I also went to some talks and and have been invited to participate in invesitgating Student preconceptions abotu organic chemsitry. A Chem Ed. PhD. candicdate reported on a pilot of this project and was interested in subjects, and since I have asked a few questions about student perceptions, I felt it would be a good fit.

NITLE Meeting Presentation

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:37:57 +0000

The NITLE Meeting at DePauw last weekend was a great opportunity. We were able to present our foray into the arena with a talk, a self-narrated version I recorded is below. we also got to talk with representatives from a few colleges who are just beginning the process of exploring tablet use in the classroom, including Yale, Monmouth, to name two. I am hopeful that we will be able to help folks, by either this blog and the resources posted herein, or by being invited to visit and talk with folks, demonstrate what we have done and collaborating with folks to see if this is right for them.

tabletteachingnitle

NITLE Meeting

Andrew French — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:36:41 +0000

Just am finishing up a fantastic meeting at DePauw about the use of Tablet PCs and inking technology in classrooms. I have learned all about using inking in PowerPoint, using PDF annotator, Using StickyNotes, and capturing audio and embedding in StickyNotes and using it as a presentation method for Chinese Language classes. 13 Colleges attended and we had folks with loads of experience using Ink based technology, and those with no experience but are trying to think about how to to take those first steps into this arena.