Beyond “Chalk and Talk”: Using Tablet PCs to Engage

Students and Improve Student Understanding

Steven A. WolfmanComputer Science

University of British Columbia

w/the Presenter teams at UW, UCSD, & UBC

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~wolf/work/

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My Stated Goal

Get you interested in Classroom Presenter and excited about the idea of (re)designing

instructional technologies for your own needs.

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My Secret Agenda

Get you to develop the next great instructional technology

(so I can use it for my students).

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Talk Format

• Quick overview of a developing technology

• Classroom Presenter design discussion

• Next steps for Classroom Presenter

• Next steps for you

Throughout this talk, I’ll be using Classroom Presenter.

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Least Valuable Instructional Technology

What is the least valuable technology for your students’ learning?

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Most Promising Technology

What is the most promising, underutilized technology for your students’ learning?

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Study of a Failing Technology: Textbooks

My students don’t read the textbook.(Can you believe it?!)

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Using Textbook Technology Effectively

How do I use textbooks effectively?

I interrogate them.

How can I get students to use them effectively?

Change the process so that students learn by practice to interrogate the book.

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Reclaiming Textbook Technology

Every week, students submit a question, with no restrictions except that it must: be their own, be in their own handwriting, and include the referenced page # of the book.

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Reclaiming Textbook Technology… continued

Great idea! Now you have 80 questions…

Instructional technologies develop with real use!

Our solution: select a random subset of 10 (plus any I specifically want to answer); post answers to a new newsgroup dedicated to weekly reading questions.

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How to Develop Classroom Presenter

source of greatest

pain

availabletechnology

structuredobservation

innovations of practice

prior and related work

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Early Presenter

source of greatest

pain

availabletechnology

structuredobservation

innovations of practice

prior and related work

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Source of Greatest Pain

What’s wrong with PowerPoint?

Take your PowerPoint pain, add tablets, and…

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Prehistoric Presenter (2002)

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“Separation of Views”

source of greatest

pain

availabletechnology

structuredobservation

innovations of practice

prior and related work

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Prehistoric Projection View (2002)

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(Re)Building the User Interface and Social Processes

source of greatest

pain

availabletechnology

structuredobservation

innovations of practice

prior and related work

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Scrolling in Practice

Based on logs of dozens of hours:Almost no intentional scrolling…

MUCH accidental scrolling.

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Explain-and-Erase

• Se ville dere dago

• Tousan buses inaro

• Nojo dose id trux

• Summit gesan summit dux

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Student Submissions[Simon, Anderson, Hoyer, Su, …]

source of greatest

pain

availabletechnology

structuredobservation

innovations of practice

prior and related work

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Supporting Pedagogical Goals: Breaking the Ice, Engagement

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Why the Technology Is Key Gives instructor instant access to content

from a broad range of students … not just from the few vocal students Increases instructor’s awareness of student ideas

Enables instructor to immediately integrate student content into the lecture discussion Using actual examples of student work improves

feedback Gives students a stake in constructing new

knowledge Public display becomes a medium for sharing ideas

Doing all this anonymously

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Supporting Pedagogical Goals:Active Learning, Eliciting Misconceptions

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Supporting Pedagogical Goals:Brainstorming, Diversity of Opinions

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Ubiquitous P & P-on-Paper[Wilkerson, Griswold, Simon & Lim,…]

source of greatest

pain

availabletechnology

structuredobservation

innovations of practice

prior and related work

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Beth SimonUniversity of California, San DiegoComputer Science and Engineering

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How to Develop Classroom Presenter

source of greatest

pain

availabletechnology

structuredobservation

innovations of practice

prior and related work

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Developing your Technology

How can you get involved in developing instructional technologies?

References:Contact info

Steve Wolfman (wolf@cs.ubc.ca) PoP, CPRichard Anderson (anderson@cs.washington.edu) CP Beth Simon(esimon@cs.ucsd.edu) UP

Classroom Presenter-relatedDownloads: http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/dl/presenter/Papers: http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/dl/presenter/papers.html

Ubiquitous Presenterhttp://up.ucsd.edu

Acknowledgements:Thanks to the UW and UCSD educational technology teams.

Classroom Presenter is built on top of the ConferenceXP research platform. This work was supported in part by grants from External Research and Programs, Microsoft Research and from the Jade and NECTAR Projects.

Thanks to Jeff Forbes and Duke CS for bringing me and to Duke CIT for making this event happen!