About this Site
The use of technology in science and math classrooms across the country has been growing exponentially over the past few years. The areas that are using the most technology are the more urban schools. Schools that are near universities and large industries are receiving additional training in technology from those same institutions to which they are closely located (Pugalee & Robinson, 1998). It is our position that if the science and math educators that are not located near to any professional resource has a training resource available to them then they will also incorporate technology into their science and math classrooms (Simonson, 1997). In short, we wanted to develop an Internet training resource for science and math teachers so that, no matter their location, there will be an opportunity for incorporating technology into the classroom.Our website must include many components in order to be an effective tool for the general science or math teacher. It must have:
(Dexter & Anderson, 1999)The average classroom in the United States hosts a variety of cultures as well as languages. We felt that we should address this fact with a strong look at multi-cultural education, and its role in our website. The simplest way to incorporate at least some level of multiculturalism into a project is to make it accessable to as many cultures as possible (Lesko & Bloom, 1998). In order to accomplish this idea in our website we have provided a set of English and Spanish directions.The most important of our goals is to make our web site applicable to the content of math and science curriculums. With such a wide range of contents being taught in the science/math classroom of today we felt that a hands on approach to the CBL technology would be the most helpful. Laboratories are one of the general separating factors between math/science classrooms and the other subjects (Ross & Hogaboam-Gray, 1998), and easily some of the most effective and widespread pieces of equipment available to the math/science classrooms of today are the graphing calculator and the CBL system (Ravenscroft, Tait & Hughes, 1998). In light of these ideas, we quickly decided to center our website around learning to use and implement the graphing calculator and the CBL system into the math/science classroom as a useful and effective tool.Although we have attempted to make this site as thorough as possible, we recognize that teachers may have needs or questions that we have not anticipated. It is for this reason that we have included in our site a long list of other accessory websites that may further help our audience.The audience of our site consists of math or science teachers who wish to learn how to use a CBL. We maintain a basic assumption that these teachers are novice users. For this reason we have chosen experiments whose set up and operation are trivial so that focus may be given to learning how to use the technology as well as applications for the classroom. This rationale will help the teacher accept and understand the use of the technology easier than if the website was set up in a more technical fashion (Becker & Ravitz, 1999).An effective curriculum must accomodate the changing needs of the learner. To determine what these needs are, we have incorporated an evaluation form that allows the user to evaluate the usefulness and usability of our site as well as how much it has effected their decision to incorporate technology into their classroom (Findley & Findley, 1997). This mechanism will allow us to make changes to the curriculum of our site to meet the changes in our participating teachers.We hope that by following the goals of multiculturalism, applicability of content, external resources, ease of understanding, and adaptability that our web site will be a useful tool for all math and science teachers. Especially for those teachers that are unable, for whatever reason, to attend workshops and training on the technology of today.
Becker, H. J. & Ravitz, J. (1999). The influence of computer and Internet use on teacher's pedagogical practices and perceptions. Journal of Research on Computing in Education 31, 356-384.Dexter, S. & Anderson, R. E. (1999). Teacher's views of computers as catalysts for changes in their teaching practice. Journal of Research on Computing in Science Education 31, 221-239.Findley, B. & Findley, D. (1997). Strategies for effective distance education. Contemporary Education 68, 118-120.Lesko, N. & Bloom, L. R. (1998). Close encounters: truth, experience, and interpretation in multicultural teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies 30, 375-395.Powers, S. (1997). Three little words: interactive, distance, and learning. Contemporary Education 68, 92-94.Pugalee, D. K. & Robinson, R. (1998). A study of the impact of teacher training in using Internet resources for mathematics and science instruction. Journal of Research on Computing Education 31, 78-95.Ravenscroft, A., Tait, K. & Hughes, I. (1998). Beyond the media: knowledge level interaction and guided integration for CBL systems. Computers and Education 30, 49-56.Ross, J. & Hogaboam-Gray, A. (1998). Integrating mathematics, science, and technology: effects on students. International Journal of Science Education 20, 1119-1135.Simonson, M. (1997). Distance education: does anyone really want to learn at a distance? Contemporary Education 68, 104-107.All graphics were created by Carlos Curto and Beth Snoke
All photographs were taken by Beth Snoke and Grant Holley
Spanish translation by Carlos Curto
Beth Snoke is Coordinator of Student Programs at The Science House, an outreach project of North Carolina State University. She is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill with a degree in physics and has taught high school physics for several years. Beth enjoys gardening and watching Carolina basketball.
Carlos Curto is a doctoral student in the Science Education program at NC State. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a M.S. in physics. Carlos is from Spain and likes to play soccer.
Grant Holley is a doctoral student in the Science Education program at NC State and has a tiny little office where he does stuff with Biology teachers. Grant is a graduate of Marshall Univeristy with degrees in zoology and chemistry as well as an M.A. in education. He has also taught many different levels of high school and middle school science.
Lisa Grable - for letting us use her Simplified User's Guide to CBL as a starting point and source of ideas.Judy Day - for contributing her Getting Started with TI-83 Plus/TI-83 to the Technical Support page.April Cleveland (and Lisa Grable) - for sharing the Water What-ifs web siteLiz Woolard - for letting us use her light intensity activityThe Science House - for letting us use their server space
