Promising Practices

Here are some success stories written by teachers who have infused technology into their classroom instructional practice.

The Eisenhower National Clearinghouse has a wealth of short articles about promising practices with educational technology, submitted by teachers and teacher educators. So do T.H.E. Journal and Education Week, both of which are online. Or, you can chat with your colleagues - in person or online - about what makes their classes special. Here are just a few of their stories...

• The Digital Edge Learning Interchange
  In 2001, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards selected 14 teachers, followed by another 14 teachers in 2002 — based on their specific proposals and experience using technology — to spend a year painstakingly designing, testing, and videotaping detailed models, or "exhibits," of how they used technology in their classrooms. The resulting "Digital Edge Learning Interchange" pulls together 58 exhibits on the Web for teachers to learn from or imitate.

• Using technology and real world connections to teach secondary mathematics concepts - by Hollylynne Stohl Drier, Kara M. Dawson, and Joe Garofalo, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia.
  Students can organize real-world data from the Internet using spreadsheets and graphing calculators. Java applets and simulations allow students to visualize and explore important mathematical concepts, such as Mean, Median, and Mode. Activities available at the Center's Mathematics Education web page utilize a variety of technology tools including spreadsheets, graphing calculators, The Geometer's Sketchpad, MicroWorlds and a host of other mathematics software. Note: Java applets are basically incompatible with Internet Explorer, so you'll need to use Netscape to run these interactive applications.

• Evolving with the Internet: Taking Technology for Granted - Finally - By Kristine Mueh, Centennial Middle School, Boulder, Colorado.
  Kristine has been experimenting with her science curriculum, participating in Hurricanes '98 and other resources available at the One Sky, Many Voices Web site at the University of Michigan. Resources in the Hurricanes project include a CD-ROM with interactive explorations, an animated science glossary, interactive hurricane tracking maps, and a game that chellenges students top redict the path of a hurricane.

• Students go wireless to save creek - by Steve Paulson, Science Teacher, Lewiston, Montana.
  Steve's eighth grade life science students teamed up witn the NSF's Wireless Field Tests for Education project, monitored Lewiston's Big Spring Creek, collected data, connected their classroom to an interface a mile away, saved their data, posted it to an Internet server, analyzed it, and presented their results. As a result, his students contributed to local efforts to restore the creek.

• Curating the Digital Classroom - by Susan Abdulezer, Multimedia coordinator for New York City Public Schools.
  In a June 2001 article featured in Converge Magazine, Susan described how the distinction between curator and viewer of an art museum can be blurred by engaging students in the types of activities that art collectors and curators do. After logging into the ArtsConnectEd "cybergallery" database, students are instructed in the procedures of searching the collection and adding it to their own personal online collection. Students can then duplicate the image, delete it, move it, add a close-up, add a text commentary about the work of art, re-title it, present it, or publish it. As a result, art, generally seen as static, now becomes alive when combined with technology. There is also a comprehensive Teachers Guide to ArtsConnectEd to aid educators in the use of the entire site.

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