The Pondering Pixel

A close-up wide angled but abridged look at projectors and other classroom technology, product reviews and releases, tradeshows, debates and conspiracy theories as well as humble observations on schools and screens.

"Technology is core and essential to the strategies we are using to reform education." That was the message from both Jim Shelton, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the United States Department of Education, and Aneesh Chopra, chief technology officer in the White House as reported in The Journal. Chopra said that technology in education is less about hardware and software and more about what we teach, the methods we use,and the support and direction we give to teachers. Chopra, according to the article, is said to be completely wired in, connected to university lectures via iPod in order to exist in a constant "learning environment.”more

InfoComm 2009
Unlike the Consumer Electronics Show, where the wow factor dominates and there are new gadgets galore all tailored to the lucrative consumer market, InfoComm focuses on the technology solutions required to build audio visual and information communications systems. So the showroom floor is packed with companies offering new solutions for display and projection, lighting and staging, digital signage, collaborative conferencing and telepresence, networking, signal distribution and digital content creation. They feature products for corporations and small businesses, schools and universities, as well as the religious institution market.more

When you’re talking classroom technology in higher education these days, telepresence is an all pervasive term. Telepresence is the experience of being fully present at a live real world location remote from one's own physical location. I’m not talking about circa 1985 videoconferencing. Telepresence enables users to maintain eye contact, read body language and interact in a real-time environment--behaving and receiving stimuli as though physically at the remote site.more

Blogs and blogging. It seems like such an obvious thing to me. But recently I read a short article in the New York Times (Education Section) about sixth grade social studies students at a Kentucky middle school corresponding via blog with a local soldier stationed in Ghazni City Afghanistan. The soldier and students communicate through his blog. Questions are asked, answers and impressions are shared. This was a big enough story to make the New York Times. I guess I was just a little too blasé in my reading of this article.more

To quell my nagging remorse about the PhD program I never finished (and swear I will one day), I often find myself perusing online degree programs of major universities. This will be the subject of other discussions because once again it places technology in education in the position of vanguard of a revolution. Today’s observation represents a flashpoint in that revolution. Bryant & Stratton College, a 150 year old institution of higher learning will bestow degrees upon its graduates where they earned them—online. But here’s the kicker: the ceremony will be a virtual one fully hosted on Second Life (which you likely know is a very popular Internet-based 3D virtual world).more

Classroom projectors used for mathematics instruction could change the game for a lot of students. Teachers are using classroom projectors for PowerPoint presentations, Excel documents, Geometer Sketchpad, and whiteboard interactivity. The use of a document camera with a classroom projector is growing as teachers aim to display and point to pictures, diagrams and lessons in textbooks.more

I know this is a common scenario: there is a new interactive whiteboard in the classroom. You’ve likely attended one or two training sessions and you seem to have the basics down. But the nagging question in your mind is how you and this seemingly magnificent piece of classroom technology will take the leap into full techno integration. As if 30 sets of eyes were not pressure enough—you have your district's financiers of the race toward the 21st Century classroom to contend with as well. What pressure I tell you.more

Have you been following the Kindle debate? Well the unveiling a couple of days ago of the Kindle DX e-book reader with a larger screen has business watchers, educators, students and textbook publishers all a buzz. So it should. The WSJ article I read reported that this coming Fall, a test group of university students at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve and other universities (including Princeton) will be given large screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and freshman orientation pre installed so that the university can analyze their experience as compared to those students using paper texts.more

Elizabeth...go up to the blackboard and show us how to solve the problem...spell the word...use proper penmanship...The list was endless.My stomach still hurts when I think about it and I carried that stomach pain all the way to grad school when I had to stand up and defend my papers and died a thousand deaths every time. Nowadays kids are told to go up to the “whiteboard” but I am certain it is no less traumatic for them than it was for me.more

Somewhere between college and grad school, I worked as a substitute teacher. The experience made a lasting impression on me as stories from those days seem to crop up in many conversations I have today. I usually have my friends in stitches as I talk about the antics of the kids in my classes. The most colorful days were those when I was assigned to sub for a teacher who left absolutely no lesson plan.more