Instructional Technology Innovations in the Classroom

History of Technology Learning and teaching has been around since the beginning of man. It has developed so much over the many centuries that technology has changed the lives of students for the better.

Early 1600’s Introducing the Horn-Book, a wooden paddle used in the colonial era that students carried around to teach them the alphabet, the Lord’s Prayer, vowel and consonant combinations and more.

1870 Magic Lantern Before the slide machine, the magic lantern projected images printed on glass plates. By the end of World War One, Chicago public schools had about 8,000 lantern slides.

1870’s-1890’s The infamous chalkboard and school slate. Teachers could now write on a board for all students to see what he/she was doing. Students in return could write things down on a board (school slate) as answers or notes.

1900 Although many students these days raise a brow to the thought of using a non-mechanical pencil, this pencil was a game changer, it replaced the school slate and was sometimes double sided with silver lead and white lead.

Film Strip Projector 1925 This little gadget projected images for students to see, and was the cousin of the motion-picture projector. With the advent of projected images, Thomas Edison predicted that “books will soon be obsolete in schools. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye.”

Overhead Projector Shortly after the filmstrip projector, the overhead projector was created in 1930 and widely used during WW2 to train forces in the U.S. military and was eventually spread into the schools.

First hand-held calculator-First Graphing Calculator 3x4= 12 A fairly easy mathematical question to answer, but how about 14.67x23.4-12.87? Its possible to do it by hand, though if you are not as mathematically inclined it may take a few minutes to solve. Welcome the calculator! Though just a basic one that can divide, multiply, add and subtract it was a great device to help students and teachers solve problems. Though it’s not as advanced as the graphing calculator today, students could finally solve those long equations simply and not by hand.

1999 Interactive Smart board

Is technology helping students? “Teaching with video lectures, Stacey Roshan, an Advanced Placement calculus teacher in a private 3rd-12th grade school has noticed a positive climb in students when using technology to teach her students. Students in the 2010-11 school year students scored an average of 4.11 on the AP calculus test, compared to the 3.59 average among her students who took the test and were taught in the traditional classroom setting the year before. And a third of the class—a 10 percent increase from the previous year—scored a 5, the highest score a student can achieve on an AP test. Other teachers have successfully implemented technology in the classroom, according to a recent study by CompTIA—which surveyed 500 K-12 and college instructors across the country. The report, IT Opportunities in the Education Market, revealed that 78 percent of K-12 teachers and administrators believe technology has positively impacted the classroom and the productivity of students. Roughly 65 percent of educators surveyed also believe that students are more productive today than they were three years ago due to the increased reliance on technology in the classroom.” US News.com Study: Emerging Technology has positive impact in classroom Ryan Lytle.

Today’s in class technology