Click above image to see landing of long range scientific sensor plane (Aerosonde) and here for its mission. Photo by David Zaks; video by Dennis Hipperson.	Live webcam image of NSA site in Barrows, Alaska. Click above image and here for more data on NSA. The time shown is UTC (Universal Time Coordinated), formerly GMT.

Introduction

Look (Concepts)

1. Objectives

The overall goal of the objectives for this chapter is to stress moving beyond teaching how digital tools work. The goal here is emphasize the application of specialized digital technology.  This includes application for learning and communication, for presentation of the subject, of unique digital tools within specific disciplines, and for discipline specific teaching strategies. See the link in the left column index to more on the four Subject Specific (section 11) Teacher Tech Competencies and Portfolio Requirements for this chapter and the link on Objectives: setting goals for teaching lessons.

2. Focus and Review

Earlier chapters have presented numerous examples of the use of computer technology for learning and communication and presentation of the subject matter. See the link in the left column index for more on focus and review.

3. Teacher Input

This part of the chapter examines not only the use of specialized digital tools, but also their design and creation.

Using the Specialized Tools

There are unique digital tools within specific disciplines. These subject specific technologies provide realistic and practical support for instruction in science, math, physical education and other areas. More specifically, these topics include calculators, sensors, programming languages and robots.

Also read these two policy statements by the National Science Teachers Association: The Use of Computers in Science Education ; and Science, Technology and Society - A New Effort for Providing Appropriate Science for All. The importance of enhancing math and science education is made even more valuable with the knowledge that over the last decade the number of those graduating with degrees in math, science, programming and electronic engineering has steadily declined.
 
 

Calculators.

Calculators come in a wide range shapes, sizes and formats. They come built in to watches, toys and notebooks and come as separate items in numerous sizes, large and small. Different calculators can have very different special functions. Every computer is a superset of a calculator.  This calculation role was the first and primary use of computer technology for a significant portion of the history of computers. Classrooms now purchase sets of calculators with general functions such as add and subtract and graphing calculators at very low cost and calculators with much greater capacity are available at reasonable prices that challenge the features of desktop spreadsheet programs. But do not get locked into thinking of the concept of calculators as just computer hardware that is very small. 

Calulators can be software applications. Every computer operating system has at least one built-in software calculator that is available (e.g., look for the calculator under Accessories on a Windows computer and under the Apple menu on a Mac) and much more powerful software calculators are available (e.g., see the free Graphing Calculator that comes will all Macs).Can you find the one on your computer?  A spreadsheet program is just a way to use the computer as a general purpose calculator. The capacity to create formulas and use functions within a spreadsheet makes it "specific to a discipline" which could be seen as mathematics, but math has general application to every discipline.

The concept of software calculator is extended and magnified by computer networks.  One of the original motivations for creating computer networks in the first place was to give scientists remote access to high-power calculation on computer machines too expensive for any single scientist or even a single company to afford. Today, any school can connect with their nearest university for access to the region's supercomputer center for educational activities. On a much scale than supercomputers, tens of thousands of people have created web pages that use internal computer programs to carry out special purpose calculations. If you can compose a question and collect the raw data, these online calculators can assist with this "evoke" or composition stage of the learning process when thinking mathematically. See the Currency Converter. For more use the link in the left index to try out some of the thousands of online "calculators" at Martindale's Calculators On-line Center that apply to thousands of subject specific areas.  Explore more of such web sites from links located in the Number sub-directory of the Evoke page of the CROP model. 

Sensors and Probes

Many sources of data come from what we can count and measure with our eye and our hands using rulers, cups, thermometers and other measuring devices. The use of computers that have sensors connected gives us additional power. More accurate measurements be taken. Measurements that cannot be done by hand because they must be done too quickly or at to great a distance can be done with computer sensors. Computers also allow measurements to be taken automatically for whatever number of times are needed, whether we are asleep or not. Handheld calculators can have probes (sensors) attached that collect data, and then the calculator in turn connects to a desktop Mac or Windows computer system and uploads the data for further analysis and exploration. For example, dip the temperature probe in a stream at different times of day and use the data to create a graph from which to discuss the changes. See the link to Real World Digital Measurement Activities for Educators: CBL or PDA Based Labs and the Dora Nelson and Arctic Travelog links.

Palm Computers

Just as the first computers started out as calculators (see chapter one), then became general purpose, so has advancing technology turned the concept of a handheld calculator into a general purpose computer. Palm computers are also called handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and pocket computers. Unlike handheld calculators which have been around since the 1970's,  palm computers have been around just since the mid 1990's. PDA's will play an increasingly important role in not only putting a computer in the hands of every student, but in giving educators unprecedent computer lab portability. This has important implications for "in the field" observations in social studies and science. These PDAs and calculators can hook into other electronic devices, the same sensors or probes first used in calculator based labs (CBLs). They can be used in effective combination with laptop computers and wireless computer networking. Read this composition on a PDAs and the impliations of the wireless portable classroom and visit the ImagiWorks site. Activities and concepts from prior chapters about PDAs has provided some foundation for thinking more deeply about the role that PDAs can play. Handhelds are playing a leading role in the integration of sensors and probes into math, science and other content areas.

Physical Education, Health and Art

There is a tendency to think of physical education just in terms of sports and exercise routines. It important to note that the areas of  art, music and dance share interesting technology agendas with physical education, health and medicine in the use of probes and sensors. Sensors and probes play an increasingly important role in all of these areas. For example, for the first time sensors enable physical education teachers to measure the precise physical activity needs of each child and to build curriculum activities tailored for each child.
 

Social Studies

Subject specific digital tools for social studies were explored in earlier chapters. The ARC Voyager application made using digital maps and other maps tools such as ArcView easy to use in new and powerful ways. This mapping tool has particular value in social studies classes; mapping in general has application to many other all subject areas.  The director of Hunter Library's Map Library is a specialist in the use of this program and is a great source of further help and assistance in its use.

Making the Tools - Electronic Design

Engineering is to science and math as writing is to reading.

Because we read, we constantly are seeing models of writing. Fortunately, school curriculum has seen the relevance of teaching writing to everyone. Writing empowers people to be creators and more capable thinkers, not just users of the work of others. We also constantly see and use the engineering of others, whether software programs, calculators, sensors, cars and radios. Unfortunately, school curriculum seldom teaches, let alone encourages, engineering. For obvious reasons of space and cost, building or manufacturing authentic houses, cars and motors cannot easily be done within schools. But that is the legacy technology of the industrial age and the last few centuries. Dealing with the most important engineering of the information age eliminates problems with space and cost. Digital engineering is about small and often relatively cheap electronic parts and about computer programming. The cost is no greater than a software site license, well with school budgets.  Further, the design and small scale engineering of various models of even manufactured items can fit into school budgets and spaces. Through the application of engineering, significant amounts of science and math can be taught in authentic or at least much more realistic settings. Giving math and science curriculum greater authenticity has been a major goal of national curriculum organizations for some time. When the nature of authenticity is examined in this context, its fundamental elements match those national goals of engineering organizations.

It is also worth noting that engineering was the first composition language. That is, before there was writing, and before there was speech, there were tool makers. The first "educational systems" would have made tool-making a significant part of the stone age curriculum. The more sophisticated a tool, the more sophisticated the spatial intelligence or awareness must become. The more steps involved, the more that long term memory was required.  In our current curriculums, tool making skills have been marginalized to the point of disappearing from the common curriculum. A glance at the real culture indicates that tool invention and making still plays a major cultural role, but that the types of tools found valuable have radically changed over the centuries and decades. Perhaps from the complexity of making their ever more sophisticated stone tools, the need for and the development of speech emerged. Perhaps it is time to reconnect the distant past with the information age and build on the synergy this would create in our common curriculum.

Students and teachers can learn to design and create software programs and electronic and other computer hardware, from computer games to thermostats to robots. This area of knowledge has been one of the most important new areas of knowledge and therefore should become one of the most important new areas of curriculum development in the information age. Regional economic councils throughout the country eagerly seek to attract companies with such knowledge workers. Having a strong collection of companies involved in information technology is considered very important in the near and long term growth of a community's economic development. Yet, an examination of the curriculum goals of many states would show that knowledge important to electronic design, including computer programming, is not required of all students in those crucial early years before high school when students are developing their awareness of different career tracks. There is little or no early exposure and positive association to these career possibilities.  This may have something to do with the long term decline in the number of United States graduates from college with degrees in these areas and our country's increased dependence on hiring such workers from other countries. 

Links in the left index column also explore K-8 curriculum options in electronic design, programming and robotics that need to become part of the standard public school curriculum standards in computer literacy. Visit the Circuit Sense tutorial. Distance education students should carry out these activities on their own though face-to-face classes will complete this work in class. Read through the web page on electronic composition with sensors: real world science and math. Use links in computer programming across the curriculum to the Web Turtle site to carry out some basic programming modifications using turtle geometry, and learn five major concepts about computer programming. Visit, however briefly, all the links for this chapter and be alert to possible integration into your unit plans such as some of the robotics curriculum materials.

Educators can take students to new levels of understanding and higher levels of motivation in math and science by actively integrating engineering activities, demonstrations and assignments. Engineering is just another form of composition, another way to evoke a response from ourselves and our culture. Computer literacy competencies can also make an excellent entry area for incorporating many engineering activities. If writing is composing with words, then think of engineering as composing with things. Often these things are the means to carry out important activities in science and math. 

4. Guided Practice

 
Competency 11.4 Use technology to facilitate teaching strategies specific to the discipline.

Through use of the technologies discussed in this and prior chapters, there are some strategies more appropriate to subject specific content areas. There are many examples of such needs. Math and science increasingly emphasize real world or authentic data collection. This may require lesson plans that address safety and training issues in handling equipment and chemicals that other content areas need not address. Physical education's use of heart monitor probes to measure and manage appropriate physical activity needs for each child requires specialized training and equipment lessons not needed in other subject areas. ARC Voyager's digital approach to maps requires lessons that integrate the study of paper maps with the computer lab based study of map and database information. Though word processing and web composition options are examples of a broad set of needs that are common across all subjects areas, each discipline or subject area is increasingly learning how to tailor technology to its own special needs.

Evoke

5. Independent Practice

It is now time to take the resources and ideas that have already been collected in your unit plan plan for their distribution across a series of lesson plans. From a teacher point of view, this means taking many of the concepts and computer resources that you have placed in sections 2, 3 and 7 and placing them inside lesson plan activities in sections 4, 5 and 6. From a K-12 student point of view, in inventing and writing this set of lesson plans, you should put special emphasis on the computer integration possibilities for students so that they incorporate the themes of this course, events which include the major concepts of each of the advanced teacher technologies as they are addressed in the remaining chapters of this class. Look for new ideas that will continue to be presented in class and then reconsider the lesson plan ideas and incorporate some element of those themes in the lessons. That is, for this chapter, examine the subject specific competencies noted and determine where and what aspect of some part of these competencies will be addressed by the lessons being developed.

Section four of the unit plan represents the introductory activities to your Unit Plan. Add to section IV a lesson plan appropriate to your teaching situation. There are many forms or models for lesson plans provided with this chapter, including.  (a current intern model for lesson plans with modification;  a six point lesson plan template, a lesson plan table template; and an example of a completed lesson plan table layout). Each of these lesson plan models includes specific listing of different models and associate school costs for integrating computer technology. Section six will incorporate the culmination activity of the unit. In the next chapter, you will be asked to add a 6 point lesson plan to section six of the unit plan.

The number of lesson plans in section V depends on your timeline. In general, if your timeline section (section X.) calls for ten days of activities to meet your objectives, then section V. should have a list of eight lesson plan topics in the sequence in which they will be covered. (Since sections 4 and 6 represent two lesson plans, section five is two less than the total required.) But you are not required to write complete lesson plans for all of section five. Instead give just the objectives of the lesson plan while mentioning the computer related activities for that lesson. A high degree of computer integration is expected overall across this unit.

 What are the odds of you being in an actual classroom or computer lab in Western North Carolina and able to carry out such lesson plans? The spring 1998 analysis of the data from our college survey of all 193 school buildings indicated that we had some 186 schools  with Internet linked computers and that 50% of all buildings had an Internet linked computer labs at that time. Community colleges have always been well ahead of the public schools in providing access to computer technology. Things have continued to improve since that survey. Whether Internet connected or not, our region averages one computer per classroom with Internet connection and at least one computer lab in the building. Certainly computers which can use painting, word processing, database and spreadsheet applications can be made available in almost any location in which you might be teaching. A small but increasing number of classrooms however have greater availability to computers than this local and national average. In 2005, all classrooms and school computers labs have Internet access, but each student does not have access to one during their school day at their own desk. These overall local trends of slowly expanding cyberspace technologies match national trends.

The problem with the more common current setting is that a working definition of classroom adequate computer access has not been created. One definition of adequate access might be immediate availability of computer technology for any and all students as needed. A more practical and quantifiable definition might be an Internet-connected computer on-hand for each student. This ongoing problem is further covered in the essay on "Effective lesson planning that integrates computer technology: what it going to cost us?" The goal is ubiquitous computing, computer technology as available as paper technology is today. Financial considerations will delay meeting these definitions for years. The good news is that costs continue to drop and the technology continues to improve. As of March, 2004, the cost of ubiquitous computing is probably around $6,000 per classroom assuming that handheld computers prove adequate to teacher needs. Further research into such a figure is needed. Though this is beyond state, school district and community college budgets to support at this time, that figure is well within the range of teachers that seek grant funding for special initiatives in this area.

Do lesson plans have to be 6 point lesson plans? No. If your cooperating teacher and University supervisor have approved or prefer some other lesson format during your intern work, then use that format. For extra credit, you may turn one or more of your listed lesson plan topics in section V. of your unit plan into web linked fully developed 6 point lesson plans. 
 

Assess (feedback)

Look at the questions you created in the left margin of your notes for this week and select your top question. Add your new question to the SUP database. It is important that you share that question with your class team and entire class and that you respond to at least one question from your classmates.

As teammates, provide feedback via email or in person about the lesson plans that were created and posted to your web site.

Publish

6. Closure

• Write your blog reflection page for this chapter's experience.

 
• Print out your computer program and the geometric shape it made and hand in that sheet of paper.

 
• Once completed, keep your circuit design with your technology portfolio materials.

 
• Check questions you entered earlier to see if anyone has responded. If further thinking and discussion about your question has yielded new insights, use your skills to add a response to your own question. You are part of a team and have responsibility to check for the questions of your teammates and respond as their question ambassador where you can.