Effective Use of Technology in the Classroom (Taking Technology to the Edge)

Posted on June 17, 2006 by Elmer Masters

Audience: All
Technical Level: Edgy

As technology permeates our lives, we find that students not only use it but expect its use in the classroom. In response to this expectation, more and more faculty members use technology, and primarily PowerPoint, in lectures. Unfortunately, their use is often ineffective to the point that the technology not only loses its benefit but detracts from the learning environment.

This presentation will focus on the effective use of technology with vibrant examples of audio, video, PowerPoint, wireless control technology, and responder units to enhance the learning experience.

What this presentation is: This presentation will demonstrate the power of technology with the tools that virtually all faculty have and will include a look at more advanced tools. Specifically, the use of Flash Animation created though Swish, the tool Snag-it to capture information from the Web, video editing tools to use clips within a PowerPoint presentation and others. As an added bonus, a teaching technique will be demonstrated with common objects (non-technological) that illustrate the power of the way information is presented and how the methods we employ affect the listener – our students with a twist – that is, illustrating how technology can enhance a non-technological teaching tool.

Additionally, this presentation will illustrate common mistakes most presenters make and offer simple solutions on how to avoid these mistakes.

What this presentation is not: This is not a �how-to� course. This will not teach the intricacies of how to create a PowerPoint presentation or how to use the various tools utilized in the presentation. In a short time, one can only wet his or her appetite to learn the skills needed to prepare powerful and effective presentations for the classroom.

This proposed topic illustrates audio stimulation, video stimulation and student participation of a kind that is rarely utilized in today�s teaching environment but is extremely effective.

MP3: BeckmanLLSat1200.mp3

Play It Now!

Sydney Beckman
Assistant Professor of Law
Charleston School of Law

About Elmer Masters

Elmer R. Masters is the Director of Technology at the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (www.cali.org) where he works on interesting projects involving technology and legal education like eLangdell, Classcaster, Lawbooks, QuizWright, and the CALI website. He has over 30 years of experience building tech tools for legal education and systems for accessing law and legal materials on the Internet. He is the admin of the Teknoids mailing list (www.teknoids.net) and has been blogging about legal education, law, and technology for over 20 years (www.symphora.com). He has a JD from Syracuse University College of Law and was employed by Syracuse, Cornell Law School, and Emory University School of Law before joining CALI in 2003. Elmer has presented at the CALI Conference for Law School Computing (where he organizes the program), the AALL and AALS Annual Meetings, Law Via The Internet, and other conferences, symposia, and workshops on topics ranging from IT management in law schools to building open access court reporting systems to information architecture design and implementation in law.
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