Teachable Tech: Classroom Trends To Watch

Microblogging makes the grade

Think of microblogging as social networking lite. On Twitter, the king of all microblogging sites, 140-character texts are sent out as “tweets” to subscribers either from the Twitter website or through other SMS (short message service) applications. Around since 2006, Twitter has met with mixed reviews in the tech world, due among other things to its low user retention rate and its promulgation of meaningless blather.  However, as one of Time’s top 50 websites of 2009, it’s hard to ignore Twitter’s appeal, and it’s no wonder that many high school teachers are following the leads of their college counterparts and taking their classrooms into the Twittersphere.

Some instructors use Twitter simply to send out class reminders to students—“vocab test on Wednesday!” and that sort of thing. But there are many other uses in secondary ed for Twitter, with its twin appeals of immediacy and brevity. During the 2009 elections, social studies students not only followed the historic election coverage on television, they tracked Barack Obama’s tweets. Journalism students debated breaking news stories in condensed arguments of 140 characters or less. Foreign language students found Twitterpals from different countries—and both practiced their communication skills in short, easy-to-digest messages. “Twitter makes it easy for folks to stay connected,” their website boasts, and for many teachers this applies to the classroom as well.

Mouse mischief

It’s no secret that education funding is suffering, and the same optimism that promised a PC on every desk seems to be drying up along with the cash flow. While a laptop for each student may not be realistic now, a mouse for each student isn’t as much of a stretch—at any rate, Microsoft is hoping teachers will see things that way. Its newest brainchild, Mouse Mischief, was released as a beta for testing; a newer version will soon be available for free download. The program works in tandem with Microsoft PowerPoint, allowing teachers to include interactive elements like multiple choice questions in their presentations. Students, using wireless or wired USB mice, click their answers in real time. It’s an easy tool for student engagement, and Microsoft has made management simple for teachers by enabling single-click commands and teacher controls that disable mice and set timers, among other things. The current design sustains up to 40 mice in a classroom and has been tested around the globe. The premise is similar to that of PollEverywhere.com’s text polls, but capitalizes on what most schools already have rather than banking on student cell phone ownership. For any student who has ever sat through a dry PowerPoint presentation, Mouse Mischief will be a welcome foray back into synergistic classroom technology.

Teaching in a technocracy

Media changes at an unprecedented speed, allowing yesterday’s distractions to become some of today’s most definitive teaching tools—we’ve come a long way from the overhead projector and ditto machine. Whether in the form of 140-word microsummaries or cell phone camera documentaries, teachers around the U.S. are finding ways to harness this teen-friendly technology into vehicles for interactive and innovative education.