Technology for Education

In this section, you can investigate a range of educational technologies and consider their affordances and limitations in relation to your learning goals. Making decisions about educational technologies can be tricky. Faculty sometimes ask if a specific technology will enhance student learning. Whether low tech (a chalkboard) or high tech (a 3-D interactive visualization), a tool’s learning benefits depend on when, where, how, and why you use it. We can help you find a tool or set of tools that aligns with your goals, and provide you support as you select and integrate solutions effectively into your teaching.

Information Visualization Tools

The effective use of any technology in teaching requires thoughtful consideration and planning. Whether low tech (a chalkboard) or high tech (a 3-D interactive visualization), a tool’s learning benefits depend on when, where, how, and why you use it. We can help you find a tool or set of tools that align with your goals, and provide you support as you select and integrate solutions effectively into your teaching.

Virtual Classroom

First and foremost a virtual classroom is a learning environment, therefore the tools offered to support this environment should ultimately support the learning goals. Depending on the goal, some tools perform better than others. Tools like Skype, Webex, Adobe Connect are designed for connecting remotely and interacting synchronously, potentially lending themselves to support educational goals like, for example, meeting with students outside of class time.

Mobile Devices

New opportunities for engaging students in education emerge with the proliferation of smart phones, tablets, and their applications designed for novel interactions with content, coupled with ubiquitous communication capabilities. Because these technologies are evolving rapidly, instructors may find it difficult to keep up. Eberly is here to help faculty who are interested in exploring their options or using mobile devices to support their teaching and learning goals.  

What are clickers and how do they work?

Clickers are an interactive technology that enables instructors to pose questions to students and immediately collect and view the responses of the entire class. This is how clickers work:

1. Instructors present multiple-choice questions (verbally or with presentation software or with the i>clicker software).
2. Students click in their answers using remote transmitters, available at the bookstore (i>clicker, the system supported at Carnegie Mellon, uses radio frequency transmitters, which are more reliable than previous versions of this technology).
3. The system instantly collects and tabulates the results, which instructors can view, save, and (if they wish) display anonymously for the entire class to see.