Salt Palace Presentation

My wife and I were driving around Salt Lake City, last evening, looking at the lights en route to attending the Nutcracker ballet. As we drove past the Salt Palace, we both recalled how, twenty years ago, I gave a Utah Council for Computers in Education conference presentation called, "One Computer for 64 eyeballs. Using the LCD to Magnify Your Computer." Little did I know, at the time (I had written a grant to purchase and use a monochrome LCD plate connected to my Apple IIgs computer to use in my sixth grade class in Davis County), how very cutting edge that presentation was! So much has happened in since then. SmartBoards with ceiling mounted projectors have become cutting edge in many classrooms. In fact, I have been a sales representative for mimio interactive whiteboards in the midwest, during the past decade.

Yesterday, in a Granite School District classroom, in Salt Lake City, I was given the password to a computer that was connected to the ceiling mounted projector. I was in heaven, even though it was the day before Winter break and the kids were wild. I started out by projecting the powerpoint of the Periodic Table, which I had been working on at home but had never shown to an audience. I let it play automatically as I gave the textbook Reading assignment on reading Science applications. After the kids began to recognize Elements such as "Gold" and "Silver" and ask questions about the vocabulary, I strayed from the assigned activity and had the students "repeat after me" as we chanted the 118 names of the Elements. They understood that these vocabulary words would be useful to them in Chemistry classes down the road.

My fascination with the Periodic Table actually spawned while playing a computer game called Dr. Brain. A computer graphic character that looked like a mouse dressed as a Professor pronounced the names of the Elements while the game player clicked on the one letter or two letter symbols for the elements.

Back to the pre-Holiday classroom ... I projected and edited before their eyes, the story of Rindercella, which I also had stored on my jump drive. They were instructed to copy the text with their "best handwriting" knowing, however, that if they all had access to keyboards they would be typing or keying the text. The advantage to word processing is that we can go beyond keyboarding for speed and accuracy as we teach editing and revising skills. I would like to survey the schools to find out how many software packages in use today are encouraging students to learn from their mistakes. How many go beyond the Daily Oral Language activities of marking errors and actually allow students to revise and reprint their work after peer editing.