Jared Ropelato

Publication Date

2008

Document Type

Project

Degree

Master of Education (MEd)

MA Concentration

Educational Technology, Innovative Learning

Abstract

Technology seems to have become the buzzword in education. Overhead transparencies are giving way to digital projectors and stand-alone lectures have been replaced with a multi-media blitz of sound bites and video clips. PowerPoint presentations have seemingly become a staple of the "modern" classroom. There is no longer a question of whether technology should be used in education; it is now a question of how it should be used. The question now has become, how should technology be used. Is a Power Point lecture really all that different from a lecture using overhead transparencies? There's an old adage that gets to the core of the technological problem in today's classroom, " ... teach a man to fish". Teachers are delivering content using technology, but not enough teachers are "teaching" with technology. Technology is not in the students' hands, at least in the classroom. Educators are still using old models of question response, even with this new technology. " ... any question is of no benefit to the learners and teacher unless the learner processes the question and participates in the learning activity" (Ward, 2003). This paper will show that using CPS systems, technology can not only be placed directly in the hands of students, but has also been shown to improve attentiveness and content retention as well. "These results demonstrate that the application of APF in the lecture theater has been of significant use in the students' learning process; both increasing the mean pass rate of individuals exposed to it and reducing the variability between the achievements of different students" (Paulis and Massen, 1998).

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