Thanks to a grant from HP, two class periods of high school chemistry students started to use Tablet PCs about two weeks ago. Students’ attitudes ranged from computer confident to computer phobic and their abilities ranged from computer ignorant to computer amateur.
These 66 students are part of a brand new digital academy, in which the sophomores were selected based on their attendance and GPA. Students with marginal GPAs (below 2.0) and poor attendance were interviewed and accepted into the academy. The goal of the academy is to help these “at risk” students to succeed in college preparatory courses.
After two weeks, I started to review notes and wanted to share the students’ successes and failures.
Assignments
Because the Tablet PCs were not prepared until months after their arrival, we were almost 9 weeks into the school year before the students could touch the Tablet PCs. Our first day was getting the kids comfortable in turning on the machines and gently turning the computers into tablet mode. They learned to use the pen, and park it in the garage without breaking the tip. We reviewed how to flip open the antenna and made sure the switch on the left showed that the wireless features were actually on.
Half of the kids were afraid to touch the screen with the pen but several kept forgetting to use the pen and tried to use their fingers to move webpages. If not for some of the more “energetic” kids, the first day would have been a disaster. Kids clearly were eager to help each other and the quiet ones felt comfortable with asking help from their peers.
Lessons learned: There is a huge challenge in getting the Tablet PCs out of the storage areas and out to the students and back in place by the end of the period. We were losing about 15 minutes the first couple of days but now have the time down to 10 minutes. Next, students would have been more comfortable if I had a handout with instructions for them to follow as they learned to launch applications.
Once students were comfortable getting out the PCs, opening up applications, and saving documents then we started on different assignments.
Assignment Number 1: Biographies
Having students write biographies of chemists is a common lesson for high school chemistry courses. Instead of having the kids write type the assignment in MS-Word, the kids were asked to keep their research in OneNote and publish their work on the classroom wiki.
Lessons learned: Crap. This was way too much to ask to be done this soon. Students were learning how to use OneNote but we couldn’t get their work saved because the Tablet PCs are reset each time the machines are powered off. This meant kids (who didn’t hear the instructions) lost work when they turned off the machines at the end of a period. Next, students struggled with surfing the web and determining the authority of a website. It took a long time before some students recognized that some sites were just “copies” of other sites. Very few students completed the assignment – and many became upset that they didn’t have more time. Since most do not have computers at home – this assignment was just too much; This assignment should not have been their first assignment.
Assignment Number 2: Graphing Periodic Trends
This assignment was a “redo” of an exercise completed the week before the Tablet PCs arrived. Students graphed the trends of atomic properties by hand and followed up with learning to add the data into an Excel spreadsheet and graph the data.
Lessons learned: Yes. This assignment worked. Students were so excited to learn about a spreadsheet and many were amazed that there were so many different types of graphs. This assignment is a keeper.
Assignment Number 3: PowerPoint Viewing
Students learned to download a PowerPoint presentation locally so that as the lecture was presented they were able to markup the slides with the pen.
Lessons learned: This activity excited students but I’m not sure they learned much in the process of marking up the slides. Instead, students should be given the text and asked to build good PowerPoints.
Assignment Number 4: Inking Problem Sets
Instead of printing problems sets and reading guides and completing the assignments with paper and ink, students inked answers to questions in Word 2007. Students also wrote their summaries into the same Word document.
Lessons learned: Yes. The room was so quiet while they worked and students groaned when they were asked to put the machines away. I’ve never seen these kids concentrate so much. Students who were not completing these worksheets by hand were working hard finishing the work on the Tablet PC.
Student Reactions
A quick, non-scientific poll conducted today suggests that the students prefer the Tablet PCs over paper and pen. The initial nervousness of touching a computer with a “pen” and never having confidence in saving documents on workspace.office.live has given in to joy and increased focus in completing assignments. I’m sure some of the excitement is the 66 kids knowing they were chosen from over 3,400 kids on the campus. They are feeling special.
What other assignments do I have in mind?
- Students will complete their quizzes and exams on their Tablet PC.
- Students will create flash cards for learning vocabulary.
- Students will create presentations (videos and PPTs) on chemistry topics.
Given the opportunity, what types of assignments would you build for these kids (to capture their attention and to help them learn the material)?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for the honest play-by-play! We are looking at going 1:1 with tablets next year and it's daunting thinking of all the “what ifs”. After seeing some really successful schools in action, you have to wonder how they got there, and since you're in the midst of it, it's more helpful to hear about your experiences.
You are most welcome. We have three core teachers – and all of us are eager to use these machines to help the kids. The other two teachers have not used the machines in the classroom yet but are developing lesson plans. They are also watching to see what goes wrong in the classroom
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