Incorporating Technology with Lab Instruction

I came upon this link from the Edutopia web site after visiting a laboratory setting where the instructor was going from table to table demonstrating the blood smear techniques for a clinical lab. While taking ten minutes or more to demonstrate this technique to a small group of students, the rest of the class was sitting around waiting for their turn with the demonstration.

Given the basic tools available with which to instruct, the teacher was doing the best he could with what he had. I thought of how we, the school administration, can provide better resources for this outstanding lab instructor.

Two technologies described in The Horizon Report, Mobiles and Cloud Computing, seem to be a viable and practical solution to improving instruction in our clinical lab (Johnson, 2009). We can start by employing the Active View Visual Presenter (www.prometheanworld.com) for demonstrating technique on a large screen. Large, clear images will provide students with visual input augmented by the auditory input from the instructor’s explanations.

The Active View Camera is connected to a computer which is connected to a projector, simple enough. Video recordings can then be downloaded, saved and transmitted to the student’s mobile phones for review, discussions, elaborations, insertion into PowerPoint video presentations, etc... These video recordings can also become part of a You tube collection for student viewing as part of homework or reference resources.

The scenarios described above are a mixture of classroom and online learning environments. The technology integration I am proposing, and will probably implement in the near future, should provide a contextual framework upon which students can build knowledge as well as continue to add to this knowledge base. Students should be able to make sense of the information provided via these technologies thus offsetting the concerns proposed by Lim (Lim, 2004).

References:

Active View Visual Presenter, http://www.prometheanworld.com/server.php?show=nav.21224&cmp=AvEdutop , Accessed 2-16-10

Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/ http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-introduction-video

Johnson, L., Levine, A., & Smith, R. (2009). The Horizon Report (2009 ed.). Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/

Lim, C. P. (2004). Engaging learners in online learning environments. TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, 48(4), 16–23.