Another Lens

A document camera, an LCD projector, and a laptop: these comprise my personal technology trinity. At any given moment of the classroom hour, I’ve got one, both, or all of them on.

My work in navigating the uses, applications, and maintenance of these three has been largely self-taught. And thanks to two wonderful colleagues – one a teacher, the other our tech support guy – I’ve been able to cobble together some pretty decent projects.

But I’d like to go deeper. I’d like to explore what media choices I make for what lesson, and to explore the reasoning behind those decisions. Education is fast on taking up the call for technology. But before I take, use, and ultimately own any tool in my teaching practice, there are two questions that need an unequivocal “yes” answer:

1. Will it enhance or improve student understanding?
2.   Will it help me more effectively and/or accurately deliver content? 

Take the document camera. Like most of my experiences with state adopted ed-tech, it was simply put on my desk. No note, no training. That’s not necessarily a complaint, by the way, because the lack of mandates allowed me to toy with its applications on my own. (This device replaced our overhead projectors, and in my more wistful moments I imagine them waking from sleep, like the Star Wars Imperial Walkers, hot bulbs, lenses, and whiny fans slogging through the backrooms of Institutional Obsolescence.)

I love the document camera. And if the medium is the message, then here’s what the document camera enables me to do more effectively:

*    Demonstrate the writing process. Both my own, and that of my students. More importantly, I can do this immediately. With the overhead projector, I’d have to make student photocopies, transfer them onto a transparency, and wait until the next day. And once a piece of writing is photocopied, it settles into permanence. The document camera offers a window into the stop-check-rethink- continue process that good writing requires, and I can have students come up and talk through their writing choices as they are writing.

·         Take pictures of primary source paintings or photos that I can’t find online. I can use these to supplement presentations.

·        Have student present graphic illustrations of new concepts they’re learning. When I use the word “graphic,” here I mean it to refer to a “visual impression in words.” Connections between literary characters, cause-effect relationships, feudalism – these are some examples of concepts I’ve required students to create graphics for.

·       Unlike a powerpoint or projected word doc, the document camera is far more immediate and alive. There’s a sense of real-time to it that permanent text can’t quite capture. In that sense, I find the document camera to be one of the more resonant and meaningful pieces of technology I’ve used.

Things I can’t do with it:

·         Have a permanent, static list of concepts or words. The document camera is mostly a device for demonstrating process. It is a temporal tool, and a little anarchic. (Cool.)

·        Get mobile. I can’t stand in the back and circle, highlight, or underline words. The kids and I are stuck up front.

·         Use sound or motion.

·         Use any kind of digital overlays. Possibly there is an app for that somewhere, but I haven’t seen it. 

Some mediums just match content more effectively. I plan to grapple more with the uses and applications of other devices in future posts.