Christine Lange, a science teacher at Memorial High School in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, recently participated in the 2011 Siemens STEM Institute at Discovery Education, according to the Wisconsin Leader-Telegram. The summit, which accepted 50 of the most impressive of the 4,000 applicants, included seminars on classroom technology integration and the future of technology in education.
Access to classroom technology, like a document camera, interactive whiteboard or HDMI projector, gives students a distinct advantage over their peers who exclusively experience traditional classroom instruction. A classroom projector, for instance, may have a variety of input source capabilities that allow students to visualize a concept in a number of different ways quickly.
"Technology is something that all kids are using and they're all excited about," Lange told the source. "Students are so comfortable using Twitter and they are so comfortable using Facebook. Now what we're doing is showing them that they can use those ideas and those programs to make science and math reachable and exciting."
Over the course of the week-long seminar, Lange attended a series of workshops that introduced teachers to such technologies as open-source collaborative software that allows students to work on a single document together over the internet, as well as a program that provides free, teacher-monitored chat services.
