 Yeah, technology is fantastic in the classroom whether I'm using it in terms of a Hybrid class where I'm meeting with the students and then having them do stuff for me online or if they're true online courses I love the technology especially in my field because the technology allows a certain level of granularity that you really can't get Without the technology. What do I mean by that? When I have a language course If I only have 50 minutes or 90 minutes for a given class I can only cover so much material and if somebody has a question I need typically to answer that question and that kills time from doing other things I may want to do in the classroom When I have the options of using video or using an online format students can go into that video or into that online Format and repeat the material or they can look at other material more in-depth So for instance if I have a homework assignment of say 20 questions from one language into another What I'm able to do is maybe one or two in class and then the other 18 or 17 of them I would give online for the students to look at those. So there's a certain level of granularity a certain level of ability for students to repeat what they've learned or to look more closely into sentences What's also nice about that is students who know a certain sentence or know how to say something They don't need to watch that what they can do is they can focus their attention on a second third or a fourth sentence in the assignment because they're all movie files online for them to look at at any time It's also great for studying for examinations for the students They don't have to realize simply on their notebook They can go back and actually watch the lecture a second time a third time a fourth time and they can rewind it Did they catch that word? Did they understand that phrase? If they didn't get it the first time They simply rewind it watch it again. You can't do that in the classroom Well being a teacher today in teaching foreign languages teaching in hybrid courses or teaching online courses is very exciting I really wonder if it's ever been as exciting in In the academic world because of this technology I mean when you go back when I look at the teachers that my predecessor is going all the way back into the ancient world We started with clay tablets and they were very heavy and it was very limiting How much you could actually carry around with your actually you could learn and then from there the technology Brought more information with papyrus Papyrus was great, but it was in squirrels You know and then from there we moved into the notion of a book and then from books where there was a lot of information It was much lighter. You had the printing press So now you had massive amounts of books out there and then from there in the 20th century or 19 the 20th century We had the typewriter The typewriter along with the television combined to make yet another form of media which or another form of communication Namely using the computer and then they connected that to the telephone and now you have it online. So I really see Technology as simply the the next form of education the next form of Transmitting information between teacher and student and it's one where now we can get is much more information to the students We do it much more faster and we create much more interactivity So the equipment that I use for teaching courses online or courses that are hybrid courses really varies every semester It's evolutionary right now what I'm using is a program called Camtasia And I'm also using that in conjunction with a piece of hardware called live scribe So the Camtasia is great because it actually allows you to record screens on your computer and mix it with video So I can put a camera on Very often I get support right from it for the cameras They'll even come into the classroom and film the courses for me And then I can add later into it a screen so the students online can actually see me lecturing And they can see the material that I'm lecturing about the live scribe is actually it's a notebook where you write Material into into the notebook and it saves it as a PDF on your computer So I can take notes or I can give class lectures and send them out to the students Whether they're in a class like a hybrid format or an online format And that one actually originally came from IT. They gave me a loaner to try it out and I loved it so much I said I think I'm gonna try one of these for myself been using it ever since now What's great about trying this stuff here at Roger Williams University is that the IT department gives you the latitude to try the stuff They may not support all of the material that we have but they're certainly willing to use their facilities to help us Complete our projects. So for instance as I said Camtasia is one of the primary tools that I use but a lot of video goes in there And the IT department will help me with the video and show me how to incorporate that into my program So that I can use what I feel most comfortable with another Application that I've been using quite a bit is a program's piece It's a free piece of software called simple mind and what simple mind does it creates mind maps So you can create a screen that has all sorts of bubbles and all sorts of charts on it You can add material in there and what I'm hoping to do is create mind maps Not only of a course so that a student can look a just for a moment at the at the map of an entire class or of entire Semester and see what we're going to be covering But eventually I want to use the simple mind program to create a map where the students will contribute Information into the map themselves and through links on the simple mind program other students can click in to see what they found Moving forward with technology in the classroom. I want to see and I'm always looking for ways of creating more interactivity Between the students and the faculty especially when they're sitting at their desk in their apartment or in their dorm In front of a computer right now We're doing a great job offering lectures to students that are online with in video or having them respond back And forth with the faculty member But what we don't have is that right at the moment interactivity that you do get in the classroom And I think that is the area moving forward that I Want to pursue I want to pursue it with applications things like periscope or things like Adobe Captivate These are the sorts of programs that I think moving forward Will it allow students to feel as though they're more a part of a classroom experience even if they're online?