HS Teachers use Tablet PC's to Enhance Varied Curriculae

High School teachers have rolled out an exciting new technology teaching tool this year as part of a new Teacher Mentoring Program. A group of teachers visited a high school that had incorporated the use of Tablet PCs and LCD projectors into the classroom in order to capitalize on the power of new digital inking technology. They were led by Mr. Tim Wedra, President of Teachers and Technology, who is serving as a a Technology Consultant for Beth Tfiloh.

What they observed was the tremendous educational value of a Tablet PC, which employs a special stylus and software to capture "digital ink" similar to writing on a whiteboard. Teachers are able to prepare lesson plans using a variety of Microsoft Office products, and then freely annotate them as part of a lesson plan. Then the document can be easily archived for students to give them the benefit of all of their teacher's notes for future reference.

This group of seven teachers then began working with their own Tablet PCs to enhance their subjects. Dr. Ellen Briefel prepares lesson plans using OneNote (part of the new Office 2007 suite) and adds Internet links to animated interactive graphs with sound that dramatically demonstrate the laws of physics with real-time simulations. She also incorporates many images as part of her lesson plans and downloads her digital "class notes" to her class webpage. View Physics class notes. Rabbi Jack Nahmod is now able to freely annotate original pages of the Talmud and other Judaic texts that he scans into his Tablet PC or downloads from the Internet and then uses a variety of ink colors to add extensive annotatations and highlights. View Judaics class notes. Mrs. Barbara Rothstein uses her Tablet PC to create free form mathematical expressions, graphs and develop proofs, much as she used to do on a white board for her classes. But now her classes can download her class notes and students can concentrate on understanding the lesson rather than having to take copious notes.

These teachers demonstrated their growing proficiency with the Tablet PC at a recent High School Faculty Meeting. Mrs. Zipora Schorr, who spearheaded the program, is encouraging other teachers to follow their lead by submitting proposals for how they would use this exciting new technology in their classroom. We look forward to seeing more innovative lesson plans as our teachers continue to develop their skills and mentor each other as part of a community of lifelong learners.