Brainstorming: Using Technology in the Classroom

• Take virtual field trips.
• Create individual or student-made videos for demonstrations or to illustrate stories, etc.
• Create reports that use the scanner to incorporate pictures into a document.
• Conduct a simulated science experiment viewed on computer to cut risk and expense.
• Create a simulation to demonstrate high-risk activity referred to in fiction or nonfiction.
• Excerpts (video, audio, or print) from various versions of the same scene in a play could be referenced for students to compare.
• Provide spreadsheets, graphs, and charts to tie in with units studied.
• Portfolios could be in disk form to be shown on a computer/laptop at an interview.
• Videotape interviews or speeches for critique.
• Diagram sentences in colors to represent functions.
• Visit other classes via Pic-Tel.
• E-mail students in other countries for foreign language practice.
• Distance learning from zoo site, etc.
• Publish writing and art on the Web.
• Create or choose costumes for play production or story illustration using Internet research.
• Create posters and promotions.
• Do a local news broadcast show.
• Use video camera for interviews.
• Speeches employing PowerPoint.
• Create transparencies for overhead using computer printer.
• Do data searches for info to graph.
• Organize names, events, etc. by dates to create timelines.
• Use data base to group authors (scientists, mathematicians, musicians, etc.) by chronology of birth, sex, ethnic background, nationality, etc.
• Use handheld computers to simulate the spread of disease through infection by using the Cooties program.
• Allow students to vote for favorite novels, paintings, etc. using polling feature in e-mail.
• Create a puzzle for students to solve, looking for answers to the pieces on the Internet.
• Hold a Tech Fair, and give prizes to the teachers or students who have the five best ideas.
• Use digital photos to create a storyboard for an original short story.
• Use digital photos and music to create accompaniment for a poetry reading, etc.
• Create a class CD with photos, music, writing, etc.
• Put lecture notes and assignments on class webpage.
• Create three-dimensional stories. One student could write the basic plot line. Another could add a character description. Another could add elaboration to the action sequences, supply an alternative ending, etc. Use word processing or e-mail to compose.
• Communicating with a student at another computer or in another school, a student could send via e-mail a list of personal items that could be owned by a story character. The other person would e-mail back his or her description of the character, based on the possessions. This is another way to brainstorm.
• Create docudrama, a talk show interview, or a reenactment of history using local television access stations or local radio station or video camera.
• Compare literary work to artwork or music, accessing through the Internet.
• Research. (Britannica online, etc.)
• Teacher/student or peer editing using contrasting ink color or highlighting feature for high visibility.
• Post book lists (personal favorites, top 100 novels of all time, Nobel Prize winners, best science fiction books, etc.) or book/movie/music reviews on your web page for students to use for reference. Maybe use this material for an extra credit item once a week like social studies teachers use current events.
• Post Jeopardy-type questions on website. Maybe they would be clues to a puzzle. (Need more than one. "Collect them all" idea.)
• Use e-mail to communicate with students in other schools to compile lists of regional teenage slang. You could provide the descriptors. (All e-mail would be considered public communication, available to teachers, parents, school, etc. in high school.)
• Prepare a document that includes links to websites.
• Demonstrate ease of editing by showing how a writer can change the name of the main character when the novel is finished. (Editing is more than spell check.)
• Put the class syllabus on the web page.
• Demonstrate a virtual frog dissection (froguts.com).
• Create class video for parent night (K-12) or for recruiting for a program (college).
• Provide a list of available equipment for students to access along with locations, procedures for use, etc. Post on the class website.
• Post blurbs on famous scientists, chance inventions, science trivia, experiments gone wrong, etc. on your website to promote curiosity.
• Use photos of buildings or objects to pose mathematical problems. Scan photos to use on web page or as a printed transparency.
• To tie in technical and vocational arts, focus on the setting of a piece of literature by looking at maps, industry, architecture, clothing, textiles, recipes, cooking, blueprints (mathematics), sleeping capacity on slave ships, etc. Research using the Internet.
• The Crucible Project webpage (http://www.curriculumunits.com/crucible/main3.htm) is an example of the above.
  Note: This link will open a separate browser window
• Use multiple windows that allow a person to read a text, watch a performance, and make notes at the same time.
• Digital Detectives Series (Running Press) allows kids to solve the crime in each book by using the latest in technology, using the Internet, journaling, etc.
• Students could keep an electronic mentoring log if they are helping another student. They could log in time and progress.
• Students could learn to keep electronic folders of items they have written using the word processor. They could organize these in folders by class subject.