Even in college, most of my profs still used overhead transparencies and a blackboard with chalk (state school ) and that was only two years ago. It was kinda funny when the university replaced all the blackboards without asking anyone and the profs were complaining for the semester about how much of a pain whiteboards/markers are. of course there were LCD projectors for powerpoint and all that good stuff everywhere too. never saw a smartboard tho but like i said--state school.

but scantrons were used in bigger classes like crazy. they tried the whole i-clicker thing but they didn't seem to be too popular especially since they're 15 $

古いTechnologyですが、まだ使われます。
I haven't seen Scantron for a long time. I used them in college (2003).
今、Harvard大学の日本語のじゅぎょうでoverhead projectorをまだ使います。

Jarvik7 Wrote:My experience in university is that taking notes is a waste of time. It takes away from your concentration and (if you're like me) you only use them come test time. It is far better for profs to give outlines (or a copy of their ppt slides) out before hand so you can follow along in class and make BRIEF notes instead of trying to transcribe everything that happens.

If I ever go back to Canada I'll be teaching Japanese, and I won't make my students take notes.

This is the exact reason why I make my students take notes. The textbook we use at the school where I teach (secondary school) does not give enough information for them to study solely from that.
And while they are copying down the notes, I wait until they're done, so it doesn't take away from their concentration. The key with taking notes is to make them brief, like you said. If you are trying to write down everything that happens, you are doing something wrong.
I make the outline on the board for the students to copy down and I make sure that it contains everything they need. This way, they will also learn gradually how to make outlines of their own, and by the time they get to college/university they will know how to make proper notes.
Lastly, if I'd give them the outline myself, they'd stuff it in their bags and not look at it again until (maybe) test time. I prefer them to write the outline down themselves so they've at least focused on the topic once.

Perhaps you can also take some tips from this for your next university class?

As for the topic: We are getting more smartboards, but I don't have one yet in my classroom (I can't wait, though; I'm getting sick of all this chalk dust). However, we still use VCR sometimes (though I try to use DVD mostly as I have a laptop and a beamer in my classroom). The beamer makes OHP obsolete, though I must say I have a colleague who used OHP until about a year ago (when he also got a laptop and a beamer). Scranton sheets: There's still a few colleagues that use them. I never have.

Well, I was talking about university, where the students and classes are much different from those in secondary school.

Students given an outline in university write notes on the outline during class. They may file it away never to look at it after that, but at least they didn't spend the entire class writing furiously instead of paying attention, processing the information, and contributing back to the class (class size permitting).

Teachers in university do not have time to wait for students to finish writing before proceeding. Exposure time is usually only twice per week for 50 minutes, so the majority needs to be spent giving information, discussion and answering questions.

Classes that I remember from highschool weren't very dense with information, so I suppose you have lots of free time in which to wait for students to write what little was covered. It is a big difference from some of my more dense university courses like classical jp literature where even just brief notes will fill 7+ pages per class.

Having the students "paying attention, processing the information, and contributing back to the class" is MUCH more important than making sure that they have sufficiently complete notes with which they can cram later. The whole point of education is for the student to learn, think, and apply, not to pass tests. If all that happens in a class is students writing information dictated by the teacher, then the teacher is completely useless since an audiobook would fill the same role. I realize that this is difficult in highschool since most of the students couldn't care less about the being there, but most university classes aside from basic requirement ones have passionate students (in my experience).

Some people at my university would still try to write down everything that the prof said, even if we were given an outline beforehand. I guess they were of the opinion that learning must always be active rather than passive. Ultimately there is no right or wrong way to approach lectures & classes in higher education, since they only account for a tiny minority of your overall study time. Their primary function is social, in my experience.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Exposure time is usually only twice per week for 50 minutes, so the majority needs to be spent giving information, discussion and answering questions.

Yeah, same here... ?

Jarvik7 Wrote:Classes that I remember from highschool weren't very dense with information, so I suppose you have lots of free time in which to wait for students to write what little was covered.

Not really. I do end up having to skip certain things like speaking and listening to make sure they have the grammar and vocabulary up-to-standard. Grammar I can generally explain only once, which is why they need good notes; there is no repetition of the explanation. If they don't understand it the first time, they can't do their exercises and have to visit me after school for extra explaining.
Not my fault; my school requires me to finish the same amount of chapters as other schools but with fewer hours as we offer a lot of extra subjects. So my job is to make sure the pupils have all that down, while at the same time making sure we get all the stuff done in 2/3 of the time. I once challenged one of my university professors to try and make an outline of my planning and she had to admit it was really hard.

My point is: I resent it when people compare a relatively 'free' university course with loads of self-study on the students' behalf to a jam-packed secondary school lesson where the pupils are expected to do the same amount of self-study but with less training in how to do it.

Funny, when I read the previous post about a college which bought smartboards even though they weren't able to be the tenure fees. I was like of course, laying of those costs is a much larger gain than buying a few smartboards.
But I must confess I was kinda outraged when I went to my yogaclass, and found out not only that there were large plasmascreens mended to the ceiling halfway the rooms, they also had installed some of those shiny smartboards. And boy, are they still shiny when the lights are out. It was still on even though it was late at night, and it's not like we use them for the yogaclass, but everything was still on! Clearly electricity savings aren't a priority either.
I know the costs of these boards, projectors, computers, plasmascreens and new furniture is but a fraction of the millions, maybe even billions of euros the university needs to save. But still, I'm pretty sure at least the university magazine would have been very happy with those funds, but who needs a university magazine anyway, right, you don't need any critical and informative sounds in a university, do you?
grmbl *goes off to fume over her studybooks, so she'll be out of that hellhole asap*

nest0r Wrote:By the way: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01...board.html - Make your own Wii smartboard

Lots of interesting ideas and links to a cpl other resources I didn't know about, in the article/comments.

Well, just to reiterate this prev. comment, these look like a viable alternative to overpriced smartboard technology. That's the kind of thinking I'd like to see more of, personally.

Also: http://www.physorg.com/news183318312.html - A computer per student leads to higher performance than traditional classroom settings

I think the wealthiest RevTK members should buy us poor folks laptops.