Abstract:

In many school settings, especially those in urban, low income, ethnically diverse areas, technology resources may be severely limited and or out of date. In such places, there are often additional challenges. Students may not be learning in their native language. Or there are challenges to learning as a result of poverty, including poor living conditions and nutrition. These not only hinder academic achievement and progress, but make effective, engaging lessons all the more imperative. The students who most need good equipment to work with – up to date tablets, laptops, etc, are unfortunately least likely to have access to them. So maximizing the effectiveness of existing resources is essential.

The author will present a variety of innovative strategies involving free online content, coupled with existing software common to most computers. These strategies have been used with excellent results in inner-city schools with poverty demographics in California. They would be easily applicable to other settings with limited technology resources. These techniques would also work well with really excellent equipment. For instance free or existing computer software (some of it online) can be used by students and teachers to animate lessons and concepts with very effective results. Animation examples from sciences such as chemistry, biology and physics will be presented, as well as some from history.