October 2003 — Features
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Implementing a Mobile Lab in a Faculty of Education
Secondary science. Our first use of the Mobile Lab in actual classroom trials was in the secondary science curriculum area of the faculty. In this situation, use of the Mobile Lab occurred as an extension of a technology professional development effort that had begun several months earlier. We had been working with a cohort of instructors to get them started with integrating and modeling technology by creating Web sites for their courses.
At our institution we use the WebCT system in which instructors can get course sites up quickly, incorporating such features as an online class calendar and lecture documents; hyperlinks to resource Web sites; a searchable glossary; text-based messaging with attachments so students can share documents; electronic assignment submission; and grading that allows students to view exam and assignment marks privately, as well as see group statistics.
Several undergraduate secondary science classes have now used the Mobile Lab. The instructors felt that it has been very beneficial to be able to model technology use in their regular classroom setting with all of their other resources still nearby. They were able to facilitate hands-on practice in a variety of situations such as a discussion on using Microsoft PowerPoint to manage and provide resources in the middle or high school classroom, exploration of a WebCT site from both an instructor and student viewpoint, an interactive Web-based virtual frog dissection, working with provincial exam test banks, as well as trying an online learning styles inventory and printing their results with the printer available on the wireless network.
After having experienced the Mobile Lab in instructor-led sessions, students in several secondary science classes asked their instructors to book it for their use during student presentations. The students used the technology at particular points in their presentation to facilitate hands-on demonstrations of a science lesson that incorporated the use of Web-based resources. It was extremely convenient in this situation to bring the technology into the regular classroom, because the students also needed access to various lab materials available in the room for physical demonstrations that were also part of their presentations.
Elementary mathematics. We had undertaken a technology integration initiative with the cohort of elementary math education instructors the year before the Mobile Lab was implemented. These instructors required at least one or two computer lab sessions with their classes each term. With a large student population, the basic math methods course had on average 10 sections per term. It was difficult to schedule all of these sections into our regular computer labs, because there were always conflicts with other courses that had full-term bookings. Scheduling is now going more smoothly for the math group with the arrival of the Mobile Lab.
Undergraduate elementary mathematics education classes have now used the Mobile Lab on several occasions to access Web sites related to teaching math. In one class, the students sat in small groups to complete an assignment in which they were asked to examine various questions appearing on a sample provincial achievement test and discuss implications on math teaching. The instructors have commented that the Mobile Lab facilitates small group work and discussions much better than working in a regular computer lab.
