How technology supports active learning

Something I'm thinking about this week ...

How technology supports active learning
- CMD
- Writing
- Simulated real life
- Subject-specific tools (CAD, etc.)
- Creating multimedia (chitwood, gale, others)
- Research and inquiry (internet)
- Problem-solving tools (robotics toy, finale,
- Reflection (pedagogy lab)

Chickering and Ehrmann got me thinking along this line, but they only offered three choices: asynch, liveChat, learning by doing. (That last one’s too broad – isn’t “doing” what we mean by active learning?)

Any other ideas??

Using technology to reflect

I have been talking lately with the chair of our PE dept. here and he has an interesting idea. He's somehow found the funding for an entire lab of beefy G5s with huge processors and a terabyte of server storage. He plans to have PE teachers in his program videotape themselves teaching, code the different segments of their classes into specific teaching techniques, and then be able to search, aggregate, compare, etc. these short coded segments with old videos of their own teaching, or with clips from other teachers. This, I feel, is an improvement on the old "video tape your entire lesson and then reflect on the entire lesson" form of teacher reflection. This way, they reflect on specific skills, and the evidence is there in video.

Has anyone ever heard of anything similar to this. Let me know!