Instructional Principle: Students learn more if the classroom is managed effectively. The amount of time available for learning is largely determined by the teacher's instructional and management skills and the priorities set by the school administration.
Teachers must necessarily perform other activities besides teaching. For example, they must often take attendance, collect milk money, settle disputes, fill out forms, and keep records on student performance. Teachers with efficient management skills, therefore, will have more time to allocate to teaching than teachers who lack these skills. In a typical school, variations in management abilities may cause the amount of time actually used for instruction to vary between 50 and 90 percent of the scheduled time available.
If business managers use computers to run their companies more efficiently, then teachers should likewise be able to use computers to manage their classrooms. By learning to use the computer to handle traditional paperwork, teachers can free themselves from numerous noninstructional tasks. The computer, however, is just a tool. Purchasing a computer will not necessarily make a business thrive. The manager must know what the programs can do and how to use them. The same principle applies to education. The computer can help educators manage their affairs more effectively, but they must understand what the programs can do and know how to use the computer effectively.
Although effective classroom management involves many skills besides computer expertise, the following functions can be handled by the computer. Most of these functions are described in Chapters 7 and 8.
Actually, it's almost safe to say that the computer can in some way help with every management activity that a teacher performs. Chapter 7 describes general software that is useful in many fields, including nearly all areas of education. If you become familiar with these programs, you'll discover that they can often help you manage your educational activities more effectively. If you don't know what a database management program is, for example, you probably think you can get along without one. But numerous teachers have discovered that a database program helps them to organize grades, notes, inventories, appointments, and many other items more effectively than would otherwise be possible. Chapter 8 describes software (e.g., gradebook programs, such as MistyCity's Grade Machine) that is directly tailored to these educational applications.
The preceding paragraphs have discussed software specifically designed for management activities. In addition, many instructional programs have management functions built into them. The student may run these programs when the teacher is not present; later the teacher can insert the disk into the computer's drive and determine how well the student is meeting instructional objectives and decide on the next step in instruction. Management functions are becoming more common in instructional programs, and their quality is improving. For example, some programs permit the teacher to enter information into a disk so that the computer will "recognize" the student and provide an assignment suited to that student's level of instruction. The computer then records the student's performance so the teacher can examine it later. If the student completes one unit of instruction, the computer can tell the student to stop or advance to the next unit, depending on the instructions given by the teacher. This kind of program enables the teacher to manage instruction in such a way as to apply several of the other principles discussed in this chapter.
ADD NEWER EXAMPLES
Classroom Management
PIViT
http://www.umich.edu/~pbsgroup/PIViT.html
The Project Integration Visualization Tool (PIViT), developed as a flexible design tool for Macintosh and Windows operating systems, helps teachers visualize and plan complex, integrated curricula such as those associated with Project-Based Science. In Project-Based Science students learn substantial science content by finding solutions to authentic questions through inquiry.
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