Origins

I am a teaching fellow at the University of Auckland, where I teach large undergraduate classes within the faculty of Engineering.  I am always on the look out for tools which will allow deep learning and a strong level of engagement to occur within classes, even if there are over 500 students in the room.  Tablet technology is developing at a rapid rate and I believe there is the possibility to use tablets devices as an extremely effective teaching tool. 

 

I am particularly interested in using tablets to replace the use of the document camera, which is my current lecturing tool of choice.  My students have a strong preference for seeing problems worked by hand, which the document camera allows, but this comes at the cost of being tied to the lectern (and presents other workflow issues as well; during the lecture I need to remember to keep the paper in frame, in focus and oriented correctly while post lecture I have to scan all my notes to pdf before uploading them). 

 

I would like to promote more engagement within lectures by being able to move around the theatre, while working through problems by hand.   A wireless tablet equipped with the right infrastructure could allow this to be done.  I want a tool that will allow roaming and support high resolution writing (with the hope that it could also run the Engineering software packages we use in teaching).  I've had some success using Doceri on the iPad but writing on the iPad (even with a stylus) is a bit like lecturing using a crayon.  There is also no way of running packages like Matlab.

 

I am now trialing a Microsoft Surface Pro  and the initial results look very promising, although further work is required to find the right mix of hardware and software.  This blog will outline my experiences with the surface as I investigate ways of using it to teach and promote deep learning.