How One Science Teacher Integrates Laptops into Lessons
Carol Donnelly (pseudonym) has taught 13 years, the last six at Las Montanas. She has been using laptops since 2002 when they were introduced at the school. In 2009, when I interviewed her and observed her classes, she was teaching biology to honors students (one class), regular students (one class), and English Language Learners (ELL) in three classes. She used the same basic lesson for all of her biology classes, stretching out the content for ELL classes while going in more depth in the regular and honors classes (e.g., research papers, PowerPoint presentations, Science Fair projects). She integrated laptops into her lessons once a week.
Every Wednesday, she told me, is laptop day. She brings a mobile cart from the Media Center to her classroom. In one lesson I observed, Donnelly began class with a review of yesterday’s material on photosynthesis. Afterwards she had students open their laptops to watch animations of photosynthesis that she had loaded on their machines earlier. A pop-up quiz appeared after the animations. Donnelly walked around and checked student scores on the quiz. She then summarized the concept of photosynthesis by questioning
