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Popular Technology Curriculum Gets an Update
Recent technological advances have led to the growth of wireless connectivity, faster processors, and the concept of the digital home filled with interconnected devices for entertainment and communication. The Journey InsideSM, an online multimedia curriculum that explains how computers and the Internet work, has been updated and expanded to address these innovations with engaging new lessons and activities.
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The Journey InsideSM includes a complete curriculum for self-paced learning along with resources for teachers. |
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The content is geared for students learning about science and technology in grades 5-9.
The new version retains the interactive, media-rich, self-paced learning approach while adding new information about recent technological advances. Classroom resources for teachers have been expanded, too. There is no need to register to use The Journey Inside. Other enhancements include:
- Interactive lessons and activities: New lessons use the interactive thinking tools available on the Intel Innovation in Education Web site. For example, a lesson using Visual Ranking, an interactive thinking tool for ranking items in an ordered list, helps students to better understand resistance and conductivity.
- Improved delivery: Online lessons and videos have been optimized to run more smoothly on a greater variety of computers. Now, students and teachers will be able to take advantage of everything the site has to offer, including virtual field trips. With these improvements, The Journey Inside becomes a virtual science museum Web site, full of interesting facts, videos, and activities teachers can select and arrange into their own online lessons for students.
Technology raises many questions that come up in the classroom: How does the Internet work? What are microprocessors? How is electricity transformed into the images on the computer screen? These questions are all fundamental to understanding the Information Age, according to teachers who make regular use of The Journey Inside in their classes.
Lisa Stamper, a middle school teacher in Georgia, says she has been provided with no textbooks for her classes in business and information technology. "I use The Journey Inside to teach the objectives from my curriculum that have to do with understanding the functions of hardware, operating system software, networking, and the Internet as well as the effects and trends of technology on society," she says.
Stamper appreciates the learning style of the online curriculum. "The lessons are more customizable than textbooks, and they are interactive and interesting without security risks. I love the activities that let the students discover or apply information they just learned."
Teaching in a technology lab with Internet access, Stamper selects lessons from The Journey Inside that meet her learning goals. "I customize lessons based on my curriculum. After I introduce each lesson, the students can work together, alone, and at home to gain understanding of the concepts." To assess student learning, Stamper creates her own online quizzes.
Stamper says improved delivery of the videos will make a good curriculum even better. "The only parts of The Journey Inside that I purposely did not include in my lessons are the videos. The students were encouraged to view them, but I did not require the students to access them. Now that "the videos load faster and more reliably, I can include the content from the videos in my lesson requirements," she explains.
"Students need to understand that the computer is more than a box," says David Brear, a middle school teacher from British Columbia, Canada. "Before I teach them how to use software, I want them to understand what's happening inside the machine. What makes different images appear on the screen when they use a software application or go to the Internet?"
Brear selects lessons from The Journey Inside to use as group learning activities during a nine-week technology class that attracts diverse learners. "The kids love it. I have them write reflections, and many of them comment about how the videos helped them understand a concept," he says. "The content is excellent."
In addition to his middle school teaching, Brear also teaches educational technology to university students, many of them in a pre-service program. "These are new teachers, wondering what to do in their own classrooms. The panic is starting to set in," Brear says, with the chuckle of a veteran. He introduces them to The Journey Inside as a well-designed curriculum they can use with confidence with their students. "This gives them another set of resources," he adds. "It's another thing for their bag of tricks. For a new teacher, it's important to build that up."
For a look at the new and improved version of The Journey Inside, go to www.intel.com/education/journey/.
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