Favorite
activities in IPT
The Contour Map activity was the students' favorite, although
the teacher found presenting it very difficult and complicated.
The teacher's favorite activities were "Devil's Tower in
3-D" (Projecting topographic data/contour map) and "An
Eagle's-Eye View" (Modeling an Alaskan volcano) from Earth
& Space Science. Most of the students liked the "Devil's
Tower in 3-D" best, since they enjoyed drawing their own
contour maps. One of the students, Dan liked "An Eagle's-Eye
View" because of his interest in rocks and mountains. Vera
liked "Animal Hands" (Biology) best. Her explanation
was:
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"… The X-ray
of the hands because I am an animal person, I love animals and that's
just to see the different animal hands. I really like that (SI-8:
CPS: Vera, p.11).
Only Mary did not have any
favorite activities since she liked them all. Although the Contour Map
activity was one of the most difficult for the students, I observed
that they enjoyed doing this activity. Rick says:
"…[Activities]
sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is hard. Animal bone was easy.
I never used contour map before, that's why, it was hard" (SI-2:
CPS: Rick, p.3).
Ms. Rose's recommendations
and her future plan
Ms. Rose recommended the
following concerning the IPT program:
- IPT needs to have a source
of clip art within the program. When users want to use the LUT table,
just go and pull that out to use it.
- Since some of the activities
were too complicated, there needs to be a way to make directions easier.
Cutting down the numbers of steps and processes that you have to go
through to do certain things.
- There is a need to sample
some of the activities and extend the scientific process. The objectives
were basically teacher-oriented, suggesting that the teacher needs
to know what questions are going to be asked. What's the hypothesis?
What is the next step?
She also was aware that her
students did not have enough understanding of the program, which was
due to the nature of the IPT software. Her future plan is to train her
students in basic image processing skills and to try the Biology program
the following year.
Limitations of the study
The study was limited by the following:
- This study included one
teacher and one classroom.
- I did not get much information
from some of the participants I interviewed. This may have been due
to the lack of experience participants had with the kind of research
studied.
- The data consist of only
nine interviews, four classroom observations (video taped), computer
background questionnaire, and activity sheets.
- Another limitation was
establishing the validity and reliability for a research tool that
has never been used. To minimize this limitation the content validity
and face validity was established through a review of the interview
questions by three seventh graders, a seventh grade teacher and one
professor.
Summary of research findings
and interpretation:
The following central concepts were developed from the analysis of the
observations and the interviews with the teacher and students:
- The teacher used the IPT
software as a demonstration tool, introductory
tool, assessment tool, and visual concepts both in the classroom and
the
computer lab.
- According to the teacher,
the preparation time for the IPT activities was
time consuming. She also pointed out that some of the activities were
too
complicated and were difficult to understand.
- Technology failure and
frustration were experienced from time to time.
- The students reported
that learning with IPT was different from the regular
science class since IPT was computer based instruction and they liked
learning through the use of technology.
- IPT made learning easier
and faster through visual real life images, which
enhanced the understanding of abstract concepts.
- IPT had an impact on students'
grades; especially low achievers who made
significant improvement in their grades.
- The students expressed
their desire to use IPT more often or as much as
possible.
- The findings showed that
students wanted to use IPT in other subject
areas such as Social Studies, Language Arts and Math.
- IPT did not have much
impact on intercommunications within the class;
however, due to the students' difficulties with the use of IPT, the
students asked more questions of the teacher or their partners.
- IPT was compatible with
the curriculum and the Ohio State objectives in science teaching.
- IPT had many strong capabilities
such as animation, 3-D images,
visual, images of real life objects, and a measuring tool. The most
effective part of IPT was the measuring tool with the hands-on
experience.
- The use of IPT was highly
motivational for the students, especially for
those who had behavior problems and those who had been lower
achievers.
- IPT was the safest way
to learn science without worrying about outside
environmental conditions for these seventh graders.
- IPT did not have sufficient
guiding materials for either the teacher and
the students.
- Physics and Chemistry
areas were weak in terms of images.
General implications
The present investigation was directed at revealing the implementation,
effectiveness of the software, and the patterns of interaction between
the students and the IPT software. This study's analysis was also directed
at revealing the constructivist paradigm and visual learning in the
nature of the IPT software designs. It is stressed that in research
of this nature, the numbers of concepts are of critical importance,
and not the number of subjects studied, or the number of responses obtained.
The seventh grade middle
school students in this science class demonstrated their understanding
of science concepts using IPT in real-world situations although they
did not understand the technological basis of this image-processing
program. IPT as a tool in science classrooms helped students understand
abstract concepts by making them visual and manipulative. It also helped
them develop complex ideas by manipulating images and constructing the
meaning from these data.
CONCLUSION
IPT has a strong potential in increasing learning science. IPT enables
self-paced learning with sensitivity to different learning styles and
continuous assessment of student progress. However, the teacher and
students' experience with the IPT software offer insight into the problems
encountered in the IPT technology. The needs of the teacher and students
as the end-user of the IPT technology and their perceptions are important
to the improvement of this software in the respect of the
user interface, student oriented materials and others. However, the
teacher and the students' utilization of IPT technology have the potential
to solve the problems with more practice and training. Using IPT more
often seems to affect student learning positively. The experiences of
the teacher and the student who use IPT helped identify, innovate, and
incorporate these evolving technologies into learning science and
hands-on experience with real life objects.
Students can develop their
analytical, behavioral and visual learning skills based on the fact
that people learn best a) by doing; b) when they can actively use the
information; and c) when they are intrinsically motivated by the material
and its challenges. The IPT approach is designed to incorporate and
transcend the best aspects of current image processing teaching methodologies.
However, the user- interface and the complexity of some activities made
it a little difficult for these seventh graders to use this software
individually without getting much help from the teacher.
Recommendations
Reiterating, my research was limited in scope, namely one class for
approximately two months must preface any recommendations. My first
recommendation is to expand this research, not only in time to at least
six months, but also one other middle school. Based on my observations
and my interviews, I recommend the following:
- Based on the teacher's
opinion, students should be trained in Image
Processing Basic Skills to make students more aware of this kind of
data in IPT.
- Students should understand
and increase their awareness of the
applications of IPT from various perspectives. This increased awareness
may help students explore science-related careers.
- By providing useful student
oriented materials in IPT to discover
information, new users would have a more positive experience and
continue to use it without much help from the teacher.
- To be better educated
in the use of IPT, the Image Processing Center
should provide extra guidance for both students and teachers.
- Since the sample size
was small, the research findings pointed to a need
for the further investigation concerning the effectiveness of this
software
in other classes or schools.
- Ongoing research in this
field needs to be established to determine
whether IPT is providing effective long-term learning.
- The user interface of
IPT is an area that needs attention as stated
previously. Thus, the user interface aspect of this software is worth
investigating.
- Considering the use of
IPT as having potential to increase motivation of
students to learn science, it can be integrated in middle school
curriculum on the condition that more student-oriented materials are
provided.
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