Carnegie Mellon Qatar shares its Tablet PC know-how with teachers at Qatar Academy.

DOHA, QATAR – Carnegie Mellon University has been pivotal in developing applications for Tablet PCs that are free to the education community. Applications such as MathWiz, Flashcards and Lemonsketch are changing the way teachers use technology in the classroom.

So when the 7th and 8th grade classes at Qatar Academy were given Tablet PCs but no instruction on how to use them, school officials turned to Carnegie Mellon Qatar to learn how to use such applications in the classrooms. “The students and teachers were given the Tablets, but they didn’t have the technology to go along with them,” says Andreas Karatsolis, Ph.D., professor at Carnegie Mellon Qatar.

“If the students are given the technology, then the teachers need to learn how to use it to aid them in the classroom. That’s where we come in. Carnegie Mellon has developed a lot of the types of applications used on Tablet PCs, so we are able teach the teachers to best ways to use the Tablet PCs to their advantage.”

So what makes a Tablet PC different from a regular laptop? Tablet PCs have screens that swivel around to lie flat like a tablet. The computer is equipped with a stylus and a screen that can capture ink strokes much like a pen to paper. Students can solve equations, draw and use most Microsoft Office tools. The computer can even decipher the most atrocious handwriting and turn it into text. But there is much more to what a Tablet PC can do.

“These machines can change the whole dynamic of the classroom. They allow teachers to communicate constantly with students,” says Mark LeSurf, head of the technology department at QA. Le Surf says 7th and 8th grade is a good age to introduce this kind of technology because students are moving into a higher level of thinking.

With a Tablet PC, there is no monitor blocking the student from the teacher’s line of sight, so students cannot be on Facebook or playing Halo. Also, the Tablet PCs can be networked so assignments can easily be exchanged between teacher and students. QA has a wireless projector so teachers can project from their machine to the whole class, which Le Surf says keeps students more engaged.

The machine’s ability to capture information allows teachers to see what notes students take during a lecture, and monitor the progression of a student’s work on a math problem. Capturing the math work is an important aspect of WeMath, a platform to help teachers and students collaborate on solving math problems instead of teachers just grading the final results.

Carnegie Mellon is trying to get funding for the WeMath project from Qatar National Research Fund. If a grant is secured in June, QA will be the site where Carnegie Mellon Qatar will do the background research – through collaborative design with the teachers – and evaluate the WeMath application over a three-year period.

“One of our goals is to integrate new technology into the classroom, and we are having positive responses from many teachers,” says LeSurf. “With Carnegie Mellon’s help, many are already using the machines to change how they deliver their lessons.”

ABOUT CARNEGIE MELLON

With more than a century of academic excellence and innovative research, Carnegie Mellon University is a global leader in education with real-world applications. Consistently top ranked, Carnegie Mellon offers a distinct mix of programs to its 11,000 students around the globe. Core values of innovation, creativity, problem solving and collaborative teamwork provide the foundation for everything we do.

At the invitation of Qatar Foundation, Carnegie Mellon joined Education City in 2004. Here, Qatar Foundation has created a world-class center for scholarship and research that is the ideal complement to Carnegie Mellon’s tradition of innovation through collaboration. Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar offers its highly regarded undergraduate programs in business administration, computer science and information systems to students in Qatar and the Gulf Region.