The role of technology in the higher ed classroom

There has been and continues to be a push for the use of technology in teaching and in the classroom. As a teacher my interest is in helping my students learn. If technology can help attain this goal, I am for it, if not I am uninterested. As one of my collegaues said, "technology in support of education, not technology for technology's sake". Another challenge we are faced with as educators is choosing, from a huge variety of technologies, the ones that will work best for our students within our teaching style. Just finding and learning to use a technology solution is time intensive and many times before or during implementation one finds the solution is only partial or not one at all. However, I have found some technologies that have worked well for me (and some not so much).

• Online reading homework and online practice. Many times my students tell me that biology is a like an entirely new language. And as my language professor colleague tells me, the only way to learn a new language is practice. Of course this applies to biology concepts as well as terminology, but if students cannot understand an explanation because they do not have a basic understanding of the terminology, then understanding a concept, much less applying it, is out of reach. Ideally, students would read and understand the basics of the material, including vocabulary, before coming to class; however, this rarely happens. In order to motivate students and help them practice I use online reading level (easy, recall based questions) homework for all my classes. This technology is great as it helps the students learn the basics, I don't have to grade it but students earn a grade which is motivation for some of them. This technology supports their learning as they are actively engaging the material and learning the basics. After offering review questions of a higher difficulty level and being taken up on the offer, I've been posting those for the second half of the spring semester.
• Student response systems. I've written about the online student response system I've used in the past and continue to use, albeit in a limited fashion, Socrative. It's great to gauge the class' understanding of a concept during a lecture and works well with "clicker cases".
• Course management system. I suppose I should count this under technology, especially as it plays a huge role in managing, communicating, and providing information to my class. I post links to videos, self made videos, outline etc. all organized by module. I also use it for collecting papers and for some minor discussion, though I've managed more major discussion in the past. We use Blackboard, and I've noticed over the past year or so there has been an increase in ways for students to collaborate virtually and for me to assess group work once and give a grade to the entire team. Good stuff.
• CATME. I used this in the spring semester for students to rate their team members not only to adjust their final team score but so students can have feedback throughout the semester (twice before it counts) on how they are performing in their group. I get pretty good return rates on this, 70-90% depending on the class, and it is much easier than doing team ratings by hand as I did in the fall semester. 
• Other. Projections systems for slides, videos etc. are also very useful in presenting information for the entire class. I'd love to have the ability for students to project their work to me and the class, easily and fluidly. 

I'm not certain that's a comprehensive list, but it gives you an idea. I would love to move to see more (free and well written) e-texts, but some students do not like them. A survey I conducted a few years ago did show that a majority would at least be open to trying it, and if it were free I think many more would. Texts are increasingly expensive, especially for our students, and it would be great to find an open source text with some good online support, eg. videos, quizzes etc. I'm continuing to explore Blackboard to give my students more ways to interact with material and master it before tests and even team work in class. However, no matter how we as instructors use technology in and out of the classroom it is a tool, one of several, wielded by a professional to help students learn, not an educator in and of itself.