Arthur Hochman
Arthur Hochman is a professor in the College of Education in his
20th year here at Butler University. He teaches
primarily elementary education classes.
Hochman integrates technology into his classes in such a way
that requires students to fully delve into the unknown. He employs
technology in a creative way striving to go beyond and elaborate
upon its usual purpose.
Recently, Hochman chose to focus on Garage Band, an application
that enables users to create and edit music, in one of his courses
exploring the utilization of the arts to help teach the content of
a class. Hochman's students used Garage Band to help explain and
teach literature in a theatrical sense.
Additionally, Hochman believes in presenting only free software
options to his students. He does not want his students to be
thinking that "I can only use technology or I can only be an
effective teacher if I have the money to buy this program and 40
copies of it for all of my students."
Hochman also utilizes technology to teach his students how they
can perform more effective searches on a search engine, such as
Google.com. Searching on the internet is a seemingly simple task
that many of his students do every day, but as Hochman points out:
as with everything, one can always learn to do something
better.
Hochman advises others considering the use of technology in the
classroom to take the risk and "just jump in and try something,"
and also to seek out other faculty to inquire how they are using
technology and "see how it can be used in a way that is purposeful
and not just because it's there."