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Teac 880E Reflection

Teac 880E: Reflection on Growth

The first weeks of this course guided me by providing research-based information about the strengths of using technology to support math instruction in the Roschelle article. This article explored specific ways that math instruction is enhanced with technology tools. First, these tools provide active engagement. In the past, students may have had to painstakingly calculate or create hand-drawings to represent mathematical concepts. Today, students may experiment and deepen mathematical understanding with digital simulations. Students have the benefit of watching how their ideas can immediately impact a simulation. Additional benefits explored in the Roschelle article were participation in groups and frequent interaction and feedback. As I have studied technology integration in other content areas, these concepts were familiar to me. This was an important reminder that the communication capabilities of technology can support any content area. Finally, math students benefit from technology use by having opportunities to connect mathematics to real-world concepts. The virtual scavenger hunt and coding resources provided resources that would help students apply math concepts to the real world.

Several of the assignments made apparent the importance of teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about how technology should be used to teach mathematics. The McGinty Calculator article (2016) discussed the importance of using calculators as a tool to help students think critically reach deeper levels of understanding. I learned that teachers need to view them as a tool and have sufficient knowledge to model how to use the tool for critical thinking. The Drijvers text made it very clear that teachers’ instructional decisions are often impacted by their beliefs. The data presented in this article showed six different orchestration types and how frequently three different teachers used them during math instruction. The three teachers each answered questions related to the teacher and student roles during instruction, math pedagogy, and technology integration. Their instructional decisions reflected their beliefs. One element that stood out clearly in this report was the differing views about teacher or student-centered instruction. Teachers that valued student-centered instruction chose orchestration types that supported this goal and teachers that placed less value on student-centered instruction tended to use teacher-centered orchestration types.

As I thought about how these teachers made decisions based on their beliefs, I considered my own beliefs about how technology should be used during math instruction. Some of my personal beliefs about how technology should be used to amplify or transform math instruction in the following areas: collaboration and math talk, display multiple strategies, manipulatives to increase understanding, fluency with math facts, problem-solving, improving vocabulary, and real-world application. I have added some new tools to my repertoire that support these uses. To improve collaboration and math talk, I plan to use screencasting to allow students to share their thinking and provide feedback to each other. I have experimented with different methods and found the Seesaw will work best for me. Using Seesaw, students can quickly record or upload a video that posts to the class feed after approval. Students may browse the class feed and comment on each other’s work. Seesaw even has a voice recording commenting feature, so students that aren’t fluent typers can still add their feedback. Computer science applications provide real-world application of math concepts. I have played with scratch and found new ways to incorporate math. I started with the second grade differentiated math curriculum and was able to create a game where students have to tell their partner a code to move from locations on a grid. I will share this with second grade math teachers and hopefully will continue to find connections with the other grade levels as well. As the Computer Science teacher, I hope to collaborate with colleagues about ways to integrate scratch and other coding resources with classroom curriculum. The google form #MTBOS Scavenger Hunt also gave me the idea to use digital scavenger hunts as an engaging way to allow students to apply concepts that they have learned to solve real-world problems. One previous practice that I may discontinue is having students practice math facts on computers for fluency. As noted in the Goldenberg text, practicing low-level math skills have had negative impacts on student learning. This is also another reminder of the importance of using a framework like RAT to ensure the technology tasks stretch students to use problem solving skills and are not simple substitutions of paper/pencil assignments.

The research and technology application assignments offered a nice balance for this course. As I made instructional decisions, I was able to directly apply learning from the articles. This helped me feel confident that my decisions to use tools were grounded in research. I found the DIM Framework to be one of the most challenging assignments of the course. I could come up with replacement and amplification ideas, but I had a hard time thinking of transformation tasks at first. It helped me to close out of the DIM Framework and think about some of the most important ways that I believe technology should be used. I was able to make a list of innovative uses of technology, then I could find ways to apply them to mathematics in the DIM Framework. Here is the list that I came up with:

Innovative Technology Uses in Mathematics
Collaborate with other classes
Share projects with social media
Ss use social media to ask ?s
Global perspectives -could connect with another math class
Maps for measurement, area, and perimeter
Scavenger hunts (#MTBOS, my maps, hyperdocs)
Hyper docs
Screencasts or video responses with comments (Flipgrid or Seesaw)
Coding

Designing Scratch Projects that incorporate math content
Simulations
Differentiated, self-paced slides or doc
Student created assessments (forms)
Blended learning so have more time for individual feedback
Blogging

 

This year, I plan to start small and gradually build on the tools that students are using. Eventually, students will have a menu of several options that can be used for math assignments. This provides variety and choice to keep students engaged. I hope to add to this list as I learn through professional development and gaining ideas from students and colleagues. Each person offers a new perspective the use technology tools to improve learning. As I learn new ideas and consider their application to my classroom, I will weigh their value using the RAT Framework. This Framework will help guide me in creating a learning environment where students utilize technology tools to improve active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, connections to real-world problems, and transform their learning experiences.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/167852733/#fullscreen