MACUL Experience: Leveraging Technology to increase writing and discourse in Math

MACUL conference past week, was one of the very interesting experiences I have had, since the MAC program started. I had not expected to see this many educators from all over Michigan come together, to share and gain knowledge. 

Talk by Zachary Cresswell ( Mt. Pleasant Public School) and Tara Maynard (Zeeland Public School),  on  using technology to foster communication, writing and collaboration in Mathematics was truly educative and inspiring to me as a Physics teacher. We all realize that it is hard to motivate students to communicate and write in technical languages, whether it is Math, Science or any other content area. The ideas that these teachers shared opened my eyes to a world of possibilities using technology. The session started with an activity where the participants worked in pairs and one of them tried to decipher a mathematical word hidden from him/her while the other described it. It was interesting because this activity was fun, engaging and at the same time forced us all to use appropriate mathematical vocabulary. We also got several other ideas like using tic-tac-toe where students can form single sentences using any three math words that fall in line. I also got a taste of nearpod.com which is an interactive form  to Doceri, where students can write, draw their answers and teachers can  share and discuss the individual answers instantaneously. The names of the contributors remain hidden while sharing, giving students a safe space to share their answers. Another resource from their talk that I found quite useful was desmos.com. One can model complex equations graphically in no time using the graphing calculator, that this site offers. This can be very useful in a Physics classroom as well.

Anyone interested in going over the slides of this session can find them at Bitly/cressmaynard15. 

The other sessions I attended were about blended learning programs for at-risk students and Technology and Engineering Literacy talk by Paul Stemmer, Education Research Consultant, MDE. Although both the talks were interesting, I had less to gain from them as they seemed to be district run programs and nothing I could possibly apply in my classroom.

I also visited the exhibits at Makers gallery which was quite intriguing. The lightening talks at the end of my visit were also informative with each speaker talking for 5 minutes about their experiences and ideas on effective instructional methods using technology. 

Over all a very informative and one of a kind experience for me and I thank Jeff and Rory for arranging this for us. Once in the profession, I am sure to attend this every year and hopefully be able to  contribute as well.

Scary assessments and easy solutions

Assessments can be fairly intimidating for students and teachers alike. As a teacher, I am realizing how  freaked out I can get looking at stacks of papers to correct and then write feed backs ( by the way feed backs need to be specific and customized, which can add to teacher's load ). After analyzing this situation which is definitely not a plus for a teacher, I started looking for alternative solutions. So when we learnt about Socrative as an assessment tool that can potentially lessen some, if not all of the burden of grading, I was more than thrilled. Since then I have learnt a lot about the tool, and also learnt a lot how to smartly  set the quizzes to get maximum insight to students' learning.
When I take over the classes this semester, I have decided to use Socrative based formative assessments as frequently as every class hour, so that me and my students can move away from the 'intimidation' phase of assessments and move closer to more iterative and constructive ways of  learning using mindful self-assessments.

Action-Reaction by Edublogger Frank Noschese

Action-Reaction is a blog on Physics teaching by Frank Noschese.  Apart from covering various standards and topics,  I love his videos of innovative Physics experiments.
Worth mentioning here is the one  about Relative velocity.

http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/day-16-relative-motion/

He showed students video of ball being thrown with a certain speed and direction from a truck moving with exactly same speed and in exactly opposite direction. If you know vector addition, you can easily guess that this would result in the velocity of the ball  equal to 'zero'. In real life it is rather hard for anyone to see such actions in motion.. but thanks to technology and people like Frank who take time to explain this further. In the video it is really cool to see the ball actually having no velocity at all and standing still before it starts to fall vertically down because of gravity.  His experiments with the buggy not moving from its original position is very interesting too (below). This experiment can easily be replicated in any classroom.
Taking this a step further, Frank's slides contain various cases of relative velocity in action, that students can actually vote on. A similar lesson is on my agenda when I teach during winter. I would love to use Socrative for students to vote on.
I have commented on this blog post and also subscribed to his blog site. It is amazing to see so much out there, for us Physics teachers to get excited about.

Padlet for feedbacks from students

Of all the tech tools presented so far, I liked Padlet the most (of course only next to Socrative that we presented).  I can see using this tool for variety of purposes, one of them being for collecting feed backs from students in an anonymous manner. I think giving students a channel to express their feelings about a topic or subject is a great way to encourage them to reflect. Sometimes we all get into situations when we feel the void but struggle to express.. Void in learning is one such thing. When a student does not understand something, putting it in words can help them to think about their own knowledge ( meta-cognition). Recognizing these voids is like accomplishing half the journey. Secondly it creates safety for students. To be able to post anonymously without fearing judgments, is a great way to get the introvert and shy students express themselves. As a tool, padlet is easy to work with, has a great UI if set right and is great for collaboration between students and the teacher.
With so many tech tools, it is rather confusing to choose which one to use. They are all equally enticing. But if we work backwards with our teaching goals set in place, it becomes much easier to choose the tools that might fit our needs.One of my goals as a teaching intern is to recognize different learning styles of students and cater to them all using variety of instructional aids.. and for this reason I think padlet will help me study the variety of student needs in my class room and so I can help them the best possible way.

Tom Ward's Talk and SAMR Model

Enthusiasm about doing what one does everyday, does not come naturally to all.  But Tom Ward's talk on technology usage in his classroom indicated his genuine enthusiasm for teaching. Technology education has its own learning curve, but the past few years has seen so much advancement and accessibility to smart phone applications, super smart devices and what not, that most present generation secondary school students are already adept in using them.

     S(Substitution), A(Augmentation), M( Modification) and (Redefinition) or SAMR model is a framework for implementing technology integration in the class room. Substitution is the first level where students tasks involve use of a familiar program in different forms ( Google docs, Word etc).

Augmentation is where students use additional functionalities ( like Google doc sharing) to learn. Modifications is when students' tasks involve modifying their tasks using the program ( like getting feedback from peers when one shares a document) and Redefinition is when students' are able to perform tasks that were once unimaginable ( like global interaction between students using google doc).  Students even at elementary school levels, use technology for tasks like documenting essays and giving certain types of quizzes . By the time they reach high school, their knowledge base about technology usage is quite deep and most students in the US would be able to perform tasks at the M and R levels.

      So when Tom Ward spoke about using Vine to capture 6 second videos for content learning, it really impressed me. I believe that for some students it is harder to focus for 1 minute on video and extract useful information than focusing and extracting information with in 6 seconds.  So if we split 1 minute worth of content rich video into ten 6 second chunks, I would hypothesize that students will make an effort to understand content and reproduce it better. Nevertheless each of these 6 second videos need to be handcrafted for best delivery of information. And my hands are twitching to test this theory in my own classroom.

I am not sure if I would use twitter, but definitely 'Vine' is on my plate. I personally do not like twitter for teaching purposes as I feel it provides a space for '140 character gossiping' over the web.

But as an educator, a meaningful video would be something I would love to incorporate just for the purposes of better understanding of the content. 

Article about Scannable Technology - From Edutopia.org

I read this interesting article about QR (Quick Response) Codes in Edutopia.org that I thought is worth sharing here.


http://www.edutopia.org/blog/scannable-technology-to-reach-parents-monica-burns#comment-144316


QR code are 2 dimensional bar codes that can be used to code in the urls, where a particular information of interest, might be placed. So the need to type site address on the browser is eliminated. Popular usages are for advertisements, profile matching sites etc. This article talks about using the codes to direct parents to teacher's portal or other useful resources to keep them informed about the happenings in the classroom. One can use a QR code generator like QRStuff.com to make QR codes for free. Parents can then scan them using any QR code reader app. like i-nigma. Such applications are available for most smartphones and tablets.
These codes could be made available to parents as a sticker on HW folder, as a refrigerator magnet, along with teacher's business card and through umpteen other ways. Even the students can use it to direct themselves to a teacher's website where he/she could be posting everyday assignments, interesting videos etc.
All very interesting stuff. But as a parent, I wonder if I will take time and effort on a regular basis to track my kids' classroom news..if I don't have that much time, will other parents have it?

Dave Theune's talk last week

When Mr. Dave Theune presented last Thursday,one sentence stuck with me for good, and that was
"Only Engagement can produce mastery"  - Daniel Pink, DRIVE. 'Engagement' in my opinion is a very potent word. It has to do with how engaged the students are in learning, how engaged the parents or guardians are in students' lives, how engaged the teachers' are in the classroom and so on. There are  numerous examples in real life, where we can pinpoint the type of engagement that could have led to a certain outcome.
I was impressed by Mr. Theune's enthusiasm that seems to pull the switch, leading up to productive learning outcomes. I agree with him about the importance of teaching community connecting with the parent communities. Adults around the young students are their best teachers.. whether in school or at home. So the idea of teachers and parents/guardians getting together, with the aim to showcase students' achievements, sharing the pride and planning for future is very refreshing, although not necessarily new. The point here is Mr. Theune made that effort to connect with the community.  In the hurly-burly of everyday classroom life, I can imagine teachers not paying attention to finer aspects of connecting with the community that could otherwise, make a real difference in a  student's life. I have seen this kind of engagement in STEMM Academy where I student-teach. Their Team-66 Robotics team meets after school and  is a community affair. Parents with varied levels of knowledge, participate to help the students learn and compete in various contests. When I attended one of their sessions, I was impressed by the role my mentor teacher plays to glue to the community together for a single cause, that is, learning. Students totally engage and drench themselves in various activities like building, 3D printing, programming, soldering etc during the robotics sessions. The pride they bring to parents and teachers by exhibiting team spirit and learning mind-set is indescribable. Mr. Theune's efforts in his school seem very similar. He is building a community where, every activity of engagement spins out another one. I also liked when he mentioned about letting your students teach, as teaching is the greatest form of learning. I believe that every one of us is a 'natural' teacher. As we teach, we engage our thought processes in a certain direction and strengthen our schema. Giving students such opportunities, can really help them develop the meta-cognitive strategies about the process of learning and the content itself.