Math for Everyone

Finally, my day has come.  The day when the focus of an education class was on a mathematical technology.  In our graduate class we discussed the use and implementation of spreadsheets into the classroom.  For many people, spreadsheets are a way to express and organize data.  Spreadsheets allow the user to manipulate the information imported into a spreadsheet.  I believe that these are helpful tools for students to learn not only in their school career, but in the workforce as well as a tool to manage their own finance.  

For me, personally, there are many features of spreadsheets that can help students learn mathematics, but for older students a graphing calculator may complete the same task.  Graphing calculators are able to perform many task some spreadsheets can but in a more efficient, portable manor as opposed to going to the computer lab and interacting with spreadsheet applications.  I do see the value of having student interact with spreadsheets to organize and learn the material.  I should try to incorporate this technology more into my classes. 

Word Processing and Search Engines

While at conferences I was able to check out the class website and be instantly updated with what everyone was doing in class.  It was interesting to view the different links comparing the various search engines.  I have become a creature of habit and have been personally, addicted to Google.  This was not always the case for me, but I have found that Google is the best search engine to fit my needs.  I have found that there are not many search engines geared towards high school students.  For some students there is too much information to sift through to find valuable, reliable sources.  Others don't have the maturity or knowhow to be exposed to all the information the web has access to.  While it is our job to educate students, sometime it would just be nice to have a search engine that is pushing the students in the right direction.  From talking to people in class, they were very excited to tell me about the ability to create your own search engine within Google.  I feel that this would be a very usefully tool.

Another aspect that was looked at in class was word processing.  This year I gave my Honors Algebra 2 students a writing assignment.  Students were asked to write a position letter to me about how they feel the role of calculators should take in class.  Students were asked to use a word processor to complete the assignment and were given a variety of options to turn this letter in; printed off copy, e-mail attachment, or a Google Document.  There were a couple of students that did use the electronic word processor, and many that were impressed by the technology.  In math class word processing is important for the creation of worksheets and notes which are nice and neat.  Word processing can be difficult and time consuming to use in the mathematics world however, I use it very often when working with colleagues or on grad school projects.

I hope to learn many more technologies in this class and am excited to implement them into my every day teaching world.

Readings

Chapter 1 and 2 discussed what teaching technology means as well as what teachers need to do in order to support learning with technology.  The information provided in these Chapters were very interesting.  The literature brought up some good points about how technology can be used as a tool to facilitate learning.  I think some teachers try to us different technologies just to say they are using a variety of technologies, which just negates the entire purpose.  When you are teaching you want to use the most relevant efficient way possible.  Sometimes it involves using technology and sometimes it just means using simple technology such as an overhead. Part of my undergrad program was a course devoted to math specific technologies.  I believe that it an important part of being a teacher who is interested in using technologies within your classroom to be informed and comfortable using a variety of technologies, both specific to your discipline as well as to the basics.  Students look to us as teachers to prepare them for the future and working in the 21st century.  I full-heartedly believe that this includes showing students how to work and struggle with learning new technologies.  I look forward to learning many more things in this class and from the book.

CEDU 510 Class #1

Welcome to the Ning... All these great names for social networks.  Class today was very exciting with the introduction of graphic programs.  All of these programs could be a creative way to let students express themselves, teachers too.  Sometimes they don't all turn out the way you want them to like my little Donny who's belly won't show, but that is also what interests me to figure that out.  It was also interesting spending the time examining different presentation software.  It took a couple minutes to get used to the speed of saving and operating, but it was different.  I am assuming that within the next couple of years they will create the on-line presentation software to mimic more of the functions that PowerPoint has such as animation which will make them just as comparable to the traditional software with the benefits of on-line saving.  I believe that on-line presentation software could be very helpful for this class as well as when working with co-workers.