Summer Graduate Course on Teaching and Learning with Technology
This summer I have been teaching a graduate course EDCP 585B – Teaching mathematics and science through technology. This year it has been an extremely rewarding experience. One reason for it – a variety of expertise of the students and they willingness to explore uncharted territories. We had an opportunity to discuss a lot of technology-related issues, but most importantly we have been trying to focus on the why questions. Since the students in this class had different experiences and teaching interests, we all had an opportunity to learn a lot of new things. For example, we discovered amazing exhibits in the Earth Science Building (thanks to Brett) and visited the Omniglobe exhibit there. We discussed flipped classroom and Geogebra, computer simulations and data collection. Since many of us attended STEM 2014 and PME conferences, we also were able to share what we learned there. It was a very rewarding experience for me (even though teaching daily for almost 4 hours is tough). Lastly, I realized that asking students to read and comment on each other papers before submitting the final version is a very useful experience. The papers this year have been a much higher quality than usual. I am certainly learning a lot and I hope the course will keep improving in the future… Lastly, I wanted to express my thanks to all the students who took on the challenge and signed up for this intensive summer course. THANK YOU!!!
