The utilization of technology in the math and science classroom should look like an enhancement and support for learning the concepts in these subject areas. Technology does not replace a standard way of teaching, but rather should be used to transform the learning that is able to occur. Technology can also not be used as a stand alone lesson or be regarded as providing a lesson in and of itself.<\/p>\n
Last year I decided to subscribe to a free trial of “Mathletics”. Does anyone use this program at their school? A colleague and I received training one day after school as to all of the resources available on the site and then a date to discuss purchasing a full subscription after a month. My grade 3 students were very enthusiastic to use the site, which was full of math games, videos, practice, lessons, and more on every concept they needed to learn. My students were able to login to this site once maybe twice a week for a block to access these materials. During the month they were very engaged at exploring all of the different avenues available. As a teacher I could assign particular topics to students, track each student’s progress, and differentiate their learning. Mathletics is an amazing site and valuable resource. When we met with the company representative a month later, we were astounded at the price of subscription. Given that this was a resource we were not able to use with our students daily because of equipment and schedule restraints, it was not feasible for our school to purchase any kind of license.\u00a0Although there are many creative ideas to fundraise and someone support this purchase price, I found myself questioning why. Why would I fundraise to teach math? This would be an expense I would need to find a way to pay for every year. How would I get enough use out of this program if I could only be supporting my students with this program once a week?<\/p>\n
I came across the math game, Prodigy, through conversations in one of my MET courses. This is a free game that takes students into an adventure world where they can go on a quest while completing math questions. The program is designed to tailor math questions to student abilities and has been very engaging for my students. It also tracks student progress for a teacher and provides many different useful statistics.<\/p>\n
Through my experience with both of these programs I have come to realize that they are both helpful and meaningful supports to my teaching when used appropriately. To solely rely on these programs would be detrimental to not only my students’ learning but also eventually to their motivation to learn. We talk about how numbers and words on a worksheet can be too abstract for many of our learners and that they need more hands on and experiential learning opportunities, and I think we need to realize that jumping to the opposite pole of full learning on technology could also end up looking quite similar to the “learning” that occurs with worksheets. When used appropriately and purposely, the opportunities to enhance our students’ learning in the math and science classroom by utilizing technology are endless and quite exciting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The utilization of technology in the math and science classroom should look like an enhancement and support for learning the concepts in these subject areas. Technology does not replace a standard way of teaching, but rather should be used to transform the learning that is able to occur. Technology can also not be used as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1669385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-unpacking-assumptions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}