Author Archives: scott skanes

(T)PCK and Me

I first encountered the TPCK framework in one of my earliest MET courses yet I still think about it every term, whether it comes up formally in the readings or not. At the risk of sounding like every classic educational reading, I credit the persistence of my reference to TPACK due to its simplicity as a framework, one that elegantly encompasses so many key ideas that lie at the heart of education.

The clearest description I encountered of the original PCK framework came from Shulman (1987), who describes it as the “blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction.” Although first written in 1987, the statement resonates strongly over three decades later and continues to inspire (well, to inspire me, at least). I always viewed PCK as a practical application of the classic expression “greater than sum of its parts”; while pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge are essential, the greatest lessons are created using both at once.

Not to leave the most relevant knowledge type (to ETEC533) out to dry, Mishra & Koehler (2006, p. 1029) extended Shulman’s framework to include technology, which details TPCK as:

  • the basis of good teaching with technology;
  • requires an understanding of the representation of concepts using technologies;
  • pedagogical techniques that use technologies in constructive ways to teach content;
  • knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn and how technology can help redress some of the problems that students face;
  • knowledge of students’ prior knowledge and theories of epistemology; and
  • knowledge of how technologies can be used to build on existing knowledge and to develop new epistemologies or strengthen old ones.

Mishra & Koehler continue by giving ideas on how to develop lessons using the framework with technology included.

As for an example of how I teach a particular concept, I’ve chosen my most recent “version” of teaching Integration by Parts in math.

Notes

I start by either handing out notes physically or making sure my students have a copy of the notes through some platform like D2L. If students don’t use a physical copy I encourage them to use a program on their mobiles that allows them to take and save notes.

some math notes for integration by parts

Mind Map – Assessing and Building on Prior Knowledge

I’ll write “Integration by Parts” in a circle on the board and ask a bunch of questions about what students think it means, what topics we’ve covered in Calculus up to this point and so on. I have them “remind me” what integration techniques they know so far. This is a mix of direct questions or passive observations. Depending on what the class comes up with I may assign a few short review questions or solve some quick problems on the board. I’ll usually return to this throughout the class and make connections (literally, with lines) between what they’re learning today to what they (should) already know. Ultimately the whole point on this part is to help them determine that they do not yet have a strategy to solve the types of integration problems they’re seeing today.

Formal Introduction to Topic

Once the scene is set I’ll work through some examples with them and introduce them to a new formula:

∫udv=uv-∫vdu

I often help students connect this formula to a prior formula (‘Product Rule’ in differentiation) through a short, non-rigorous “proof”. This tends to help them remember it, or at least buy in slightly, as it gives them some context of where it came from.

Piece-by-Piece

Without getting too detailed (in this post), I spent the next few minutes working through an example with students and explaining the philosophy behind how to approach solving problems like this, one step at a time. I began including a mnemonic, LIPET, for students who struggled badly with this, and this tends to help them succeed assessment-wise.

Checking for Misunderstanding

After this I have students break out into groups to work on the first set of practice problems, one designed to iron out misconceptions or misunderstandings of the concept before they have to do any real calculations. I circle the room while they discuss the problems with each other and compare solutions. A student (or a few students – time depending) is asked to write their solutions on the board – or cast it using ScreenBeam or AirPlay – and them we discuss them as a class.

(For those who know the topic of Integration by Parts, this activity asks students to look at a set of expressions to determine 1) which function should be labeled as u, which will in turn give du, and 2) which function to label as dv, which will in turn give v).

Practice Time

Once we’ve had a discussion why may range from from pairs, to groups, to the whole class, a set of practice problems is assigned to work on solidfying what they have been working on today. Students may work independently or in groups, while I check in on all students throughout. Eventually students are provided full solutions which may be projected on the board at the front of the class or accessed online through D2L or similar, and they check each other’s work. Issues are flagged and I may choose to review questions either on a per-student basis on for everyone on the board. It depends on how many students had the same issue, and whether or not a student could instead be used to help another student.

Using Technology to Redress Problems

To end the lesson I provide an “Integration by Parts Exit Card” which is essentially 2 quick multiple choice questions that contain question types students often struggle with. This is either a physical card that they circle an answer on, or more commonly I will have them respond using something like Google Forms. Once they finish the card and submit it they can leave, and I’ll aggregate and review the results prior to the next class. This allows me to ensure that I can focus on specific problems my class is having with the topic before we build on it.

exit cards

And that’s about it! I don’t leverage tech too much for this lesson because I haven’t found too much tech that seems like it would actually benefit the students, but I feel that the tech I do use is beneficial.

Do you have any suggestions on how I could improve here? I’d love to get some feedback!

Thanks for reading,

Scott

 

References

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers college record, 108(6), 1017-1054.
Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard educational review, 57(1), 1-23.

Choice, Collaboration, Context

Several of the definitions of “Technology” offered to us in Module B resonated with me, with Jonassen‘s perspective being perhaps the one that aligns most strongly with my current views. Specifically, Jonassen’s suggestion that “students learn from thinking in meaningful ways” which is “engaged by activities which can be fostered by computers or teachers”, forms a good foundation for how I would/will approach the design of a TELE.

Math and science should be taught with digital tech tools precisely because these tools allow students learning opportunities that would be otherwise impossible to experience. I suppose I wear some constructivist and collaborative learning ideals on my sleeve here, as I believe knowledge is best constructed from the inside-out, as well as through collaboration with others. Tech incorporated into, say, Project-Based Learning assignments, grounded in real-world issues, could allow STEM topics to extend outside the walls of classrooms and become enhanced by leveraging digital collaboration spaces. Put simply, students could collaborate asynchronously through Google Docs to share ideas. This collaboration could even be extended to schools across the world, with all classrooms working toward a common goal. The point is that students are working together and are engaged in meaning-making. If students are allowed choice in the topic(s) they pursue, and how to pursue them, then that simply adds to the level of “buy-in” of the student.

Other carefully-selected digital tools can, of course, be leveraged by students throughout the project. In this case a particular tool would not be selected with the student being directly taught how to use the tool. Instead, the student would perhaps be given a selection of tools that could be useful for their project, and they would learn to use the tool through practical application towards reaching a project-related goal. For example, if they are trying to solve a tricky problem that naturally involves solving equations, Desmos could be offered as one method of solving their problem. In short, they would “learn with rather than from technology”.

So, to answer this week’s two questions:

1) What do you think designers of learning experiences should do?

Provide students with a chance to engage in meaning-making by:

  1. allowing student choice in problems to solve,the approach taken to solve them and the tools used to help them do so,
  2. incorporating opportunities for synchronous and/or asynchronous collaboration, and
  3. being aware of the context of the learning environment (“know your students”) and design with a goal in mind to allow for more personalized learning experiences based on real-world issues that are meaningful to the student.

I think that basically covers my philosophy… although I’m sure I’ll end up adding to it in the coming weeks 🙂

2) How would you design a technology-enhanced learning experience?

By trying to meet the three standards I set above!

-Scott

Broken Link in CiteULike?

Hey all, maybe this is a long shot but…

Has anyone happened to find a working link for the article “Technology can make possible the use of authentic learning activities in the classroom“? I can’t seem to access it from CiteULike!

The link – http://copland.udel.edu/~jconway/authlrn.htm – apparently no longer exists.

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Scott

Fear – Meeting the Student – Examples and Exploration – Thoughtful Selection

I interviewed a co-worker, let’s call her Sharon, who currently teaches Mathematics, primarily statistics, at a Canadian-based college in the Middle East. She has “been teaching since 1970” and “started at a community college”, then worked at an aviation college for 10 years until 2000, then did instructional design followed by three years in the Cayman Islands then at a Canadian college in the Middle East for the last 12 years. The interview took place at the college in Sharon’s office, on a Tuesday mid-January, starting at 9:30am. I asked her 8 questions, including some probing questions throughout, and those initial questions can be found on the course wiki. As an aside, Sharon is doing more with tech than most others in our department and she’s nearly 70! It just goes to show age is not always an indicator of resistance to tech!

(Full Transcript can be found here: https://goo.gl/D9eFmv)

“I’ll be 70 in March. I’m going to have a spinning party as I have every year. Maybe this year I’ll actually fill all 35 bikes!” *laughs*

I asked her if she’s always used tech, to which she replied “yes. Since 1990 I think. Since the beginning of time, since the [TI graphing calculators] became available. I was the first one I think, in Canada, to use that graphing calculator in post-secondary school.”

The following points are sort of “themes” that arose throughout the interview, and ones I feel best represent Sharon’s views. Those themes are:

  1. Fear of tech
  2. Meeting the Student at their level
  3. Building confidence and understanding through Examples and Exploration
  4. The importance of Thoughtful Selection of tools for the task.

Fear

Fear and discomfort surrounding tech is a common occurrence both on the teacher’s side as well as for parents and students. “If it’s somebody that doesn’t want to use technology, then the battle begins before the learning begins”.
Back in the 90’s when Sharon was working at the aviation college, “I got to use [graphing calculators] but the students weren’t allowed to carry this calculator in any other classes. In electricity, where they would have 5 equations 5 unknowns, [the teachers] never ever wanted an answer. The teacher would get them to get as far as to the end but then never work anything out. They banned the calculator in aviation in 2000; by this time all the high schools were using it, and they banned it!”

In this case the college was unwilling, or uncomfortable, to use this new tech tool to improve student programs or learning, insisting that they should still work everything out by hand, even when they had a strongly motivated woman to spearhead its use. “I was the only math person in aviation, I went to all of the promotion meetings, and they moved me to another department and I quit”.

Tech has a tendency to make parents uncomfortable as well, in many cases due to them wanting the best for their children. However, sometimes there is a real benefit to being open to change. A funny story told by my Sharon went:

Parent: “When I was at school I didn’t use a calculator”
Sharon: “Yeah, and how did you do in high school math?”
Parent: “Well, I failed”
Sharon: “Well, maybe we shouldn’t take your daughter along that same path”

It is not unusual for there to be tension when new methods and strategies rub up against perceived notions of how something “should” be done. This often happens when someone has become very comfortable doing things a specific way for years and they feel discomfort when their views come into question. Sharon told another story of a student who complained in her online course, saying “I’m from the old school, you know, I’m not computer-savvy”. To which she thought “well you should never have taken an online course! Like learning to dance if you’ve got no legs, it just makes absolutely no sense to me.” She was joking, of course, but it leads to a good point – we need to meet the students on their level and build them up.

Meeting the Student

Sharon has a number of strategies for promoting student success and building confidence in skills, one of which is to use notebooks and translate the class content.

“Funny, I’m on a real bender now of them having a notebook, because I believe – I call it “studentese”- that they need to write and do what I’ve done in their own language.” She teaches almost entirely students who have English as a Foreign Language, so I thought this was a really fantastic idea; students are encouraged to process what they’ve been told by making notes to themselves in their own language.

She also had some great thoughts on the benefits of working out math by hand even when they have calculators, because it helps the students to build their logic skills.

“If you don’t know what you did in numbers then doing algebraic fractions is almost impossible, [but] if I said to [you] ‘what’s the common denominator of 6 and 24?’, you’d know that from having done many questions”. She suggests a sort of muscle memory for math that creates a base for all work to come; a base that once stable can allow for students to use calculators to get to the answer quicker while still understanding what those answers mean.

Finally, she would build the understanding from the student outwards by having them “write the recipe that gets me adding two fractions together”, for example. She called it “math in words” and I thought it was a great idea. She called this being able to “see the maneuvers” as they are forced to think through the question.

Examples and Exploration

Once a foundation is set for the student, the real fun begins. For Sharon this comes in the form of building confidence and understanding through examples and exploration, and using tech as a means of getting there. The basis of her philosophy comes from her belief that “students must have some vision of what’s going on”, and if they don’t they are simply “mimicking you”. She believes tech can help them develop that vision.

She gave some very interesting examples that I’ll share:

  • “If I said to [a student] ‘you’re on a 15-foot cliff and you kick a football up into the air, what will that look like?’ and then, because you’ve been told the formula you fill that in, that still doesn’t mean you can see that the y-intercept is 15, and the ball is arcing in a parabola”. She’s suggesting that it is entirely possible for students to “regurgitate” values, even when “they have no idea; they followed a pattern and came out the other side”.
  • In stats, “without [tech] I would have to wait for them to draw everything I wanted to do”. With it, the students get instant feedback, allowing time for “what if” cases that develop confidence and understanding. “I call it ‘what if’ because it allows me to change one little thing and now they have a whole new ball game; a new everything. I can’t imagine not using it”.
  • “The challenge is to come up with questions that show that they understand the procedure rather than the rote math. You’re not taking your old test and having them have the calculator do the work for them. That’s an insult to the student and to you.” I think this is a huge struggle that many teachers face – how to modify existing materials to make the best use of new teaching and learning methods?

This tricky choice of how to modify materials leads into a bigger discussion, one involving the importance of thoughtfully selecting tools.

Thoughtful Selection

“I work so hard to make it work.”

Just because digital tech could be used to do things traditionally done without it doesn’t mean it should be. Sharon brought up points on this subject again and again:

  • On the topic of using iPads for notetaking and textbooks, “as far as the students writing [notes] on the iPad, it didn’t happen. I think there were lots of reasons for that. It really needed something that allows you to write and save your notes. And you know, there are people that won’t read ebooks because they want the feeling of books”. In this case, simply substituting paper for an iPad actually worsened the student experience, and students who preferred paper over e-text were left at a disadvantage.
  • “Excel, for instance, can’t do this question” *she points to a simple frequency table*. “I have to write a page of commands into Excel, so I’m actually working out [problems] by hand. How ridiculous is that? It’s disappointing. I work so hard to make it work.” it’s funny, Sharon is using Excel, a program known of crunching numbers, and it can’t even solve a simple stats problem for her without extensive manual work. Sharon’s struggles likely reflect those of many teachers; we are often expected to learn so much for the benefit of our students, yet if the tools chosen don’t fit student needs it’s a giant waste of time.
  • “Using PowerPoint for mathematics is outrageous. I’ve done the question already, how boring is that? Seeing a PowerPoint of my solutions? But when I come to teach research design PowerPoint is a great tool!” Again, thoughtful selection means everything.

Final Thoughts

I was shocked at how much of what Sharon said throughout her interview resonated with me, and reminded me of discussions I’ve had throughout this program. I didn’t prime her for this interview at all yet she, at 70 years old, echo’d struggles and vocalized opinions similar to those found on these posts. I’m a little behind this week, but I’m looking forward to reading the abstracts of others to see if there are any similarities!

I’ll leave you with an interesting statement made by Sharon:
“Sometimes what they’re used to seeing makes them happier than seeing something new”.
Do you agree? Does comfort in familiarity sometimes take precedence over subjecting our students to a constant barrage of new tech?

Thanks so much for reading,
Scott

Graphing Calculators: The Future (of 2004)?

a ti-83 calculator laying on a dino magazine

I have to admit I was overwhelmed this week when I was faced with eight (8!) case studies to explore. Thankfully most were quite short, clocking in at less than 30 minutes, and they were actually interesting! I was a little judgemental when the videos seemed a tad dated, but what technology doesn’t seem dated almost immediately these days?

Example 1: I traded in my Pixel last month for a Pixel 2. The original Pixel was only released in October 2016 – barely a year ago.

Example 2: Last term I created tutorial/screencast videos for D2L to help my staff get better acquainted with its basic functionality. When we returned this term D2L Brightspace had upgraded to Daylight, making all my tutorials obsolete, or at least annoyingly dated – nothing looked quite the same.

My point is that I was once quick to judge a video by its video quality and perceived production decade – perhaps our generation’s higher-tech version of “judging a book by its cover” – but these days I’m much more interested to see if the content remains relevant. Often, much of it does, once you get past the initial reluctance.

Among the various cases offered I chose to focus most closely on Case 2, which deals primarily with introducing graphing calculators (namely the TI-83) into class back in 2004 or so. This case struck a nerve because I’ve had conversations and meetings with my department as recently as last Tuesday about the role of the calculator in classes. Opinions range from “they should do it all on paper then check their answers with the calculator!” to “let the calculator do the nitty gritty for them so they can tackle more complex problems!” to “why buy this $240 (in Doha) for a TI-84+ when all students have mobile devices and can get Desmos for free?!”… that last one was me…

Anywho, without further ado:

What are the underlying issues and why are they issues?

From my perspective, the first underlying issue for this case was the fact that it is significantly cheaper to buy a class sets of TI-83 graphing calculators (which the teacher referred to as computers, and he’s not wrong) than to buy a class set of desktop computers. This is a pertinent issue, one even more pertinent circa 2004, when smartphones were not as widely used. Not only do students and their parents rarely have “money to burn” per se, but neither do schools and school boards. If they can choose graphing calculators for mathematics classes for each student instead of expensive desktops, or even laptops, it may help ease the financial strain. One caveat here is that a graphing calculator, like any tech, is not a magic bullet. It must be thoughtfully chosen to meet a specific need of the students. For example, examining course requirements could reveal that a much cheaper calculator like the “Casio Scientific Calculator fx-82AU PLUS II” could do most of the same job at half the cost.

Another underlying issue in this case was that leveraging a tool like the TI-83 can help students from getting “lost in the math”. Instead of trying to “get a number” at the end of a series of steps, the teacher was able to ask deeper questions and the  “technology made [the students] comfortable to push this question to the limit”.

How would I explore a response?

Let’s not forget that ”better learning” using a tool like the TI-83 doesn’t happen automatically. Training is required for teachers to understand how to best leverage the tool for the benefit of their students and their unique learning contexts. As was said by Teacher F in the case study, “teachers do need to understand as much of technology as possible to make sure that you are able to ask questions of an appropriate level to get the mathematics out”.

I’d also like return to an earlier point on how TI-83 is a notably cheaper choice for classrooms than individual desktop computers. While this still mostly holds true, there exists stiff competition and excellent alternatives. Chromebooks are now becoming comparable in cost to calculator like the TI-84+, and there exist free mobile apps that can do almost everything that the best graphing calculator could do in 2004. Finally, why focus on a single expensive tool like a TI-83, or invest in static desktops for the classroom, when we could focus on leveraging students’ own existing mobile devices using a Bring Your Own Device model?

What further questions does the case raise?

Many of the questions that came to mind during this case were ones about students. Did the introduction of the graphing calculator increase student engagement? How did students that took math courses using the tool fare against past students who did not have it? Did the school start using the TI-83 for all their math classes? We heard from several students who were doing exceptional work with the calculator (Boba Fett represent!), but how did the weaker students feel about using a tool with so many buttons and functions? Where are all these students now, and what tools do they use for math problems? What would be the 2018 version of Teacher F’s mathematics technology?

How might the issue that is raised exacerbate or ameliorate a conceptual challenge held by students?

I think that, for most students, once they wrap their head around what a graphing calculator can do it opens the doors to a huge world of conceptual understanding. Ideas that could once only be explained in words, textbook diagrams, or time-consuming hand-drawn graphs could now be visualized with nothing more than a few button taps. For topics like curve sketching, graphing tech allows intimidating, abstract or, confusing equations like

x² + y² = 1

x² + y² = 2

x² + y² = 4

to be seen for what they really are: simple circles.

an image from Desmos

All in all I feel like using graphing calculators, especially recent free graphing software like Desmos, is nothing but a good thing. I can see it being introduced at extremely early levels of mathematics education, as early as the first few grades, to quash conceptual challenges with graphing equations before they have a chance to even become confusing.

Scott

My Private Universe Contained a World of Misconceptions

I was bad at Chemistry

One might assume that, because my background in a B.Sc. in Math and Physics, I had a strong grasp of chemistry. After all, Physics and Chemistry are quite brotherly subjects. Well, I did not. While concepts in Physics made “sense” to me from day one – after all, I felt I was living in a “physical” world, and the concepts covered often referenced things I was familiar with through day-to-day experience – a deeper understanding of Chemistry eluded me for many years. To be clear, I struggled with chemistry up until my final few months of high school.

Specifically, I just could not “get” particle models of matter. I couldn’t accept, intuitively, that atoms and particles were/are real things. I couldn’t understand how we knew what they look like, how they move, any of it. I didn’t understand how tests could be done on them, I didn’t understand how we could see them and I didn’t understand how the objects I used in day-to-day life, like a pencil, could be made up of these mysterious particles like “hydrogen” and “carbon”. It all just seemed imaginary. Reflecting back on it all now, I attribute much of this frustrating mental block to the following:

1. never having a passionate teacher who took the time to thoroughly explain the concepts. (like Heather, I felt I was being given information to know, not explanations to understand)

2. my younger self took a long time to understand the purpose of a lab, and we had limited equipment. (other kids always took the lead and basically did the labs for me, or we were forced to watch the instructor do the labs)

3. Through almost my entire time with K-12 chemistry I probably only saw two videos about chemistry. (even then the animations and CGI were so bad that it all just seemed like hocus pocus; I couldn’t tell what actually existed and what was an artist’s interpretation)

Even after being told what I was supposed to know, I was always left with the question “yes, OK. But… what really happens?”

I had a persistent mental block; an elaborate private universe, containing a world of misconceptions.

With this in mind, I understand Heather’s situation. Being “bright” didn’t seem to affect the severity of her private misconceptions. I noted the following challenges throughout the video:

  • Heather does not believe the Earth goes in a circle, and instead believes it goes in a very unusual pattern.

heather's sun

  • She believes that indirect beams of light/energy from the sun cause summer, while direct beams cause winter. She says “it doesn’t go in a straight line”.

I still don’t quite know what she is getting at here.

  • She believes that “rays from the sun come around the Earth and illuminate that part of the moon because of the Earth’s shadow”, which is her explanation for the crescent moon.

This is a super common misconception but is flat-out wrong.

heather's moon shadow

  • She knows that she had to learn the phases of the moon, but couldn’t remember if she was taught where the moon was for the phases.

Many students will have similar stories from their own education.

Disconnected

Clearly there is a disconnect here between what the teacher has discussed in class and what Heather believes. It’s hard to tell from the video, but it’s quite likely that there was not enough time spend on gauging prior knowledge and focused unearthing of student misconceptions prior to teaching the topic. The teacher started the teaching already assuming the students had some basic, shared knowledge. Clearly, that was a mistake. Perhaps if private Universe had been filmed in 2018, the teacher would have leveraged some digital tech such as PhET to teach the phases, and/or had students explain their personal theories individually and/or in groups using these tools prior to beginning instruction.

A Digital Solution

Speaking of digital technology, and circling back to my initial thoughts on particle models, I found research that suggests many preschoolers, elementary, and middle school students all have (incorrect) intuitions about the existence of “invisible particles” in contexts such as dissolving matter (Samarapungavan, Bryan, & Wills, 2017, p. 1016). What was interesting is that when interactive game contexts were used for understanding simple molecular models, children as low as kindergarten show success using them to explain heat and temperature phenomena (Samarapungavan, Bryan, & Wills, 2017, p. 1016). Maybe if I had these tools contexts growing up I’d have bucked my misconceptions much earlier.

Darkness Rises … and Light to Meet It

There’s another interesting point I encountered in my research which helps explain Heather’s case. The researchers found that, especially in regard to light and shadows, suggest that “it is important to continually attend to and systematically address students’ concepts of materiality in the context of ongoing physical science instruction across grade band topics with a variety of phenomena” (Samarapungavan, Bryan, & Wills, 2017, p. 1017). It is likely that Heather formed this misconception much earlier than the filming date, and carried these ideas with her year after year, unquestioned. Is this her fault? No, not really. Perhaps it was the fault of the teachers, or the system, for failing to “continually and systematically address” the concepts.

 

I truly feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of this topic, and I’m truly looking forward to both the comments on my post as well as reading and commenting on yours!

All the best,

Scott

Unpacking Assumptions

To me, a good use of digital technology in the math and science classroom is technology that engages students on a “deeper” level than traditional, let’s say “chalk-and-talk” lessons; lessons where the teacher is the distributor of “knowledge” and students “receive knowledge” . It’s when the use of the digital technology allows concepts to be explained in a more natural, fluid, concrete, intuitive and/or personally-meaningful way. I’ve learned to understand that tech is just a tool, but my opinion is that “good” tech use is when the tech is implemented is such a manner that the learning experience is augmented. It strives to do something different that was quite simply impossible in another medium, or through another platform.

Viewed from another perspective, what makes the use of digital technology “good” is not the tool/tech itself but the manner in which it’s used. For example, if students are tasked to write a paper, using Google Docs as the platform is not necessarily a “good” use of tech. Word would have been equally sufficient (this would be the S in the SAMR model). However, if the goal is to collaborate synchronously and/or asynchronously on a project, sharing ideas to construct something despite being physically separate, I’d certainly consider Google docs a “good” use of tech!

Other “good” uses of digital tech could be to use responsive/interactive simulations, AR, visualizations, or to teach our students to code. We should be mindful to give our students not only tools, but the knowledge and skills required to apply the tools to create something. Too many people think that simply incorporating tech and saying “go! Explore!” will result in better engagement. It’s been suggested by research, such as in Clements & Sarama’s The Role of Technology in Early Childhood Learning (2002, p.341), that “curriculum designed around [tech] should have children do more than merely engage in free exploration, which can lead to boredom”.

Finally, “good” uses of digital tech are absolutely not just a “vision”; they’re 100% real and 100% happening right now as we speak. One simple yet enormous challenge is that using tech in this way is still very new to the average teacher. Better training programs, among other solutions, are required. This could allow the average teacher hands-on experience with tech to become

  1. more aware of the opportunities digital tech can afford and
  2. confident enough to apply them, starting with small tasks that and grow in complexity along with their skill set.

After all, teachers, like children, “learn by doing and by thinking about what they do” (Clements & Sarama, 2002, p. 342).

Reference

Clements, D. H., & Sarama, J. (2002). The role of technology in early childhood learning. Teaching Children Mathematics, 8(6), 340-343.

Question answered was from the STEM 2018 Blog:

  • What is a good use of digital technology in the math and science classroom? What would such a learning experience and environment look like? What would be some characteristics of what it is and what it isn’t? How might a learning experience with technology address a conceptual challenge, such as the one you researched in the last lesson?
  • What makes this a good use of digital technology? Is this a vision or is it possible in real classrooms? What makes this vision a challenge to implement and what might be needed to actualize it?

ETEC533 Course Outline – Google Doc

Hello again!

Every time I take a course I try to wrap my head around it and organize my thoughts using a single Google Doc. I place a little calendar in there, make a note of important dates, copy the syllabus, etc… all in an effort to have all “key” info for the course in one easily-accessible place. This helps me plan for the week with the added plus of being sure I’m not missing important dates, since I can access the info from anywhere (e.g. Docs on my Android)!

Without further ado, I made the doc and thought, “Hey, maybe this will help others”. So, here it is. Enjoy:

Link to ETEC 533 (65A) Google Doc

It’s a copy of my stuff so edit and comment to your heart’s content!

-Scott

 

Matching Readings with Weekly Lessons

Sorry for blowing up the café here but it’s early days and I’m trying to wrap my head around the large number of different parts this course has. Please bear with me – or choose to ignore me!

Question: Is there any way of knowing which of the readings are matched with specific lessons? For example, knowing the assigned readings for lesson 1.2? This info would help me better manage my time as well as make relevant/informed posts.

Perhaps others are thinking the same. If not, could you tell me your strategy? 😀

 

All the best,

Scott