Activity 2

Welcome back for our second activity! 

For this activity, we'll be exploring ways to foster curiosity by building students' conceptual knowledge with technology-rich tools.

From the video in the last activity, we learned that we have many different opportunities to design technology-rich student work that fosters curiosity. Some of the most powerful, and often overlooked, opportunities use technology-rich tools to scaffold the process of learning. During learning, we can use technology to scaffold the process in three ways:

1. Procedural or Rote Knowledge - This is the knowledge of steps in a process to solve a mathematics problem, facts about the periodic table of elements, etc.  

2. Conceptual Knowledge - This is the underlying understanding of a concept. Typically this is taught using models and students can draw the models, interact with physical models or digital models.

3. Problem solving or application knowledge - This is the knowledge of what skills and concepts to use to solve problems in novel settings. Many times, these novel settings are real world situations. 

This activity, we will be learning about how to foster curiosity with conceptual knowledge building work. 

At the end of this activity, participants will:

• • Understand how to foster curiosity with conceptual knowledge building tools for STEMx

  • Evaluate technology-rich, conceptual knowledge building tools for use with STEMx students 

  • Gain insight into students' perceptions of technology-rich, conceptual knowledge building tools for STEMx

When we are building students' conceptual knowledge, we are helping them understand the underlying concepts. As a simple example, instead of memorizing 3x5=15 (rote or procedural knowledge), students understand that multiplication is the same as "groups of" so in this example, it would be 3 groups of 5 or 5 groups of 3. When students have conceptual understanding, they can use a variety of means to get to an answer even if they have forgotten or don't know the rote knowledge or the procedure. So if a student couldn't remember his multiplication fact for 3x5, he could draw out the 3 groups of 5 and solve.

Building conceptual knowledge is not done to the exclusion of rote or procedural knowledge. Certainly, it is more efficient for a student to know immediately that 3x5=15 rather than draw out the concept. However, I have found that building conceptual knowledge allows for a deep and flexible understanding of the concepts and can easily lend itself to curiosity fostering student work. I have also found that conceptual knowledge dramatically impacts students' confidence in their own problem solving abilities!  

When we talk about technology-rich, conceptual knowledge building tools, what do we mean? 

Broadly speaking, students are working with a model of a concept to learn about it. Sometimes we use models because the concept we are trying to teach is too large (solar system), too small (atoms) or abstract (solving for an unknown). The models are representations so they are like a metaphor. 

For STEMx concepts, digital tools that scaffold conceptual knowledge are usually called simulations or virtual manipulatives. Here are some examples that you can explore to deepen your understanding:

        PhET

        National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

        Illuminations by NCTM

        Interactivate by Shodor.org 

This week, you are going to select a virtual manipulative or simulation and integrate it into student work. You will want to select one that works with the content you need your students to learn this week. But, how do you choose? The following video will help you evaluate virtual manipulatives for ability to foster curiosity. 

Before you watch the video, you might want to play with the following virtual manipulatives as they are referenced:

        Resizing Images

        Thinking Blocks

        Percent Grid

        Decimals to Percent

        Fractions to Percent