Kristine Harootunian

Contributes to the development, communication, and implementation of a shared vision for the comprehensive use of technology to support a digital age education for all students by advocating for policies, procedures, programs, and funding strategies to support implementation of the digital learning plan

Evidence: iPads in the Classroom Reflection on the article It's the Pedagogy, Stupid: Lessons from an iPad Lending Program

I love everything about this article. I agree with so many of the points that the authors make. I don’t believe the iPad in itself is transforming education. As they say:

“It began to dawn on us that the appeal of using the iPad in the classroom isn't its potential for re-imagining pedagogy [...] rather, the iPad's appeal is two-fold: simple convenience and outstanding image resolution.”

I don’t care as much about the image resolution, but I view the convenience and freedom that the iPad gives as the biggest seller for me as a teacher. The article mentioned that in teachers’ applications for their iPad lending program, STEM teachers had the most concrete examples of how they were going to use iPads in their classroom; I am one of those logical thinkers. I signed up for this class because since working at South Burlington High School I have been annoyed with the way the math classrooms are set up in a fixed way to offer math instruction. Currently, all math classrooms have SMART boards that are rather inconveniently positioned in the center of the whiteboard/chalkboard.

This would be fine if you used only the SMART board to display content, however,

our SMARTboard software hasn’t been updated since 2011, and IT says they are not paying to upgrade the software
the boards are glitchy and have to be recalibrated often
the mathtools package no longer works
The dongles to connect to our computers go missing
our school is a PC school and I am a rebel and use my mac and the version of the Notebook app from 2011 doesn’t work on the latest version of the Mac OS

I started off just writing on the chalk/white boards, but the glare from the sun and angles at which students have to view the board leaves blind spots in the room. Then I switched to using the doc cams (in all the rooms as well) and this has worked generally well, however the placement of the VGA cables dictate where the doc cam lives. In some rooms, they are located behind the students, so I am left talking at the back of their heads and can’t see the expressions on their faces. I saw having an iPad as a solution to this.

As stated in the article “Instructors of physics, math, and science at these campuses were far and away more likely to propose specific, original goals for themselves,” that’s me in a nutshell. The main reason I wanted an iPad to use at school is to combat all of the above problems listed. I wanted to use it to screencast notes or other all class activities, from any location in the room, with the added benefit of having the ability to screen record notes/lectures for student review later. Additionally, since using the iPad I've noticed that students are more engaged. One thing that I like to do with to shake up note taking is ask who would like to take notes on the iPad as it is projected for the whole class to see. The whole class contributes to the notes, they are especially interested in seeing their peer's handwriting, and jump at the opportunity to participate. There are more examples of how great this has been, but we can talk about that in my interview.

After working with the iPad for over a year, teachers in the math department have seen the benefit. Our department chair has asked administration for permission to purchase iPads for our department and I have been working with our IT department and have created this tech agreement to pilot a program where everyone in our department is issued an iPad and Apple Pencil for use in math instruction.

Evidence: Discontinuing use of TI-84 calculators in our classrooms and implementing the use of the Desmos Test Mode App

I don't know how art teachers do it. All of the materials, supplies that they spend thousands on, somehow make it back to their intended spots at the end of class. Math teachers could learn from them. Our calculators (which cost about $100 a piece) go missing often. We have not developed a way to keep track of them. One idea that I had was to require students who could afford to supply their own calculators and students who couldn't could check out a calculator from the library for the year. We almost had enough calculators to make this work, however, whenever we would do an inventory, we would find that we had less calculators than expected.

In comes Desmos to solve all of our problems. We rely on this program in class often, but have struggled to let students us it on tests as we were unable to restrict their internet use and were concerned about the fidelity of their answers. Desmos released an app for iOS and Android that restricts the use of a cell phone to strictly the app.

I have been testing out the functionality with my freshman, and all of them love it. We plan on removing our classroom supply of calculators, moving them to the library, and allowing students without cellphones, and/or are in specialty classes like Calculus or AP Statistics to check them out for the year.

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