Teaching with Technology

A few resources for the Pew Teaching with Technology Nomination. The short URL for this page is http://bit.ly/JGtechteach

Links point to files on dropbox or to blogposts about the use of technology. I also put together a glog(an interactive poster) for the 2011 Instructional Technology Fair about my technology use.

Laptop Days - in all of my classes I frequently have laptop days where at least half (and sometimes all) of the students bring in laptops. I moved to this structure instead of booking computer labs for a few reasons. Frequent trips to computer labs were bothersome for students as well as myself; it also allowed for as short a notice as the next day if computers were called for to address an issue that came up in class. The students used the programs and resources more outside of class when their inside of class experiences were on their own computers. It models use of technology in classroom, which is important for future teachers. The shift to open source software also supported this move. See the sample Math 229 laptop day workshop for an example, or this classroom visitation report on a laptop day, or this blogpost about a laptop day.

Math Software - while the university has site licenses for Maple and Geometer's Sketchpad, both wonderful programs, I had only 2 students in a decade purchase these for themselves, and it is rare for a school to have Sketchpad and unheard of for a K-12 school to have Maple. So I mostly use GeoGebra and Wolfram|Alpha with my students. GeoGebra is a free, open source program for doing both algebra and geometry; many of my sketches are linked on this separate page at my blog. In addition to using it in class, have worked with over 100 area teachers in professional development for the program, and maintain a Google site with those workshop materials. Wolfram|Alpha is a computational knowledge engine, sort of a cross between Google and the world's most powerful calculator. I haven't written as much about W|A, but the adoption rate of the program among my students is over 90%. In addition to the web engine, it is available as a mobile app, which 10-25% of students buy. It completely changes the way students do homework, and has made relevant and immediate the discussion about how technology not only changes how we teach, but demands that we reflect on what we teach as well.

Twitter - this was suggested to me from conversations with Dr. Maria Anderson at Muskegon Community College, who was talking about its use for online classes. (Maria whom I met through blogging connections.) It seemed like the benefits she described would be ideal for Student Teacher Assistants. I do try things before I require them of students, and quickly I became convinced of the value of Twitter, as it plugged me into a network of strong K-16 teachers that in turn connected me with an amazing stream of resources. I implemented it for TAs with Dr. Rebecca Walker in Fall 2009, and shortly thereafter with support from Dr. David Coffey. It has ranged from good and impactful to excellent. It provides daily contact and assessment of student teachers, offers support for them between seminar meetings and strengthened their peer-to-peer interactions. In addition it has led to the TAs interactions with leading teachers in the field across the nation. This semester (Fall 2011) I have tried my first use of Twitter with students earlier in the program, by streaming a twitter chat during class. In general on Twitter you only see tweets of those people you've followed; chats are conversations supported by Twitter's strong hashtag search function. For #mathchat, for example, you would make a tweet about the topic of the day and include #mathchat in the message. Then anyone searching for #mathchat will see your tweet, enabling conversation with people outside of your circle. Here is a sample of a mathchat. Streaming the mathchats has deepened discussion in a class that sometimes stuggles with being too quiet. Next semester I will be using it with an honors project to help get feedback and find activity testers for the student author.

Google Docs - the ability to simultaneously edit and share work via a Google document has been a powerful teaching tool. For example, students collaborated on a discussion of a seminal article in math education, which has become one of the most visited pages on my blog. In addition, the ability to create interactive documents for use by students has been powerful. The fact that they are easily embeddable is frosting on a very good cake. In addition to their use with students, these have become a fixture of my professional collaboration as well.

Dissemination - the use of social media for sharing my professional work has definitely enhanced my teaching. On the one level of being able to quickly and easily find and share materials (for example, reading and viewing recommendations) with students and former students, and on the next level of reflecting and improving on my work. The mathhombre blog is the main vehicle for this, although I recently started a Tumblr for quicker (or sillier) sharing. But this has also been a vehicle for students to write guest posts - a feature I hope to expand on in the future. Furthermore, I think that technology offers a way for students to do work with broader impact than just for class. A continuing project for my preservice high school teachers is a wiki for High School Mathematics. They may edit a previous section, or add a new section as a semester long project. The wiki has also become a good opportunity for teaching about fair use and creative commons, and the need for good attribution on the web. On a lighter note there was a course where the students became interested in making a video, and it turned out to be a wonderful learning opportunity.

Software piloting - as I am constantly on the lookout for new games and applications, one aspect of my technology use for teaching is piloting and reviewing software for teachers. A recent example is for graphical interfaces or, similarly, for iPad use. In addition, I was the first in the department to try out an online homework system, or to go to a Math and Tech professional development camp to which we have since sent other department members. (I returned this year as an instructor for GeoGebra.)

It's been interesting to put this list together, as I've become so immersed in some of these technologies that I think I've been taking them for granted. That makes it hard to be explicit with sharing my thinking about them with future teachers, which is an important part of developing TPACK. I've put this page at my portfolio site because the only way I was able to represent my work to my colleagues was with an active, linked structure, and I invite you to poke around as well.

Image credit: giulia.forsythe @ Flickr