Week 7 Reflection: Geogebra

Before this week, I had only used Geogebra in MATHS 202 to do a few small activities. After this week, I can see how this program would be very beneficial for middle and high school students. I really liked using this program because it allows students to see how beneficial it is to see certain shapes and polygons, but Geogebra is special because it also allows students to understand certain algebraic qualities that these geometric figures have by displaying the slopes and equations that these figures have. I really thought that Elizabeth and Ashley did an excellent job writing a module that allowed us to slowly get used to the program by doing simple operations before we dove into more difficult operations. I also thought it was really cool how Geogebra used sliders to show certain qualities of functions because it would allow students to have a much deeper understanding of how certain variables of equations of functions can change the graphs of a function depending on its numeric value. The only thing that I observed that would make this program a little bit more difficult to use especially at the middle school level is that the instructions for this module tended to be somewhat lengthy which may give middle school teachers a headache when trying to keep students focused on these activities. As far as high school students, I think that they would pick up what is going on very quickly. Overall, I was very impressed with the detail and organization of this module, as well as the program that was being used.

Week 6 Tasks

I write about Week 6 (four days late SORRY!!!) with mixed feelings. I will start with what I thought was positive about my week. I really enjoyed the reading because it reminded me how important the use of graphing calculators are in the classroom. Both activities presented in the article I thought could be used in my future classroom, so I enjoyed learning about the reading. The next thing that I enjoyed was getting to choose two activities (Amazing Profit and Linear Alignment) on Illumination that I thought I would use in my future classroom. I decided to choose two activities dealing with slope since I am going to teach middle school and will more than likely dealing with a lot of algebra related topics. The two activities that I found were very informative, yet very simple and to the point, and I liked that because it would allow me to incorporate these two activities into my future lesson plans because it would only take one to two days to use each one of these activities.

The thing that frustrated me the most with my week was my attempt to find activities that I will use on the module I will be making for Week 7. This is not to say that I think that there are not any activities that I can find or make to make a good module. But the two activities that I found and completed (Scoring Points and Free Throws) were in the TinkerPlots workbook that I borrowed, and honestly they were horribly constructed. There were questions that were so vague and had certain answers that really would not benefit the student learning them that I would finish the lessons and just have no idea how these activities were supposed to benefit a student at all. What I have learned this semester is the importance of detail when using technology in mathematics, but these activities left me with the impression that that was the complete opposite goal that they had. My goal for Week 7 is to make my own activities or to find some more equipped activities that will allow me to make a module that is worth learning about. This week has shown me that there are some TinkerPlot activities that were made when the program was first discovered that did not get tested very well. I am hoping that through the module I plan to make that I can make more detailed activities than the ones that I just completed.

Week 6: Reaction to Online Classrooms

When I learned that we were going to be hearing from a math teacher that teaches online only, I was surprised because I did not think about those options being available or even existing. I just assumed the kids primarily go to a public or private high school or they are home schooled. I did not think about kids that are home schooled actually having instructors that teach them online. I will admit that I find it strange that someone would want to teach online because to me that just means that you are more interested in the material than the kids that are being taught. As much as I love math, I am going into teaching because I want to have a positive influence on young teenagers lives. I absolutely love the energy and enthusiasm that they have for life, and I am excited about the prospect of waking up every day and being excited to go do my job. When he said that he had some negative experiences in the classroom, I was not surprised because I expect to encounter things in the classroom that I am not going to be pleased with, but it is how one responds to those situations that shows what type of teacher they really are.

In Mike's situation, I am happy that he found a job doing something that he really enjoys, which is teaching math. It was easy to see that he really enjoys teaching online, and teaching higher level math to students that want to be challenged. It seemed to me though that he may have had a tougher time enjoying teaching in public schools because he had to deal with both the kids that wanted to learn and the kids that did not want to learn (as much.) One of the challenges that I look forward to when I become a teacher is to find ways to help students that have more trouble with math so that they can go through there life not feeling limited when it comes to having mathematical knowledge. I know that this will not be easy, but I look forward to the challenges that I will have with these students. I believe that early on in teaching, I will run into some bumps in the road, and I will have to learn how to adjust to those bumps, but I think that once I have some experience under my belt I will have some really good ideas on how the majority of middle grade students like to learn math. I do not think there will be one way in particular, but I think I will know different ways to benefit each student's mathematical abilities.

The speculations that I have made about Mike may not be true. This is just my opinion based on listening to him talk last Thursday. I think it is awesome that there are people that are talented enough to teach students online because I do not think I would be as effective as a teacher that way, but he seems to be really good at it. Overall, I thought it was good to hear from someone who was in a different situation in teaching math, and hearing how their experiences have been in their situation with teaching mathematics.

Week 5: My "aha" Moment

My "aha" moment with my technology was downloading data off of the internet and putting it into TinkerPlots. It is something that wouldn't seem like that big of a deal, but just seeing how simple it was really was, and how beneficial it could be not only in a math classroom but in other areas of life was very intriguing to me. It was cool to see that a program that is primarily used in middle grade levels could be used in real life when looking at sports statistics, body characteristics, backpack weights, and presidents ages. I think this is why TinkerPlots would be a very effective tool to use in a middle school classroom, and with all of the data that already comes with TinkerPlots along with millions of pieces of data on the internet, I think it will be a very effective tool in my future classroom.

Reflection Week 5: My attitude towards technology in mathematics

Before I was in this class, I remember all of the great ideas and strategies that I was planning on using in my future classroom in order to make it successful for my students. I planned on having fun activities for my students which would allow them to work together in small groups. I also planned on not lecturing all of the time, and allowing my students to come up with their own ideas on certain topics in ways that they learned them best. Although I still plan on using these same strategies in the next year or two when I am in the classroom, I have also came to the point where I think using technology in future math classroom will be very beneficial to my students as well.

Before I entered this class, I had never considered using technology too much, and even the first few weeks of class I really was not taking it into consideration. But after hearing some of our online meetings with teachers that are currently in the classroom today, I have began to change my mind about technology. I am not saying that I think technology should be used every single day in the classroom, and should take the place of other teaching strategies (lecturing, group work, student led activities), but I think that it should have some part of the learning process in the classroom. I felt like Mr. Pinkerton had a good grasp of how to use technology in math, and it seemed like he understood how his students were going to handle the use of this technology. He understood that every one of his students may not benefit from it, but he also realized that some of his students that were not benefiting from normal classroom strategies that he was using would benefit from seeing how math can be used through certain technology.

So after five weeks in this class, I am currently thinking that I will use technology a few times a month when it comes to the whole class using technology, and allowing them to complete activities that they would enjoy on these computer programs. I think that it needs to be something that is student led, and is fun for them as well. I think a lot of times we try to keep students in a box way too much, and I think allowing students to use technology is a great time to just let them loose a little bit so that they can learn and explore the way that feels most natural to them! Hopefully this will allow them to grasp something about mathematics that they never would have understood in a normal classroom setting!

Week 4 Reflection

Week 4 was a different week than usual because I was working primarily with Terrapin Logo, which was interesting to say the least. One thing that I wish I was better at is learning how to use computer programs quicker, so when I made my quilt on Logo it took a little while. It could be that I am a step slow with new programs, and I want everything to be exactly the way I have it envisioned in my mind that results in the process taking so long. But after I completed all of my activities on Logo, I felt much more knowledgeable about the program than I had at the beginning of the week. I also enjoyed the reading, and I felt like a lot of the principles related to how I felt when I was working with Logo because even though it took me quite a while to complete my assignments, the extra practice and the time that I spent learning how to correct my mistakes made me feel much more comfortable with Logo by the end.
On top of Week 4 material, I also had to make up some of my Week 2 work after I had completed some of my Week 3 and 4 work. I experimented with Jing and made some videos showing how to do certain procedures using Geometer Sketchpad and Terrapin Logo. I found out that Jing is not very difficult to use, and that it will be very easy to use in the future for this class and my future classroom. I also did my report on VoiceThread and saw what a great program it is.
As of right now, I am looking forward to taking Sunday off for this class because I think I am finally caught up after being behind all week! The good thing is I feel like I learned quite a bit this week which is encouraging!

Week 3 Reflection

This Week 3 reflection is coming a little late due to getting behind on some of my work from Weeks 2 and 3, but I am caught up after spending around 20 hours on this class this week. This week has helped increase my level of comfort with TinkerPlots due to the articles that I read and reflected on, and the activity/lesson that I made using an instructional video of off keypress.com. The two articles that I read helped me understand that TinkerPlots is a program that can be very useful in the middle school classroom. I believe this to be true because it is a program that can give them structure mathematically with data analysis, probability, and statistics, but it also allows them to explore how to evaluate and discover data patterns and trends on their own without structure.
Middle school students today are more technologically advanced at that age than any other generation in history, and I think they would be able to gain a lot from TinkerPlots if the time was made to use it.The reason that I believe this is due to the fact that since there are a variety of different data sets with different topics, they could find one that they relate to, and they could use that data in order to benefit them mathematically. Also, since Tinkerplots is very colorful I think that they would be intrigued with how it looks, and would enjoy doing math more than if they were looking at a textbook and making a bar graph on graph paper. One of the most beneficial things about TinkerPlots in my opinion is that it is simple, and is made so that all middle school aged would be able to gain something from it. Sometimes mathematical technology computer programs can be to overwhelming for students with limited mathematical knowledge, but that is not the case with TinkerPlots, which makes in my mind will make it enjoyable to use for students and educators.
When it comes to my own knowledge of TinkerPlots I feel pretty comfortable with constructing material after making my own lesson this week. Given I did use the TinkerPlots instructional website videos to help construct my lesson, I feel that if I had made a lesson on a simpler topic that I would be more than capable to. The first lesson that I made though was a little more difficult so I used a video to make sure that the questions I was asking were at a middle school level. It is really cool that in only a month, I have gained sufficient knowledge on my technology, and I can not imagine how comfortable I will be by the end of the semester!