Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

Everyone knows there is a difference between Elementary Education (K-5/6) and Secondary Education (5/6-12). They are different in many different ways including content, what the school day consists of, and how to gain back the students attention if off track. Today I will be talking about the different type of strategies used to gain the students attention back if starting to get off track.  Starting with Elementary Education, which consists of Kindergarden-5 th /6 th grade. The different types of strategies that I have experienced/seen are as follows:  ·       Repeat the clap rhythm  ·       Saying then answering  ·       Announcing that he/she will wait for the class               I’m guessing we all know what the repeating the clap rhythm strategy is from either our days in Elementary or from us seeing younger c...

Through some of my classes I've noticed that some of the teachers wont give help just answers. And while the answer is nice to have just giving it and nothing else doesn't help with trying to understand the material. I haven't experienced this in any of my math classes but in the ones that I have the teachers are confused that the test don't go as while as they planned. And on the other end of the spectrum their are the teachers that move so fast through the material expecting the students to understand right away because that teacher understands it already. So what I'm saying is as a teacher you need to find a middle ground for explaining your material. But that middle ground is going to change from student to student, because in some cases if you give the answer the students might be able to see where they went wrong and some of them might be able to understand it with a quick explanation.

I want to talk about something that I have seen in my classroom observations, notation. I have seen a few teachers who put little to no emphasis on proper notation. I've even seen a teacher evaluating an expression without using any equal signs! So, the question should be if we actually do need to stress the importance of notation. I think that the answer to this question should obviously be yes. There are a lot of different reasons that we should emphasis the importance of notation while teaching math. First off, it makes learning a whole lot easier. When I observed the teacher who hadn't used notation, I was genuinely confused as to what the goal of the lesson was. I would consider myself very strong in mathematics, and I think that there might be something wrong if I don't understand what is going on.  There is also the issue of your students wasting their time doing a lot of work that means nothing if it has bad notation. Bad notation can lead to total misunders...

       One of the biggest questions I have asked and hear a lot is how to improve student’s engagement. Even for longtime teachers, it can be something they want to improve. Thinking back on my own experiences when was I most engaged? I think several of these very engaging classes can be found with the teachers that still make me want to come back after all these years. Some of the best memories from school were from teachers that may have taught like a pirate. From my Latin teacher reenacting Pompeii with a miniature city and pop volcano to my English teacher that made us act out Romeo and Juliet. Both were able to bring the lesson to life and we took a stronger hold to it because of it. Here I am going to take a bit about the book Teach Like a Pirate and what you can do to be an engaging pirate teacher.        In Teach Like a Pirate, Dave Burgess talks about teaching in three circles. The first is content, this is what you as the teache...

As a freshman, I attended the South Dakota CTM Conference in Huron; at the very end of the last day, I attended a session by Sheila McQuade, a teacher at O’Gorman High School in Sioux Falls, in which she described her experience of flipping a classroom.  While each teacher has their own style, in general, a flipped classroom combines teacher-created videos and interactive lessons with help on homework during the hour of class time. Students’ homework is to watch the assigned video lecture and take notes; when they come to class the next day, they are to work on assigned problems, worksheets, etc. and ask any questions that may arise. Sheila had a presentation prepared about the ups and downs of flipping her classroom. She went through the process of creating the videos, pointing out which software and programs worked best for her. She found that her biggest obstacle was keeping up with making all of the videos for her students to watch and take notes on. The biggest thing t...

Suppose you ask a question to a classroom full of math students. Two students raise their hand. One is a little black boy, the other a little white girl. Which one do you call on? If you call on the boy, you may be accused of discrimination for not allowing the minorities to have their voice. If you call on the girl, you may be accused of being sexist, not allowing women to have their voice. Now say you choose the girl, and she gets the answer wrong. Students could then use that to support the false idea that woman cannot do math. The same is true for the boy; if he gets the answer wrong, one could use that as evidence to support the false idea that minorities are stupid and cannot do math. Now suppose you ask a question to a classroom full of students. Two students raise their hand. Now which one do you choose to answer the question? By stripping the question of all the racial and gender information, one can think about alternative factors. Which student is more likely to have th...