Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

Every spring semester I get to write the last blog post for Math 371, Technology for STEM Educators. I always title it, "What I Learned This Semester," but this year I want to be more specific about why educators need to keep learning.  If we don't continue to learn, how can we ask our students to learn? As a teacher educator, I have always felt that modeling what I want our future teachers to do is the most important aspect of my job. How can we say one thing and do another? So I try to model good teaching, fair assessment practices, and being a lifelong learner.  Last semester I did an action research project with collaborators from Georgia Southern University and the University of New Hampshire. We used a two-column proof software in our Geometry for Teachers courses at our respective institutions. We collected data through student surveys and the software. When it came to analyzing the survey data, I initially used a Chi-square Test of Independence on the pre-and post...

By Allison Johnson This semester has been full of learning. I have learned about a lot of different technology tools to potentially use in my future classroom. I have learned about a lot of different iPad apps to use. I have decided that I like having an iPad and being able to take notes on it so much that I am highly considering getting one. I also learned how to do things on a SMARTboard and Promethean board, which I was very excited about. Elementary-aged Allison would be so happy, I remember always wondering about how you work a smart board and I loved playing on it when I could. This week we had a Desmos art project due. Desmos is an online graphing calculator. We had to create an image of some sort in Desmos. This activity was challenging, you had to graph a line and then just keep changing the numbers in the equation until it looked right. I was able to find some resources online to help, which was very nice. After I finished my activity, I sent a video of it to my parents. My...

By Hunter Hanson Accounting is becoming more and more technology-savvy with each day that passes by. Right now, in the United States, legislation has introduced accounting to be considered part of the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field instead of being in the business field in K-12 Education. Accountants are responsible for recording the financial transactions of a business or organization. The accounting process includes summarizing, analyzing, and reporting financial statements. All businesses need an accounting professional to do their finances, which makes them in high demand in almost every economy today. STEM provides some of the fastest-growing jobs related to cloud computing, engineering, mathematics, and sciences. The legislation would allow STEM K-12 grant funding to be used to help with accounting awareness and education. The activities would promote the development, implementation, and strengthening of programs to teach accounting. The goal of t...

By Melissa Christlieb Have you ever been assigned a homework assignment online? Or have you ever assigned your students online homework? Online homework is being implemented more and more in education each day. So, what are some pros and cons of online homework? Let’s start with some pros. A major pro of online homework is the flexibility that it allows. Students have complicated schedules and are involved in more things than just your class. Having homework online allows students to learn when the time suits them and the opportunity to work in a different environment than a classroom. There are so many resources online now to help with homework and understanding. Online homework can be beneficial to students who are shy or do not like to talk in the classroom. Having discussions posts online gives those students a way to communicate what they are learning in a way that is comfortable for them. As a student, one aspect of online homework is that immediate feedback is provided in most c...

By Sydney Stapleton This past week our class created Desmos activities, which ar e digital mathematical experiences that aid students’ learning by modeling and using multiple representations to show concepts. While exploring Desmos to make an activity, I am amazed at the tools and abilities it offers to help teachers visualize the learning concepts for their students. Desmos was started by a Yale math and physics major and now CEO, Eli Luberoff. Like most, if not all, secondary students, Eli grew up utilizing a graphing calculator. With the wave of technology in the world, it makes sense that we would see people create software that can do the graphing on a bigger screen, like a computer. Desmos now has not only a graphing calculator tool, but a scientific calculator, four-function calculator, matrix calculator, geometry tool, and test practice as well. SInce Desmos is specifically for educational purposes, it strives, “to build a world where every student learns math and loves learnin...

by Emily Siemonsma           In high school, the importance of memorization is stressed in almost every class. Even in some college courses, memorization is the only way through the class. However, memorization has never been a strength of mine and I am sure many other students agree. Memorization takes up so much time and honestly I forget eighty percent of the material right after the test if I force myself to memorize terms or methods. Learning is about gaining a deeper understanding of the subjects you are introduced to. Thus, I believe that memorization needs to become a thing of the past, especially in the math classroom.           Once we say goodbye to memorization, we can start discussing allowing formula sheets in the math classroom. I think that formula sheets make perfect sense in the math classroom. When someone is working as an engineer, teacher, or mathematician, they will probably look up most formulas. Memoriz...

    While technology has opened up a variety of opportunities not only in the math classroom but in classrooms in general, it runs the risk of leading to a disconnect between teachers and students. Coming from the Harrisburg School District in high school, the first district in South Dakota to adopt Mass Customized Learning or MCL, I feel as though I have gained a unique perspective on how teachers who are either forced to use too much technology or teachers who aren't prepared to use technology can lead to a classroom environment with the teacher almost completely uninvolved. MCL provides the potential for strong student-teacher interactions with teachers being readily available to help students who have already gotten an understanding of the material. The teachers need to understand that they need to make sure they are still actively involved to not lose their students' attention.     In theory Mass Customized learning is a modern idea where students can ...

By Hunter Hanson What is gamification in the classroom? Well, gamification is about transforming your classroom environment and regular activities into a game. The teacher can do many things with gamification to try and get students involved with what they are teaching. They can use a leaderboard with students getting points each week as they progress throughout the year. This can be achieved through either effort from the student, the attitude of the student, or even how well the students perform in the activities. It can be a great tool in the classroom with many pros but also has some cons as well. Some gamification websites that you can use as a teacher include Kahoot, Quizlet, Gimkit, and many others. Pros One pro of gamification is that it creates enthusiasm in the classroom. Gamified learning can help students that may struggle with certain subjects in school like math. By gamifying the subject, you can make the students more excited and competitive while learning at the same ti...

By Allison Johnson Statistics in middle school and high school is often not considered a priority standard and can sometimes be overlooked by the teacher or skipped if the class is behind. Most teachers also do not feel comfortable and confident enough to teach statistics. There are many resources online for teachers to sharpen their statistics skills and better prepare them to teach the lessons. The traditional way to learn statistics is to use Excel. Excel does have a lot of nice functions and options. It is easy to calculate the mean and median and other numerical values in Excel. The graphing functions in Excel are not so good. The graph function in Excel is not easy to manipulate and it is hard to easily change what is on the x-axis and y-axis. This week in class we learned about a program called CODAP. CODAP stands for Common Online Data Analysis Platform. I found a lot of things in CODAP that I liked. You can easily rearrange the way the data is sorted by clicking on the title o...

By Melissa Christlieb On Friday, February 4th I attended the SD STEM Education conference in Huron, SD. During one of the presentations, we learned about the website named Floop. This website is a tool for teachers to use when grading and giving feedback to students online. With this website, teachers are able to make assignments for students and the students use Floop to turn in the assignments electronically. On the teachers' side of this website, you are able to insert comments, write on the assignments, give audio comments and see who has read and replied to your comments. If a student replies to comment it will flag the assignment as if they just submit something. I think this would be very helpful for teachers so that a student's comment does not go unseen. As a teacher, you can select to see who has turned in the assignment and who hasn’t. Floop also keeps a bank of your previous comments made which can be reused for different students. T his website is able to be access...

By Emily Siemonsma Group projects are a huge part of high school, college, and people’s careers. However, does group work really create a better individual learner? In the long run does group work in school create better members of society. It cannot be denied that teams are a necessity to society. Think about a team of doctors. If someone calls 911, EMT’s will arrive, then the patient will meet nurses, doctors, and so many other people to help take care of them. If all the members of this team had not learned how to work with others leading up to them taking this job, that could be detrimental to the patient. Another example is a sports team. In basketball if one person hogs the ball and tries to play the game by themselves, the team probably will not win. The athletes must learn how to play with each other and be confident in each other. When group projects function as they are supposed to, the outcome is wonderful. Students learn how to better interact with their peers. Students...

by Sydney Stapleton Technology advancements have created the ability to share information within seconds. New high speeds of data, Wi-Fi in nearly every building, and more technology available than ever before allows everyone to publish and distribute content. This generates the perfect storm for violating copyright and fair use laws. Educators need to educate themselves in order to protect them and their school from getting involved in lawsuits and paying large fines. This week in class, I was taught, for the first time, the rules and vital fine print statements pertaining to copyright and fair use laws. Before reading any information on copyright, I assumed it was similar to how you must cite your sources to avoid plagiarism. While some aspects, like citing the source, are still relevant there is much more to it than that. While discussing during class, it was clear there are many misconceptions surrounding what is permissible without breaking laws. The fair use doctrine can caus...