Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

The students did their final presentations on Monday.   They had to create a video lesson over a statistics or probability topic, show us the video, and respond to the following: ·          Why you selected the particular math content for the lesson. ·          Which app or program you used and why. ·          What you learned while creating the lesson. ·          What you would do differently if you were to do it again or had more time. The 11 students were divided into 4 groups.    It was very interesting to me that each group used a different technology for their lesson.   The following technologies were used:   Knowmia, Educreations, Camtasia, and a webcam.   Three of the groups presented with slides of material and audio added to the slides.   One group was brave enough to ...

Greetings from Oklahoma!    My name is Keri Kornelson, and I'm in the math department at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.  And I can't escape the fact that I'm a technological newbie, at least when it comes to technology in the classroom.  But I decided to teach an inverted (flipped) class this semester, so I needed some technology to make it all work.  The idea started simply enough.  Discrete mathematics is often the course where students get their first exposure to logic and proofs.  I decided to teach in the flipped model because I wanted to be present when students started trying to read and write the proofs, rather than letting them struggle through that on their own after I did the content delivery (a.k.a. lecture) during class time.  For example, they don't really need me to be right in the room with them when they learn the definition of an even integer, but they are likely to have questions when the time comes to prov...

Hi Everyone in Math 371!     Thank you so much for having me as a guest blogger this week.   My name is Rachel Harrington and I am writing to you from Corvallis, Oregon.   I am an associate professor of mathematics education at Western Oregon University.   On Fridays, I work from a coffee shop in my hometown and do virtual office hours through Google Chat.   Isn’t technology grand?   I have never actually met Dr. Vestal, but I talk to her regularly via Facebook.   She is a friend of a friend who did a virtual introduction.   Our friend in common knew we did similar work and thought we should “meet.”   Again, isn’t technology grand?     I have read the past entries of your class blog and see that folks have used it to summarize their personal experiences with technology and also a chance to review how they explored technology tools in the previous week’s class.   So, continuing with that theme, I thought...

Since we did not have class last Tuesday I will reflect on things we have discussed throughout the semester this far.  The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about what we have discussed and learned is how much time it takes to learn the technology that surrounds us in the classroom.  Spending time with the SmartBoard and the Promethean board has been invaluable.  Some day as we venture out into our own classrooms, the majority of us will have these tools to help teach the content to our students.  Preparation is going to be vital in ensuring that we deliver a smooth, effective lesson.  Technology is very frustrating for me, but a big reason for that is because I have not spent the time with it to get comfortable.  This class has opened my eyes that I will indeed need to prepare for a learning curve in the use of technology. Some other valuable tools learned are the computer applications Desmos and GeoGebra.  I am sure that there are numero...

In Math 371 we continued to discuss a book that we decided to read called “It’s Complicated” and we also continued to play around with Excel.             In the book discussion we talked about two chapters of the book. These chapters were about bullying and online predators. We did not focus on the chapter about online predators as much as the bullying chapter. As future educators all we can do is teach our students about Internet safety and how they shouldn’t talk to strangers online. We focused mainly on the bullying because as teachers, that is something we know we are all going to have to deal with. The definition of bullying stated in the book, which came from Swedish psychologist Dan Olweus, is constructed with three components aggression, repetition, and imbalance of power. In this book they interview teenagers about different social issues and uses in technology. Something that stuck with me was the fact that many of ...

In Math 371 we spent the day working with Excel and showing its uses in the math classroom particularly with statistics. From working with it, I realize Excel does have quite a few uses in the math classroom setting. We spent time working with the probability and statistics section which worked quite well especially for calculating average, median, mode and all sorts of other types of statistical data. It also had a variety of different charts useful to plotting data. Another uses of Excel is the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet allows students to create formulas that are useful for data. The students can just develop an equation and then copy and paste to put different values into it which make it easy to solve equations. However as a teacher, it is much more useful for students to solve equations themselves and when equations are used it is much more useful to see the graph which Excel cannot do.  This is one of the major reasons I find GeoGebra to be a better tool for a tea...