Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

Sometimes when students are presented with problems and solutions in math, they are unable to describe what is happening and mark it up to “magic.” Almost anyone you ask can tell you what the Pythagorean Theorem is, but not everyone can describe why it works. All they know is that it is a magical formula that you use in math that gives you the right answer. Teachers need to make sure that when they are teaching, students understand why the things they are doing work. The idea of math being magical typically stems from students being told to memorize formulas without understanding how to derive them. We are doing the students a disservice by having them memorize because they lose out on an opportunity to critically think. If students get in the pattern of believing that math is magic, they give up when they come across something they don’t understand because they can’t remember the magical formula they thought they had memorized. Another danger is that if the students do not under...

In the past few years, I have had my share of aiding students with their math homework. Anywhere from college to elementary, I have observed and compared the tendencies of these students. Overall, the students have no issue remembering what they learned, but, if anything, they lack the confidence in their efforts to finding the solution. They answer each solution with uncertainty, looking for any direction from the instructor. How can we build confidence in our students? It is one thing to have them find the correct answer, but if they continually need our confirmation to find confidence, are we helping or harming at this point? Henry Ford once said “Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” This quote helps underlines the importance of having confidence in your own ability, especially in the case of our students. For the remainder of this post, I will discuss a few of the concepts that I have applied to my teaching methods. Instead of providing an e...

            There are over 155 million Americans playing video games regularly. Chances are many of your students will be among these 155 million. To many parents, video games have a negative connotation that seem to have no value. The truth is that video games, in moderation, have many benefits. The gamers use many facts, tools, and information given to them to move on throughout the game. This makes it no surprise that some games can also be beneficial in your classroom.             In our technology class, one of our favorite type of game is one that sets the students up against each other. If you have competitive students, as we do in Math 371, these types of games can be very beneficial. They can also be used for short quizzes, or exit tickets. One thing that we must be carful with when playing these is that we do not forget what we want our students to learn. Many of ...

Greetings students of Math 371! I'm very excited to once again add to this blog.  Dr. Vestal asked me two years ago to post as a guest blogger.  I skimmed through my previous post  and am happy that it's still relevant.  The revolution is as strong as ever. I want to talk briefly about how Twitter has helped me become a better teacher.  I first joined Twitter back in September of 2011.  It wasn't until the spring of 2014 that I started being active on Twitter and using it professionally.  Over the past four years, my use of Twitter has evolved into what I now consider my Personal Learning Network (PLN).   I first started following some of the all-stars of mathematics education -- Dan Meyer, Andrew Stadel, and Dr. Vestal to name a few.  Over time, I've followed more and more people who I've either met, read about, or heard of via re-tweets and likes. Each day, I spend between 5-10 minutes skimming through my Twitter f...