Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

       Technology surrounds us every day. The smartwatch on our wrists, the phone in our hands, the laptop we complete homework on, the washing machine and dryer used to do laundry, and even the coffee machine used every morning to give us caffeine boosts are all considered technology. According to, “How many devices will you use in your life,” by WebFix, the average American lives to be 79 years old and will have 43.9 phones, 15.8-26.3 laptops, 7.7-17.2 TVs, and 13.2 coffee makers. As you can tell technology is taking the world by storm.      Relating this to my Technology for STEM class, it makes me wonder is there too much technology in the classroom? Or maybe a better question is, is there such a thing as too much technology in the classroom? In my opinion, there are benefits and downfalls to technology in the classroom, but is there  a fine line of too much technology?      Starting positively, there are billions of resourses a...

As I was thinking about what to blog this week, my mind kept coming back to a topic we talk about a lot in our pedagogy classes: homework in the math classroom. In middle and high school, the majority of my homework assignments were simply 2-40 even or something similar to that. Although they weren’t extremely long, it still felt like I was just doing extra problems for no reason. Eventually, there was more of a variety, but I still didn’t really know why I had to do that much homework since it was just a completion grade anyway. I tutor a student in Algebra I, and the review assignment for their first test was literally 80 questions long! Yes, it was review and they had a few days to complete it, but that is outrageous! The assignments have gotten shorter as the year has gone by, but he still has 30-40 problem assignments to do for every class period. Now why am I talking about homework in a blogpost that should be dedicated to technology? Well, this week we learned about different ...

               As a third-year math education major at South Dakota State, math exams have been on my plate since I started my post high school education. As this week ends, I just finished two exams over the course of the week, so as you could imagine I did my fair share of studying this week. I have never been great at studying nor have I ever enjoyed it. I thought to myself, “how can I make this experience easier for my students?” As time passes and technology gets more innovative, the cluster and sheer number of options for our students to utilize while studying can become overwhelming. Being a student in a time of such rapid growth in technology has shown me firsthand how exhausting it can be to siphon through it all.             Studying is one of the aspects that the teacher doesn’t have nearly as much control over. It is the responsibility of the student to put in the appropriate...