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 learn at their own pace with teacher-prepared lessons given to them in advance. The goal of this is to provide students the ability to take more or less time on a given subject and to have the teacher there as a constant resource for students to get one-on-one instruction from should they struggle with something. When Harrisburg chose to adopt this policy they really had no examples to go off of so the resulting program essentially had the opposite effect. Students instead had no motivation because of the lack of hard deadlines and many teachers thought that they were helping students to think more independently by not helping them when asked. I was in this program the second year after its introduction so they did not yet have a chance to figure out what to do. By the time I had graduated almost none of the policies I started with were still in place.
During my Freshman year of high school, I would say I interacted with my math teacher in particular about three to five times a week, once for a weekly check-up on my progress in the class, and the other times to ask to take exams. Whenever I went to class I would either watch a video or take a test. The tests were graded with no explanations as to what you did wrong and you would retake the same exam as many times as it took to pass it. Normally I would simply write this off as a teacher who simply isn't doing their job very well, but this was the department-wide standard at the school. With the videos the same problem occurred, if you had a question you would simply be referred back to the notes or the video until you figured out the issue on your own. This was once again a department-wide standard to promote independent learning. Finally, as I mentioned earlier there was a weekly meeting in which instead of getting help with issues you had, the teacher would simply tell you whether or not you were at the recommended pacing for the class. To me, this is an example of how technology can be misused very easily to make almost every student upset with math.
Thanks to myself and a few of my friends, these practices were changed the following year to make things better for everyone. Instead of giving the same test until you passed, you would get an explanation of what you did wrong and receive a similar test with different questions for your next attempt. Each day in class, teachers would give a small lesson based on the content of the scheduled pacing to ensure people understood what was going on, and the weekly meetings were removed. By bringing teacher-student interaction back into the classroom, the environment was improved greatly for everyone. I saw my personal stress and anger towards math greatly reduced, and I was able to understand things much better. Everyone also enjoyed the new system much more. Students were able to use teachers as a resource when needed and to learn the material at their own pace. This change happened largely due to voluntary student feedback, not feedback asked by teachers. Because of this, I feel it is very important to make sure you know students' thoughts when any new system is introduced, but especially one so focused on student's individual learning.
Technology is a vital part of the classroom these days with almost every school district I have seen having computers either readily available or individually assigned to students. What can come from this is either an enhanced experience where students can understand the material before coming to the classroom and use the teacher as a resource to better understand what they are supposed to be doing. While this seems good in theory, the execution is very difficult and can take time to be done correctly. Fortunately, now there are far more examples and learning strategies for MCL in particular so a situation like this does not happen again. However, it is an example that can be used to show how important student feedback is when introducing a new style of learning.
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