Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

It's the day of your exam. You're palms get sweaty and your heart is racing as you flip through your notes, hoping that reading over them one more time will make them stick to your memory. You know you've got time to slow down and truly comprehend the material, but you're too anxious to bring yourself to do just that. You're back in high school and have an algebra exam coming up next class period. You are so focused and worried about it that there is little to no hope for learning to occur in your current class. Finally, you get to the exam just to find your mind blank as you helplessly stare at the squiggly lines and operations symbols in front of you. But you studied for days; there's no way you could be this unprepared for the test. All that studying and worry, all just to leave that classroom feeling helpless and like a failure.  This is the sad reality for many students when it comes to math. The idea of having to understand and solve math problems leaves...

       The way math is taught has changed plenty throughout the years, with new discoveries, new technologies, and new educational requirements. Even with those differences, there is one experience that all math teachers have, and that is answering the age old question, “Why do we have to learn this anyways?” Telling kids that they “simply must” never works, so what are we to say? Most of my teachers told us we will need it for college, for work, and just for everyday life. But the most memorable answer I received was, “You may not ever need this. If a stranger runs up to you and asks you to solve an algebraic expression, you should run. But at least you are learning valuable problem solving skills.” All these answers, however, seemed vague to me. As the impressionable teenager I was, their vague answers did not exactly pique my interest in my studies of mathematics. In fact, it made me think they mattered even less. The issue here is that what all those teachers sai...

In school, I’ve always heard students say, "When I am older, I am going to have a job that does not require math, so why do I need to be in this math class." If I am being honest, before deciding I would be a math teacher, I thought the same thing. Since deciding that I want to be a math teacher, I have been thinking about what I would say if students asked "when am I ever going to use this?". Why should my students care about a subject they "will not use” in the future? After a lot of thought, you still need basic math skills and critical thinking that this class teaches you, to be successful in the real world.  I would first tell my students that the more practice with basic math, the easier day-to-day life math is. The math done daily is primarily subconscious, like when shopping, counting money, time management, etc. For counting money, let's say we want 76 cents. To figure out how to get there subconsciously, we are using the formula 1x+5y+10z+25c=76. ...

With today’s technology, students have access to a variety of math-solving tools that can assist them in understanding and mastering mathematical concepts. Some teachers may worry that these tools encourage shortcuts, but when used correctly, they can be powerful learning aids. Many math tools, like GeoGebra and Desmos, provide interactive visual representations of equations, graphs, and geometric shapes. Instead of solving equations on paper, students can see how changes in variables affect graphs in real time. This helps them better understand mathematical relationships and patterns. Apps like Photomath break down problems into detailed steps. Instead of just providing an answer, they guide students through the entire process. This can help students understand the reasoning behind each step. Although Photomath and apps like it aren’t skilled in word problems, other tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini can take a word problem and guide students through the solution. One ch...

Making connections between math and other topics is a potent strategy for engaging students in math as future teachers. Math is frequently viewed as a stand-alone subject, but connecting it to science, art, history, and music makes it more interesting and meaningful. This method develops creativity and critical thinking, in addition to helping students understand how mathematics is used in everyday situations. Math is crucial to science. It is used to analyze data, predict outcomes, and resolve issues. Algebra, for example, aids in population growth predictions and chemical equation balancing. Students can observe how math is used in the real world when math is incorporated into scientific classes. Art also relies heavily on math in everyday life. To produce balanced designs, artists must employ symmetry, geometry and proportions. Students might investigate how artists such as Leonardo da Vinci enhanced their works by utilizing mathematical forms or the golden ratio. This enhances thei...

Whether it be elementary school, high school, or college level math, one sentiment reigns true for the vast majority of students – everyone hates word problems. Even for many people that consider themselves “math people” and enjoy solving math problems, the wordy questions tend to garner the most disdain. Why is that? I think that applying math to real life situations in the early years (kindergarten, first, second grade) is actually much more intuitive for kids than just working with numbers; because they aren’t yet familiar with words like addition and subtraction, using realistic scenarios that they would encounter such as giving or taking away every day items typically makes much more sense to them. However, as math gets more complex, that dynamic flips, and the abstract problems without a real-life connection become simpler and easier for students to grasp. At some point, story problems stop being a tool that helps students understand math and become an obstacle students must ov...

     Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines struggle as making strenuous or violent efforts in the face of difficulties or opposition. This doesn’t sound like something that would happen much in a classroom. I mean, violence is definitely not something I’d wish to see in a classroom. However, the reality is that struggle is an integral part of being a student.      For the sake of clarity, I should tell you, that the type of struggle that I’m referring to is productive struggle. The difference here is that productive struggle is where a student is actively engaging with a problem to push their understanding. Rather than facing a difficult situation and turning towards frustration and stagnation, which is how I’d describe unproductive struggle. Productive struggle is what can allow a student to take steps toward growth and understanding. This is because it builds resiliency, deepens understanding, and encourages a growth mindset.       Undo...

There is always question and conversation among math teachers on the subject of homework . Do you assign homework daily? Practice makes perfect, right? How many homework questions should I assign? Again, practice makes perfect, right? Do you grade homework by completion or correct answers? As an educator, you desire your students to get the correct answer, right? But what about the learning process? How do I handle the issue of students cheating on homework ?    Recently in my Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators course, we discussed platforms on which students often cheat on homework, such as P hotomath , S ymbolab , Mathway , and several other AI math solvers. We noticed after doing some research that there are tons of math solver apps or websites that are available to use, and that those platforms are being used by students in the classroom. Math solver software is especially used on assigned homework. This poses the question, i f students are cheating on their hom...

Many teachers are inspired to become educators because of experiences they had in the classroom as a student. This is not the case for all teachers or prospective teachers, and it is not the case for me. To be clear, throughout my education, I have had many wonderful teachers who have both inspired and supported me. However, my high school chemistry teacher did not inspire me to become a chemistry teacher. During my first trimester of high school chemistry, at the end of 2019, I distinctly remember a class period in which the entire class was asleep, except me and a few other students, who likely wished they were asleep. Even the teacher seemed bored. He was lecturing on something I don’t remember, but I do remember the response from the class: boredom. Even with innovative instructional techniques and high pressure for improvement in every facet of education, teachers can contribute to this problem without realizing it. It can be easy to have the same structure for each class, and s...

What is a flipped classroom? Many people may ask themselves this question if they are unfamiliar with this term. It’s definitely not a classroom with all the furniture flipped around and turned upside down. This week in my Math 371 class, Technology for STEM Educators, we discussed the idea of a flipped classroom and its benefits and drawbacks. A flipped classroom is a teaching method that reverses the typical classroom mold. In a flipped classroom, students watch lecture videos and take notes at home, and during class time students work together to apply the material, ask questions, and get immediate feedback from the teacher. Some overall benefits are students can learn at their own pace, students can pause and rewatch the lecture, and it’s a great alternative for when students are absent. Another big advantage, especially in the math classroom, is that parents have access to lecture videos to help their children based on that. Some drawbacks are that students have to be independ...

Are you scared to continue being a math major? This is a question I was recently asked by one of my professors as an end-of-semester reflection. On the one hand, absolutely. I knew the material after that point was only going to exponentially get harder. On the other hand, I was (and am) so excited to continue learning more about math, despite the challenges that I know are ahead of me. Why should I be scared? There is this perception that math is this difficult subject that only the smartest students are going to succeed in. It’s nothing more than a subject schools force them to learn to progress in school and graduate. It’s something to be feared. There is some truth to this. Math is an increasingly difficult subject that some students are going to excel in more easily than others, just like every other subject taught in school. And schools do require students to take it, but for many beneficial reasons such as the real-world applications of math and the problem-solving skills that m...

Last week, our Math 371 class, Technology for STEM Educators, examined the appropriate use of technology in teaching.  But what does that mean? Don’t use technology just for the sake of using technology. An example that I gave of that is using an iPad to roll a pair of dice when you could just have students roll physical dice. There are definitely advantages to using technology for this, as have 30 students rolling dice in your classroom would be noisy. But does the technology enhance the experience, and I would say that it doesn’t. Technology should help students with their understanding of the material. Now when we say technology, do we mean it has to be electronic? I would argue that manipulatives could be considered technology. In this case, something like algebra tiles can help students understand factoring better so that would be an example of an appropriate use of technology.  If you don’t have a set of algebra tiles for your classroom, you can use them online at https:...