Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

Last week in Math 371 we got the opportunity to practice with a SMARTboard and a Promethean board. We were able to take turns, try new things, and teach each other useful techniques. One beneficial trick that one of the students taught the rest of the class was a quick way to erase the SMARTboard. If you take the eraser and make a circle around what you desire to erase and simply touch inside the circle it disappears. When working with the Promethean board the toughest part is writing on the pad because you can only see what you’re writing on the Promethean board. Overall as the class worked more and more with the boards it was clear that everyone slowly became more comfortable using them. Over the course of this semester that seems to be the theme with all the technology the more you work with it the more you perfect it.   While we were practicing with the boards we discussed amongst each other about using these devices in the classroom. One thing that we all agreed o...

I was forced to join Twitter in May 2012 to attend a conference sponsored by South Dakota EPSCoR called Science: Becoming the Messenger, funded by NSF.   I was very skeptical about Twitter and slightly annoyed that I HAD to join.   Now I feel that it was one of the best things that I have done for my professional life.   I have only tweeted 757 times in 22 months, slightly more than once a day.   My tweets definitely are sent in spurts, when I have time to spend on Twitter and read others’ tweets.   I am currently following 401 people, including friends, family, and educators.   The last group is the largest and contains a variety of individuals, most of who are interested in mathematics, education, technology or some combination of those.   I am up to 178 followers, which isn’t a lot in comparison to others, but the number is increasing weekly.   I want to discuss a couple of great experiences that I have had because of Twitter and the...

Last week in Math 371, we looked at our Desmos creations and talked about how to use GeoGebra in different ways in our lessons.  First, a little explanation about our Desmos assignment: We were asked to create a picture using Desmos, an online graphing site. For my picture I made something basic, a house. It was made with straight lines and one circle for a doorknob. I settled on a house after my many attempts at creating more creative pictures failed. The time it took me to complete this assignment, including time tinkering with the site’s many features, my numerous attempts at other pictures, and the completion of my final picture, took me somewhere in the vicinity of three hours. Later we talked about using GeoGebra, a free graphing program, to help enhance our lessons for future classes. For this assignment we were asked to keep the emphasis on topics covered in probability and statistics. For my example, I used GeoGebra’s spreadsheet application to show that the p...

This week in Math 371 we concentrated on cyber-bullying and teaching mathematics in a classroom with technology. First, we talked about cyber-bullying, and as a teacher how we would deal with cyber-bullying. Since cyber-bullying usually happens at home it is difficult for a teacher to try and handle the situation. A lot of good ideas on how to handle cyber-bullying were mentioned, such as telling the parents if you see it happening or even talking to the one being bullied, or the bully. Sometimes telling the parents is not as effective as we would like. One of the article's for reading this week talked about parents that were bullying a young girl on their block because their daughter and the girl had a falling out. The parents bullied this young girl so much she committed suicide. Half the kids that are cyber-bullied are bullied in schools as well. It is important as a teacher to know what bullying looks like and to report it if we see it happening. We also talked about teachi...

As technology advances, students cling to the resources they can use in the classroom.   In high school, I rarely used a computer and filled countless notebooks for my classes.   Nowadays, students use laptops, iPads, and Chrome books for school related activities.   This week’s discussion was primarily focused on the use of graphing calculators in math classes.   Should students be allowed to use their graphing calculators whenever they desire or restrict their usage to ensure quality education?             In the first article, “Why the graphing calculator still matters in an iPad world?” was written in 2011 and discussed the use of graphing calculators compared to iPads.   Lucas Allen provides strong evidence that graphing calculators are better for students and teachers.   The main producers of graphing calculators, Texas Instruments, provide workshops for teachers so they know how to use the...

"Flipped Instruction" is a term I had just recently heard about (thanks to our Geometry class last semester) and something that teachers have started introducing into the classroom in the past five or six years. After reading "The Flipped Classroom" by Bill Tucker in the Education Next online journal, it was clear to me just how new this idea is. It came from two high school Chemistry teachers as they were having trouble reteaching lessons to students who had missed class. They started by posting videos for review of each day's lesson. Soon, they learned that not only were absent students watching the videos, but also many of the students that had sat through the lesson already needed just a second glance for reinforcement and practice on their homework. (By the way, the cost of the very first software program to do such a thing was only $50 for the teachers). This new idea turned into a whole new teaching style for these teachers. Instead of standing in front ...