Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

     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:...

One of my goals this semester was to figure out ways to use AI as a helpful tool for teaching. As a result, my students have experimented with AI in both the Technology for STEM Educators course and the Assessment in STEM Education course. When it comes to lesson planning as a teacher, we need to be realistic. Teachers aren’t going to create detailed multi-page lesson plans for each course every day. And there will be some days that they will be stressed because they don’t have a plan for the next class period.  During these stressful times as a teacher, I think that it would be good to use AI to come up with a basic lesson plan. After exploring some AI tools, one of our favorites was Gemini . It isn’t one of the AI tools designed specifically for teachers, but it does a very good job when given explicit directions. We used it to create a detailed lesson plan and also discovered that it is great for creating rubrics for summative assessments, such as projects, presentations, or o...