Tech Thoughts

My iPod Touch had been turned back in, its out of my hands, and waiting to be passed on to others to see and experiment what it can do for learning and teaching. However, I am continuing to think about what it can do for me as it sits on my wish list of things I want to purchase.

One of my favorite features of the iPod are the ereaders. However, many of them cost money so I only played around with the free ones. I was able to look at the Dr. Seuss ABC app and it was really cool. Not only can you click on the words and then they are read out loud but then you can also click on the illustrations and the words that correspond with the picture light up. The other thing that I think would be really great is being able to create your own audio for books using the Touch. You could just record yourself, or the students, reading a book and use it at the reading stations for others to read along with. In the kindergarten class I am in that is one of their choice time stations and it is frequently visited. However, I think it would be great if we could create an audio for any of the hundreds of book in my classroom. Next I would just need to find an app that allows you to upload and create ereaders. I am sure its out there or on its way. Then you wouldn't just have the students record audio of them reading just any book but you could record audio of them reading their own book and turn it into an ereader.

In the kindergarten class the other day I was working with one of the students that is having trouble distinguishing between letters and the sounds that they made. This student was working on writing and I was helping her to stretch the words and listen for the letter sounds. With a lot of support she was able to get some of her sentences down. While I worked with her for a long period of time there were a lot of students that I did not get to. I wonder if an iPod Touch with the Dragon Dictation App would be helpful for her, or if she just needs more support . If she needed to write the word "with" or "happy" would she be learning the same amount if she just had to stretch the word on her own. It is a completely different approach than what many of the other students did to get to where they are but is that wrong?

Today in class we talked briefly about some people view the use of  a, iPod Touch like playing with a toy. Some people do not respect it in the education community. I think that it would be a powerful tool for students and could be used educationally, but at the same time how do you make sure your students are not taking advantage of it. Some of the students I can think of that it would be helpful for are also the ones I worry that would just play around with it. My thought is, if you told a student to look up a word in the dictionary you would notice if they were because it would be on their desk and you could see them flipping through the pages. However, if a students Touch was their dictionary then how do you at a glance or two tell if the student is making any progress or even on track. Or maybe it would not make a difference.

Math Tips and Teaching Tips

Second to last math class and I am still learning a lot!
When thinking about what to teach your students these four steps can be used as a framework:
1.What do they know- The teacher needs to figure out what they know because if you just reteach what they know then they wont be learning anything
2.What do I want them to know- The teacher needs to decide on the objectives of the lesson to ensure the lesson has a focus
3. How do I get them there- The teacher needs to decide what is the most appropriate way for the students to obtain the objectives and take in to account their individual needs
4. Did they get there- In the end, and along the way, the teacher should decide if the students have learned what they needed to learn
If those four steps are used as a framework, your students will have the best opportunity to learn what they need and what you want them to. Instead of holding on to a lesson plan because you like it, or spent a lot of time on it, you need to step back and evaluate why you are teaching what you are teaching.
We learned of a great website today in class, Wolframalpha. When I was in school I always wished a website like this existed. This website is helpful for all of the even numbered problems in a textbook, you know the ones that don't have the answers in the back of the book. What you do is plug in the equation you need solved and it solves it for you. Or if you are just trying to divide two fractions, it will also solve that for you. Quite impressive. Now the question becomes, how does this change what we as teachers do? It is no longer enough to say that the students need to compute all of the problems because they can just use the Internet to do the work for them. How do we ensure that they are learning, because if they have been using Wolframalpha to do their homework, what does that mean for the tests. 

Another thought to how technology changes things is what if the homework was no longer doing the math problems at home, but it was having students watch a video on how to do the math that the teacher created. Instead the lesson is introduced at home and then worked through at school. No longer your traditional teaching. Would that work? What would be the negatives, or the positives to doing this?

I really appreciate the math activity we did in class today. Not only did we get to experiment with measurement in an atypical way, using anything as a measuring device, but then we figured out that it was a linear relationship. I think this lesson could be simple used as an introduction to linear relationships and what it means to have a linear relationship. We did not really need any background knowledge to complete this lesson. It could get the conversation started, as it did in our class, about linear relationship. I also liked how this activity tied into the the math video we watched. The students in that video were also learning about linear relationships in a different way. There are so many great ways to teach the same material. However, I think that these two examples are two different ways to get across the same information. It would be interesting to have students do one, and then the other and talk about why they both show linear relationships. It would help strengthen the students understanding of such relationships.

Helpful tip for a new teacher: If you need something ask around. Its possible that you might just find what you need in some storage closet. So look to see what treasures are lost at the school. Additionally if someone offers you something they no longer need, take it. You might just end up needing it. But if you don't need it, take it anyways because that person will keep coming back to you with things they don't need and you might just end up getting something great.

Thoughts on Mathematics

Today in class we were told that research shows that virtual manipulatives are just as effective as the standard, “old fashion” manipulatives for students because of all of their exposure to technology. However, I wonder if the research found differences in the ages of students using the virtual manipulatives. I could see older students doing just fine with the virtual tools but that maybe younger students would need some hands on exposure first. In the kindergarten class I am in we have “math tubs”. Inside the tubs are various manipulatives for the students to use and explore. One tub has various geometric shapes that they use build and sort and re helpful for them gaining some knowledge about shapes. I have found a virtual tool that that you could do some similar things. However, would this be just as effective for the students? I am not sure. I am not totally convinced. This might just be because I am not completely from the virtual generation and my exposure to math has always been hands on. Since I am not sure if one over rules the other, I think exposure to both would be best. Another thought I have is what about the students that haven’t had as much exposure to video game and a computer? If the research shows that students can use the virtual manipulatives because of their exposure, than I take that to mean the students that haven’t had those experiences might not benefit. There probably are not too many students out there that fall into that category but we also can’t assume that everyone does. Also considering learning styles, some might just operate better when they have tangible manipulatives in front of them.

Another thought I ate up after it came up today during the discussion was the teachers who try to rush and get through the all of the curriculum. The comment that first came up was what if teachers only taught 50% of the curriculum and made sure to teach it really well. If this question had come up during my time in the middle school math dyad I would have asked the teacher I was with. From my observations I never got the impression that the teachers were just trying to push through the curriculum. Instead it seemed pretty flexible with some teachers staying on units a little longer because the students were not ready to move on.  I wonder if you can help elevate the feeling of needing to get it all done by not teaching from a text book. I know in all of my classes that I have used a textbook we never got through the whole thing but did move at a pretty rapid pace. Maybe having a large, thick text puts pressure on teachers to get through the curriculum.  

Shape Relations

This week in math we had the opportunity to explore two math computer programs. They were both a lot of fun. The first one we were required to use a variety of shapes to recreate what looked like a face. I thought at first it was going to be really easy, but to my surprise it was rather challenging. Once you picked a shape like the square builder or the rhombus builder you would drag it down over an eye or the nose and see if you can make it create that shape. However, the catch was you could only use each one once and in this face there was two "squares" so that meant you had to find another shape that could also be made into a square. This program allows the students to play around with what they know about shapes and really see what the difference is between shapes like a kite and a trapezoid. I know especially in elementary school as students learn about shapes you tend to just recall the colorful wooden manipulatives that are helped to teach the shapes. I wonder how many students only think of a rhombus as being a blue diamond like shape, or a trapezoid being like the wooden red one. This program allows for a deeper understanding. I have already had plenty of lessons on geometric shapes, but I still learned a lot exploring this computer program.

In the other program, we were challenged to make a square using the tools of the program. That meant also we had to play around with what we knew about shapes and their relationship because there was no button to click that allowed you click and drag the mouse in a square shape. I was not successful creating a square. I tried just connecting line segments but the angels would be off. I attempted hooking circles to other circles hoping a square would form the radius of the circle, however, there two the angles would be off. We were told that you would be able to prove it was a square by selecting a side and having the whole shape expand and keep the square in tack. After several trial and errors I was never able to form a square. I think i need to explore the program further.

Meaningful Math

Today in class we talked a little more about Gapminder. The questions came up about it being appropriate for younger grades. The answer to the question was simple yet not what I expected, try it out on someone who is younger and see what they think or what they can do. In this situation I can’t see any negatives to trying it out. This might just be a great site to expose the students to. Maybe that means the teacher uses it to help teach a lesson plan but not have the students be the ones to set up the graph. When the students are working with graphs and data, you could use this to supplement the discussion on what they are learning about. My project now is to give more thought to a kindergarten student using Gapminder. Google search did not give me any ideas so now it is up to me.

Another piece of information I am taking away from today is to empower students to teach their peers. Just like teachers learn more having to teach the material, students learn more when they are required to teach. Another benefit is in the process of being the teacher it helps the students to identify the areas where the material is unclear and needs more development. This reminds me of one of the articles we read about never saying anything a student can say. It might require some more work on the part of the classroom teacher, but allowing the students to “teach” and “say” all that they can, will help them become better learners.

I might say the best part of today was creating the paper boxes. I was very enthralled by this activity. I was not quite sure what the final product was going to be but was very excited to find out. There were two things that impressed me about this project. First there were a lot of math proofs that could be made by simply folding a piece of paper. Second, it was not just meaningless folds but we were actually working to create an end product. HOW COOL. Can all math be like this? This gave a real world application and it was meaningful. Now I have a neat little box to hold my earrings in.

The Fun Side of Math- Through Assignments and Activities

Today we finally had the opportunity to talk about the reading on math and literature. I was really impressed by the stories that middle school students were able to write. As I started to read the article I couldn’t imagine how creative math stories could be because I was not able to think of anything. After reading through the examples I was really surprised. This article was really a success story of an integrated lesson plan. The article mentioned that this project helped show the teacher where the students were still unclear about geometry. Through the students writing they were able to figure out where there was a mixed up understanding of angle measurement and other geometry principles. The project also allows for the students that don’t feel like they can show their creative side in math to branch out and do just that. I am curious what other math and literature lesson plans there are out there. This article inspired my partner and I to create a lesson plan integrating math and writing. Our lessons is still basically in the brainstorming phase but we are going somewhere along the lines of a persuasive writing piece to go along with a set of data. The data given will be a fictitious classes grades and the students will have to say whether or not they want their grade to fall in the mean, median, or mode if they they are striving for the best possible grade.

During our discussion about the article one of my classmates said “what if a student is not a good writer?” This was something I was thinking about. However right as she asked the question I realized “how does that logic compare to the student who is not good at math?” and that was exactly the response to the question. It is an interesting thought. As teachers can we really worry about what we are going to ask students to do because they might not be good at it? Of course so long as we are asking them to do things that is within their expected abilities, or maybe push them a little. I can see how a math teacher might not want to bring in writing because it gives that student a chance who doesn’t like writing to have a class where they don’t have to worry about it. Or an English teacher not bringing in art because this is a chance for the students to just read and write. However, if all teachers were exposing their students to a range of integrated curriculum maybe the students would do better in them all and understand that they have a connection.

In class today we had two great activities. First we got to make measuring fun, by jumping cotton ball frogs with a paper clip. After each “frog” jump we had to measure the distance and write it down so that in the end we had to calculate the average jump of the frogs in my group. I know I learned about measurement in school at some point, although I don’t recall having the chance to be one the ground gathering the measurements. After that we moved on to creating giraffes out of Tangrams. That was quite hard for me at first. Even though I have done this activity before, and probably have even made a giraffe, I had a hard time. Once I thought I saw how all of the shapes went together to form the giraffe I had a hard time seeing it in any other configuration. Once several students had successfully built the giraffe we were asked to use several sets of Tangrams to double its size. That part came easier to me. Once I was able to look at the small giraffe I was able to figure out what was needed to double its size. To challenge myself more I found an iPod app where I can continue to create these figures. So far I have successfully created 3 of the easiest. Only about 25 more to go.

iPod Touch in Kindergarten

In my current thinking about using the ipod Touch to differentiate instruction, I was exploring app land to see what all is out there. There is really a lot. I came across a free spelling app that looked like fun but was not sure if it was something that a kindergarten class would use, since I am mainly thinking how could I use it in my classroom now. In my experience in the class I am in, there is not much of an emphasis on spelling correctly. The students are encouraged to use "guess and go" spelling and to use what they know about letters and sounds to spell. Therefor, I think using an app where they are going over letter sounds would fit in more with what we are currently working on. As this thought passed through my head my friend sent me a text. I pulled my phone out of my coat pocked and read a text saying "Jace has spelling tests. Since when do they do this in kindergarten". Hmmm.....maybe some kindergarten classes could use spelling app. Maybe in fact it could be used in my class. Some of the students in my class are still having trouble with sight words like "the" and "my". Those students might benefit from more exposure and the use of a spelling app at their desks to master the sight words.

To further explore what I could with apps, I searched "iPod Touch kindergarten" in Google. I found a log of great things doing that. Blogs, tutorials, schools asking for the money to buy touches, and videos. Below is a video that I found from YouTube of a kindergarten student reading a book with the help of an app that he types in unknown words and it pronounces it for him.

This is another way that students could use the Touch as they read. If a student had it at their desk with them with headphones on they would be able to use this during silent reading. I am going to have to play around with this app to see what all it does. It would be great if it could record or keep a history of the words a student was looking up. That way it could be passed back to the teacher to see if there is a pattern to what words the student is missing. They might need some more instruction on something like what sound a particular letter makes, or what sound a "ph" makes. This could also be helpful for the students to use in knowing if they have a "just right" book or if it is too hard. The rule could be if you are having to look up more than 5 words than it is too hard. That gives the students a clue that it is is too challenging.