Thursday, November 29, 2007

Slates and Clickers

Interesting discussion with a former student today. First of all a disclaimer- I take students complaints about other teachers with a grain of salt. Other teachers have come to me with complaints from my previous students, so I know we can't always match students and teachers perfectly.

With that in mind, I shall proceed. So, a former student comes to me to ask for help with an upcoming Algebra 2 test. Last year when he took my class, he failed because of zero effort. Nevertheless, he was not a horrible kid and he felt comfortable coming to me for help this year. It's funny because he's not very happy with his current teacher and now he's regretting that he didn't try harder last year when he had me- in his mind, the more reasonable teacher.

He complained about the pace of the class with the new teacher. Two lessons per day, no review day before tests and sometimes two tests in the same week. Then he started getting into other details. He said the teacher used slates to allow students to try problems and then show their results to the teacher. The teacher would then point to each slate and say whether it was right or wrong. This frustrated my student quite a bit because he would be told that his answer was wrong, but not why it was wrong. It's interesting to me because the slate idea has been kicked around for a few years now and some people think it's a cure all. It's one of those ideas that sounds good, but it's questionable whether it really is beneficial for students. Of course, like many good ideas, the level of success is dependent on implementation as well.

In comparison, I've been having some great luck with my clicker system. It's a technology system that is designed to give instant feedback to students just like the slates do, with several advantages over the slates- and in some people's minds, several disadvantages. With the clicker system, I create quizzes using PowerPoint. Each slide has a question and several multiple choice answers. Every student in the class gets a remote control and I have an infrared receiver attached to my computer. When I display the question, students press a button on the clicker to "vote" on the multiple choice answer they think is right. After all the students have voted on a particular question, a bar graph appears that shows how many students voted for each answer. If I want, I can also show them which answer is correct. So, like the slate system, students get instant feedback. Unlike the slate system, students get multiple choice answers, so they have something to work toward. Of course some teachers would complain that students may reverse engineer the answers or may copy answers from a neighbor and I'll admit there are problems. But like anything, there can be implementation issues and they need to be worked on. So, I'll continue to work.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Re-engineering the Math Classroom (textbook technology)

The textbook vendors are really coming around with technology support. McDougal-Littell writes the textbooks we use for most of the math classes at my high school. I just spent some time with my rep at a recent math conference. I was amazed to hear what they have to offer. They have an online system at their web site that can be used for quizzing students online or for assigning homework online. They also offer such expected things as an online graphing calculator.

I also inquired about newer, better test generators and they had a pleasant surprise. I had recently tried out the new test generator provided with some new textbooks we received, but a found it lacking. It was way too slow on my old dinosaur computer. And it was slow compared to the older test generator that I had been using. The only reason I was interested in a new test generator was because the old one didn't have enough questions to cover all the topics that we covered in the book. Also, I was hoping for more algorithmically generated questions versus static, database questions.

Well, I got lucky. Even though we had only recently received the new test generator, there was an even newer one that the vendor had available. They demonstrated it to me and it was awesome. It was fast and full of nice features. It did seem to lose some of the older features that I liked, but it had some cool new ones.

However, back to the online homework/assessment system. Over the years, I have used diagnostic exams from the Mathematics Diagnostic Test Project (MDTP) from University of California. They offer a nice set of tests that can be used for diagnostics, but also for benchmarking. Where are your students at when you first meet them and how do they improve after you're done with them? Well, the textbook vendor came up with an online assessment system that automatically diagnoses student weaknesses and then allows you, the teacher, to generate a list of remediation assignments and it will even let you pull together the files for the assignments and either print them or email them to the student!

These types of technology are bound to make teaching better and more efficient.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Re-engineering the Math Classroom

Fuzzy logic and Bayesian Networks could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of of multiple choice assessments- especially clicker system assessments.

Textbook test generators can be used to generate questions for clicker system quizzes.

Virtual manipulatives work great for pre-algebra classes especially NLVM with the virtual equation balance. Also there are several nice sites for tangrams. And don't forget Google Earth.

edhelper.com is a nice worksheet generator web site.

Algebra in Motion offers a set of Geometer's SketchPad visuals and animations to demonstrate a variety of algebra topics visually. For this reason alone, Geometer's SketchPad would be very useful.

Mimio has produced a low cost item that allows you to turn any whiteboard into a smartboard. This item used in conjunction with Geometer's SketchPad (a computer and a projector) could really help facilitate graphical drawing on the whiteboard and it's capture capability helps to eliminate redundant lesson delivery.

If you don't attend regular math conventions, conferences and workshops, you are missing out on a lot.

Supplemental materials are great and some textbooks make great supplemental materials. Harold Jacobs has written several textbooks that provide a meld of classic text based problems with modern critical thinking and problem solving challenges.


MathType is great and very useful for PowerPoint presentations, however, there are some other technologies coming along- like the Open Office formula editor- that may make formula entry easier. MathType actually is pretty good for use with SmartBoards or Mimio systems because of the big buttons and all the pointing and clicking. But if you want to type equations- and I believe this is the quickest method to enter formulas (or anything in the computer)- Open Office formula editor allows you to enter formulas like you enter equations into the graphing calculator. For example, x^2 + 3x -2 for a nice quadratic or (-b +/- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac) over (2a) for the good old quadratic formula. Unfortunately, you can't have the best of both worlds. MathType does allow you to type formulas, but you have to learn the syntax of a typesetting system called TeX. Open Office allows you to type the formulas easily, but it does not allow you to migrate the formulas to Power Point easily- and that's a problem if you must use PowerPoint like I must with my Interwrite PRS clicker system.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Great day for being a teacher

What a fantastic day to be a teacher. One of my former students has been nominated by district to be flaunted in the annual report because of her experience at my high school as related to great strides she has made in life. Another student came in today to tell me that she had always loathed math even though she was good in other subjects. She paid me some high compliments and told me that other students were saying good things about me as well. Also, I've begun to use a classroom response system (CRS) in my classes and today I created a monster quiz for my Foundations of Math class. It was a really enjoyable way to spend 45 minutes with my students.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Thoughts on Math Topics

I have a lot of ideas about cool, practical, topical math lessons and I need to put them down somewhere. That somewhere might as well be here, no?

Water bottle math. These things are made from oil, they're filling up landfills, they're not very cost effective to recycle (when compared to aluminum) and we use billions of them. How many do we use in the US? In the world? How much oil would we save if we stopped using them? How much energy would we save?

Plastic bag math. Same kinds of questions as above.

Oil/energy math. Talk to district energy czar, Rick. Get some numbers from him or web site for national energy manager group for schools.

Can we power our own computers using bicycle generators?