Passion Quotient and Curiosity Quotient

As CEP 812 comes to a close, we were asked to look at ourselves as passionate and curious individuals and how technology is changing the face of our society. Thomas L. Freidman wrote an article where he detailed how the technologies and social media platforms we have today are changing the game of education; these new advances are chaining the type of individuals we need to run a successful and thriving society. He says that it “will be vital to have more of the “right” education than less, that you will need to develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can be easily replaced by it and that we need everyone to be innovating new products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine work by automation and software.”

 

In order to achieve this, it is necessary to have teachers that are passionate about their work and curious enough to take on the tasks that keep them moving towards this goal. Learning the inner workings of these technologies so that we can appropriately teach our students to use them takes a teacher who is committed to their own learning, a teacher who asks the right questions, a teacher who looks to ideas and suggestions founded in research that can push their students to a new level. Success like this comes from teachers who put in more than they’re asked without thinking twice, from teachers who stay in their positions and continue to love their students through the ups and downs of this technology integration; it comes from teachers who are concerned about the state of our society’s future and do whatever it takes to make sure it’s headed in the right direction. It takes teachers like the one I believe myself to be. 

References:

Friedman, T.. (Jan 30, 2013). It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q. In The New York Times. Retrieved Dec 11, 2013, fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/friedman-its-pq-and-cq-as-much-as-iq.html.

Please click the link below to see how I see myself as a passionate and curious educator.

Wicked Problem: Reinventing the Whole Idea of Teaching

Even though I’m still a fairly new teacher I have found myself consistently struggling with the balance between having kids work on skill and drill assignments and having opportunities to investigate, collaborate, and create in their own unique ways in my classroom. I chose to join the group focused on rethinking the traditional classroom setting, and teaching as a whole, because it is something that I have been trying to do for quite some time. As a Math teacher, whose kids are nearly all 2 to 3 grades behind, I am sometimes stuck having to lead more direct instruction of big ideas because my students don’t have the proper foundation, or experience, to investigate ideas on their own. Our group focused on the idea of a flipped classroom, which seems to have countless benefits, and if implemented correctly can honestly improve the critical thinking and collaboration skills of my students. However, since this would be such a revolutionary and drastic change for my students, it would take immense amounts of time to get them to the point where they are actively working on their own and staying on task. I think having a tipped classroom might give students more of a sense of control and ownership, but given the levels of my current classes, I fear that they might not have the academic stamina to pursue the things that frustrate them on their own. Trying to find this balance, and dealing with both sides of the coin, is just one of the reasons why trying to reinvent the traditional classroom is awicked problem. Wicked problems can’t be solved easily, or by traditional means, so our group set out to try and find a new lens with which to view teaching and learning. Check out our exploration into the pros and cons of flipped classrooms and try to come up with a possible solution for yourself; do you think you could successfully flip a classroom? 

Technology Integration in Communities of Practice

This week we were assigned the task of surveying a group of our colleagues to make sense of how our communities of practice were implementing technology into their classrooms. In my survey, I focused my questions on what kinds of technologies were being used in the classroom, how often they were used, who was interacting with them most, what technologies teachers would use in their ideal classroom, and what was stopping them from integrating technology the way they wanted to. Knowing my community, I was not entirely surprised by what results were produced. I have compiled this data into two different visual displays as well as a paper, which analyzes the data on a deeper level. 

 

Here is one visual representation of many of the issues facing technology integration in our school. 

This is a visual representation of how technology is mainly used and what issues teachers feel are most prevalent in their classrooms. 

Maintaining a Well Balanced Diet of Information

As I thought about my information diet this week I realized that even with all the information out there, I spend a very limited amount of time seeking new information and when I do most of what I consume is completely social. Most of my information intake comes from FaceBook and Pinterest; even though one of the boards I pin to most is my “teaching” board, it’s also used heavily for DIY crafts, recipes, and event planning. My FaceBook news feed gives access to the occasional news article surrounding current events or critical information, but for the most part it contains funny lists from buzzfeed, pictures of my friends and family, or memes that are trending.

Since I created a twitter in CEP 810 and started an RSS feed to increase my access to information that would affect my practice, I really haven’t used either information platform very well. One of the best ways that I can manage my info diet is simply to start using these media outlets in more efficient and effective ways. I believe some “junk food” or social information is vital for my system because in essence, it keeps me sane; just as Nicholas Carr makes the point that we, as humans, crave the acquisition of information, that it is the release of dopamine that keeps us wanting more and more, I believe that acquiring even this basic social knowledge keeps me searching for more.

In an effort to get a more balanced diet of information I have found 3 new organizations to follow via twitter. Considering that I haven’t used these social media sites well over the past few months, I feel like trying to get more “nutritional” information via twitter is my best course of action since it’s so quick and easily accessible.

The first organization I’m choosing to follow is Common Core Math (@CCSSIMath). This source provides plenty of great information surrounding the common core initiative, but it narrows the information so that it is strictly focused on mathematics. As we make the transition to common core and the standards I teach are changing, having access to plenty of resources can be nothing but helpful.

Another new source I have chosen to follow via Twitter is Digital Learning Now (@DigLearningNow). Since I have a class set of iPads, I really need more resources and guidance as to how to teach students with digital tools. This source provides access to multiple resources, videos and blogs, which will help me to provide many digital learning opportunities to my students.

The third source that I started following is Teaching Ideas (@TeachingIdeas). I feel as though this source might be a bit overwhelming as it is thousands of teaching ideas from teachers all over the world, but I also think that it will be a more useful resource, as it is full of ideas that teachers are actually using and having success with in classrooms.

I think that in starting to follow more educational sources on Twitter I’ll be exposed to even more people and organizations to follow in order to increase the nutritional value of my information intake. While finding new sources to follow on Titter I also took the opportunity to download a new RSS feed app, since I wasn’t a fan of my old one, and followed a few education magazines and technology sources. Hopefully opening up my social media platforms to more educational resources will help build the nutritional value of my information.

Resources:
Photo by Pietro Zanarini. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic http://www.flickr.com/photos/zipckr/3925513417/

Carr, N. (2011). The Dark Side of Information Revolution. [Video File]. Retrieved from http://bcove.me/7j4zpzwz

Technologies to Support Special Learning Needs

This week I researched working memories and learned a little bit more about what my students who have ADHD need as a result of their working memory deficits. Recalling facts and strategies in math can be quite difficult sometimes, since there are so many, and  so I believe using a few simple technologies can go a long way in helping my students who have very specialized learning needs. Even more than that, these technologies can really stand to help each and every one of my students be successful! I’m really looking forward to using Google Docs to help students keep track of their thoughts and give iSolveIt a try to see if it helps my student persist in solving problems! Check out an expanded explanation of why I chose these technologies by visiting my Google Doc here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xDD7m8Af2QgNIiMVBKAVQ2WMNf2v1bXJbfxyDBjn1GE/pub

Why People Are Stupid

Why People Are Stupid

This week we dove into James Paul Gee’s book, The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students Through Digital Learning. The first few chapters of his text about why people are not smart and why they continue to act as dumb individuals was really eye opening to me. He expressed ideas and opinions that I had not thought about before in this context and it gave me some rally great things to think about as an educator. Check out my attached Google Doc that organizes my understanding of his ideas and how they apply to my role as a teacher. 

CEP 812 Final Reflection

We have interacted with a lot of different technologies over the past 8 weeks, the biggest of which was our Maker Kits. I chose to work with the Makey Makey and I have to admit, I didn’t love it. I honestly don’t see myself incorporating this machine in my classroom, at least not for student use. As I get more comfortable with what it can actually do, I may start to use it as an engagement piece, but knowing my students and knowing myself as a teacher, I don’t know that I could appropriately fit it into my curriculum to get the students truly working with its potential. I do appreciate the creativity that it has the capacity to inspire; I just don’t believe that my classroom is currently that creative space. In order to get the most value out of using the Makey Makey I believe my students would need one to themselves or to a pair and we just don’t have the resources to make that happen right now. I also think that this is a very obscure technology that many of students would view as a little too “out there;” seeing the way they interact with technology in our school, technology that they have had access to for a while leads me to believe that they would struggle with exploring something this open ended.

 

Aside from the Makey Makey, there are definitely parts of this course that I will take away and use in my current practice. In the past weeks I have learned to think a lot deeper about every decision I make in my classroom. The biggest pieces that I have found true value in are the learning theories and the different design theories (instructional, experience, and universal design for learning). All of these ideas aren’t necessarily ground breaking in my opinion, in fact in a lot of ways, they seem like common sense. However, when you think of all the different directions teachers are being pulled in, making sure these ideas are in the forefront of every day planning becomes an issue. I really appreciated revisiting these ideas and diving deeper into each of them. The one idea that really stuck with me in all of this was that my classroom is truly an experience for each and every one of my students and everything I do to set it up and function within its walls should be geared towards making things more engaging and accessible for all of them. In this, I’m hoping to find even more examples of technology that I can use on a daily basis. This class has been a way to reexamine solid research and ideas surrounding best practices, now I need to find iPad apps or other educational technologies that work in my own circumstances to make sure my teaching reaches these levels of best practice.  

 

Unfortunately, as much as I benefited from revisiting, and learning more about, these educational ideas, there was a fair amount of material in this course that I did not find valuable to my current teaching practice. Specifically, I don’t feel as though the work we did with the MOOCs and conference proposal was helpful to me in my current position. As a fairly new teacher, I think there are definitely parts of my practice that I could share with others, however I don’t necessarily think I’m in the position to act as an expert and guide instruction on any part of my practice. As I developed my MOOC, I tried to think about what I feel most confident about in my teaching and that was my ability to collect meaningful data and fluidly create groups to provide the best instruction. However, as I saw in my evaluation of this MOOC there are large pieces of teaching it to others that I hadn’t really thought about. In my opinion, and similarly with the conference proposal, this is in part due to the fact that I believe I’m still in a learning phase of being a teacher. There is so much to absorb in your first few years of teaching, all while interacting with students every day, and amidst all of that I don’t think I’m really in a position to learn about different ways to appropriately share that learning to other teachers just yet. This isn’t to say that these chances to share my experience are not something I wouldn’t revisit in the future, but based on the feedback I’ve gotten on these assignments, I believe that these gaps and shortcomings are very real. I think it would take a lot of time and energy to become the type of teacher who is able to teach other teachers, and as I am still learning so much about my own practice, I don’t think that is something I can fully commit to right now. 

Problems of Practice

http://screencast.com/t/XZnYDFHK8egP

In our first week of CEP 812 we were given the task of defining problems we have in our current practice and then attempting to find technology resources that would help us to attack our problems. One of the biggest issues I’m seeing in my class is my students’ inability to appropriately read and discuss real-world mathematical problems. Through discussions and data collection I have found that a lot of this problem stems back to their lack of retention of basic math ideas and vocabulary. One online resource that I found and would like to use with my students is flippity.net which creates online flash cards. Watch this screencast that provides easy to follow instructions to make your own online flash cards.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

This week we were given the task of finding 5 scholarly articles that pertain to our current teaching practices and to write an annotated bibliography for them. This has been one of my favorite tasks for this class so far because I agree with Eileen Bender and Donald Gray “that the demands of teaching and research are counterforces fiercely contending for control of our time” (1999). There are so many resources in the world today about good teaching practices, wonderful educational questions, and how to best meet the needs of our students and yet with everything that is asked of us as teachers, really diving into these resources generally loses out in the battle over how we spend our time. This week also gave me a wonderful chance to get back in touch with the MSU library and it’s abundant resources; a quick online chat with a librarian opened me up to wide variety of articles surrounding middle school mathematics and just a quick glance at all the titles had me literally jumping out of my seat in excitement over some of the ideas that were presented. Below is an annotated bibliography of just a few of the many articles that I found, printed, and will keep in my arsenal of amazing teaching resources. These articles discuss different approaches to problem solving and eliciting productive mathematical conversations in my classroom, which are two big ideas that I continue to struggle with this year. Each article brought up interesting ideas and solutions that I plan on taking back to my classroom tomorrow in order to get my students growing even more.

 

References:

Bender, E and Gray, D. (1999). The Scholarship of Teaching. Research & Creative Activity, XXII(1). http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v22n1/p03.html

 

Annotated Bibliography:

 

Bicer, A., Capraro, R., and Capraro, M. (2013). Integrating Writing into Mathematics Classroom to Increase Students’ Problem Solving Skills. International Online Journal of Educational Sciences. Vol. 5 Issue 2, p361-396.

This text was more or less a summary of various research that points to the fact that incorporating more and more writing in math classrooms directly effects a students ability to be more successful in problem solving. The article notes that writing helps improve student’s problem solving abilities because the writing requires them to demonstrate how and why they know things as well as the information they already know. The authors also dive into a discussion about what makes something difficult versus complex, which opened my eyes to the kinds of questions I’m asking my students, and how I can restructure them to make them appropriately rigorous. This text broke down the levels of cognitive capability to: visualize, analyze, generalize, deuced and rigor and then gave mathematical examples of what each level would actually look like. Seeing this distinction has gotten me thinking about where some of my students are cognitively and if my expectations of them in my classroom are appropriate. As I’ve been trying to utilize the iPads I have in my classroom and make more self paced units, I think this kind of information would perfectly align to my planning and help me to structure lessons that help each student show growth. The article also gave various examples of structures that can be put into place for students to write in math. These examples include, writing out their answers in detailed sentences, keeping a math journal, and using a graphic organizer to keep track of prior knowledge. The examples and data they present make it clear that writing in mathematics is crucial to improving a student’s problem solving skills and makes me want to try to find spaces in my class that students can write even more than they do now.

 

Billings, E., Coffey, D., Golden, J., and Wells, P. (September 2013). Teaching with the Mathematical Practices in Mind. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, Vol. 19, No 2, p. 100 – 107. 

This article outlined a professional development opportunity offered to a group of middle school teachers that introduced them to the workshop model. I chose to read this article because I myself have attended a couple professional developments that have addressed the workshop model and I try to implement these strategies in my classroom once a week so any more research or information about how to use it in my classroom is always helpful to me. In addition, I was instantly attracted to this article in particular because the content was surrounding proportions which is one of the biggest standards we cover in 7^th grade. The article highlighted each of the components of the workshop model (Make Connections, Focus, Engage in the Activity, and Reflect on the Process), in plain, easy to comprehend language and allowed me to dive a little deeper into how I approach each in my classroom. In my experience I haven’t put much emphasis on the “think aloud” as a lesson’s focus, but that was the biggest part of this article’s example which got me thinking about how I could restructure my classroom to allow for my students to participate in think alouds more often. One of the biggest deficits my students have, according to our data, is that they cannot read a math problem and appropriately pick a strategy to execute the problem. Unfortunately, one of the only ways to help students improve in this area is to have them working with examples and talking to each other about their thoughts. Even if my students can do that on a regular basis, it is difficult for me to judge their individual progress because I cannot be a part of every group, every day. With having access to the iPads in my classroom, I believe this is a perfect opportunity to have students record their thoughts so that I can go back later and listen to each of their thought processes. If I can be a part of each student’s learning on this deeper level it will also make conferences that I have with each of them more meaningful and ideally they will improve even faster.

 

Bolyard, J., Lynch, S., and Lynch, J. (August 2013). I-THINK I Can Problem Solve. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, Vol. 19, No 1, p. 10-14.

This article takes the idea of a traditional Think-Pair-Share as a way for students to think about and discuss a mathematical problem and adds on another dimension. Most of my students are struggling to determine which procedure or strategy will allow them to correctly answer story problems and the I-THINK structure asks students to talk about all aspects of the problem before trying to solve it. This is something I’ve been trying to do in my class for the past few weeks, however I have been doing it without actually naming the actions that I expect my students to do. This article presents a perfect framework for putting words to the actions I want my students to be doing; it also provides suggestions for questions and suggestions I can provide to students who continue to struggle with the idea of talking about mathematical ideas. The authors bring up the point that the new Mathematical Common Core Standards call for teachers to provide instruction in communicating mathematical ideas in problem soling, making connections, and justifying solutions. As a teacher, these are obviously my goals, but actually putting structures in place for my students to follow will help me as I track their growth and improvements in these areas.

 

 

 

Brydges, C., Erlandson, K., Howard, K., Karpie, M., and Plumb, M. (2012). Build Like an Egyptian – The Perfect Pyramid: A STEM Project for All Egyptian Ages. New York State Mathematics Teachers’ Journal, Vol. 62 Issue 3, p. 132-136.

This article beautifully sums up a STEM project that really allows students to act as creative individuals while engaging in a rigorous, cross content assignment. The article points out that there are not many STEM projects available to math teachers, especially projects that are classroom ready, which is something I know to be true. Having the students create a perfectly square pyramid, maintain a budget to erect the pyramid, and create a mummy to be placed in the pyramid opens up so many opportunities for students to deepen their understanding of geometry, basic finance, and humanities topics while having good old fashion fun. The article provides step by step instructions and advice to execute the lesson which is highly beneficial to teachers considering the juggling act of increased responsibilities they’re already working with.

 

 

Imm, K. and Lorber, M. (August 2013). The Footprint Problem: A Pathway to Modeling. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, Vol. 19, No 1, p. 46 – 54.

This article emphasizes the importance for students to solve word problems by modeling; it also brings up very valid points about how students are traditionally taught to solve problems. The author presents the idea that generally when students are asked to solve problems they are set up to solve them in a certain context. We first teach them certain skills, and then give them big ideas, and only after they have demonstrated a certain level of mastery of these insolated skills do we give them a problem to practice the application of that skill. Even then, as they point out, most teachers give students isolated word problems that practice the given skill, not necessarily problems that they will have any true connection to or see as legitimately real-world applicable. There are two points that the authors brought up about this idea that really hit home with me. The first is we need to teach our students to be problem finders before they can be problem solvers. This one idea highlights one of the biggest issues I’m currently having in my classroom; students are so intent on just doing something with the numbers and words given to them that they don’t take a step back and really determine what the problem is.  In my current class, students can’t even articulate what they’re trying to solve for in the problem, let alone do the correct math. The second point that really resonated with me from this text was that when we are creating “real-world” problems for our students to solve, we need to be more intentional about making them imaginable, believable, and intriguing to the students. This seems so basic and obvious, however when I’m trying to create word problems that are more rigorous and test multiple skills at once I struggle with making them meaningful to my students. It is common knowledge that students will perform better or try harder when they feel connected to the material, so hopefully making this small adjustment in my classroom will help my students to be more engaged. 

Maker Experiment #2 – Universal Design

This week’s learning was around the Universal Design for Learning; UDL is essentially an instructional model that is designed to help all students, even those with learning disabilities, feel success in the classroom. According to the Center for Applied Special Technologies, UDL is defined as “a framework for designing curricula that enable all individuals to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning. UDL provides rich supports for learning and reduces barriers to the curriculum while maintaining high achievement standards for all” (2011). In essence, UDL is a variety of extra scaffolds to support students with extra needs, but that end up helping the average student in the process.

As I looked through the UDL guidelines published by the CAST center this week I realized that I already implement quite a few of these strategies into my daily lessons. On a weekly basis I have students working together in differentiated groups where they all receive differentiated assignments to meet their individual needs. Within those groups students receive extra supports such as calculators, more specific questioning to get them working on the correct path, graphic organizers to keep order of their information, and more conferencing with me about their progress.

Looking back over my lesson plan for how to get my students working with the Makey Makey, I found that I didn’t really incorporate a lot of these ideas into my activities and plans. I would say that this was in part due to the fact that it was more of an exploratory lesson and I wanted to give the students more opportunities to do investigation on their own. I’m sure that as I created the documents to carry out the lesson, these scaffolds would have been put into place naturally, but going back through my planning with this new mindset shed light on many places where I could implement UDL strategies to help all of my students.

The overall structure of my lesson using the Makey Makey kit was to have the science behind the kit described in Science class, have the students use some sort of programming software to create a game or classroom activity, and then document their learning in written form as part of their Language Arts class. I like this approach because I feel that it has validity across all contents and students learn best when they can see connections to the material in different contexts. Within this, there numerous places that I can see opportunity for UDL scaffolds to help all students be successful in this project. Below I have listed different scaffolds I will provide to students in each part of their instruction; each strategy is linked to a specific UDL guideline.

Click the following link to review my original lesson plan surrounding the Makey Makey and then review the following changes I would make to my original lesson. https://smogorsa.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/maker-experiment-1-learning-theories/

Science Class:

Students can keep track of new vocabulary by using the Frayer model. This will allow students to learn about these new words in varying contexts: the actual definition, a picture, a sentence, and a non-example. This will deepen their understanding of each word. (2.1)

As students learn the workings of the Makey Makey and begin to make sense of how the machine works, they can outline the specific parts on multiple different circuits so they can see how the charges work in different machines. (3.2)

Students can set goals to understand different types of circuits and conference with their teacher to check their progress on how their understanding has developed. (6.2)

How to guides about how circuits work with conductors to supply a charge can be provided for students to follow a pattern. (3.3)

Math Class:

Students can create an activity or game about any topic that interests them. This gives the students ownership over their project and a little more creative autonomy to make them want to learn the material. (7.1)

All students have the use of a graphic organizer to keep track of the procedure for writing scripts in their programming software. (3.2)

How to guides about how to create games and activities in programming software can be provided to follow a set of steps. (3.3)

Language Arts Class:

Students can choose to explain their understanding of conductors and how they created their classroom activities in written form, verbally, or by using technology. Allowing students to show ownership in this part of their project as well maintains their individual buy in and can increase creativity. (4.1)

Overall, in this kind of activity, I do think most of these scaffolds would benefit all students; giving them the opportunity to have individual buy in and showcase their creativity is essential in the learning environment. However, in some instances I would not want to provide all students with each of these scaffolds because I do think there is value in a handful of my students acting more as investigators and explorers as they encounter new ideas such as the Makey Makey. Sparking their curiosity and letting them control their projects seems to work more for the above average student. 

 

Sources:

CAST (2011). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.0. Wakefield, MA. 

UDL guidelines examples. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2013, from https://sites.google.com/site/udlguidelinesexamples/

CAST (2011). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.0. Wakefield, MA: Author.