USM Computer Class

My project is the portaportal page I set up for my 8th grade math classes.

Since my comment that I made on the 2 Cents site never showed up, I thought I would restate it here. The article I read was a blog describing a lecture given by David Pink. In the last part of the lecture, Mr. Pink outlined six abilities (very much right brained) that will matter the most in the new global economy. My response as a classroom teacher is that we are under so much external pressure to prepare students for state tests and to cover a large number of skills (especially in math) that we are sacrificing the time needed to provide critical and creative thinking opportunities for our students. And thus, we are not really preparing our students for what will matter to the future of our country.

I made a comment (7/19) on the 2 Cents Worth site about the Daniel Pink article.   As of 7/20 am the comment had not been approved.

My initial goals were two-fold and I will comment on each one separately.

One of my goals was to simply learn how to navigate on the I-Book screen.  When I think of all that I didn’t know Monday morning and all that I know now, I am amazed.  Fortunately,  I was able to learn as Alice guided us through various aspects of using the Macs and I was lucky to be seated beside a technology coordinator.  What bothers me though is that as a new teacher at the middle school level last fall, no training in how to actually use the laptops was ever offered.  Interestingly, as my skill with using the laptop increased, I was able to transfer some of the tricks I’d learned to using my PC at home.

My second goal was to find some substantive tools that will help my students become more active in their learning and increase their mathematical understandings.  Establishing my PortalPortal page certainly helps me to meet this goal because I picked links that will require the students to be active in either skill building or in problem solving.  If we continue to have a novel study as part of our Literacy Block next year, I am going to try and add a blog page that corresponds with the reading.  If I try a blog page in my math classes, it will first be with the Algebra I students in having them comment on some problem solving strategies.

While I have started a file of math podcasts (I chose ones with corresponding videos), I’m thinking that these might be more in the attention-grabbing category of teaching – certainly an area important for middle-schoolers.  I want to try starting a class with one in September so that I don’t forget everything I’ve learned.

Knowing that I’m a middle-aged digital immigrant who approaches technology with much trepidation, I feel that I’ve made major leaps this week.  Fortunately, one of my 8th grade math colleagues is a technology whiz and now that I know some of the language I’ll be able to work with her on implementation ideas.  And of most importance, this class has certainly opened my eyes to seeing the world more from my students’ perspectives.  I should be a more effective teacher because of this.

WHAT:  I have created my own PortaPortal page (found under JuliaSwan at PortaPortal.com) to use in my 8th grade math classes starting in September.

WHY:  Last year was the first that I had taught with laptops in the classroom.  While one of my goals for school was to use computer technology in my teaching, I only managed to have the students use the laptops for writing assignments (in advisory and in literacy block) and for using Green Globs (in math classes).  Two math teachers had mentioned PortaPortal pages as being handy to use in math classes and thus I was curious as to what they where and how to set one up.  Though this is a rather basic project it truly fits my needs and I am 100% confident that now that I’ve started it I will use it and can continue to expand the links.

HOW:  I found PortaPortal very easy to use.  Even when I incorrectly set-up the first six links I was able to go back and figure out how to correct the situation.  Since all of my possible links were written by hand in some folder at school, I decided to start at the NCTM website (which I’ve been meaning to visit for years and was now given a golden opportunity to do so.)   After establishing categories which correspond to the units I teach, I went through all of the Activities portion of the NCTM website.  For any activities which appeared meaningful and student-friendly, I added the link under the appropriate category.  I did have to expand my categories during the process.  I am about halfway through the NCTM Websites portion following the same process.  At the beginning, all of my categories were meant to be accessed by students, but I did add one which contains links to teacher directions for specific activities.  I am looking forward to having my students access some of these links during math classes next year.

I’ve thought of three projects that would be meaningful in my teaching (simple but meaningful.)

#1:  Establish a library of math podcasts and use these to introduce a unit or pose a question.  I think this could be useful as a class opener (while taking attendance, etc.)

#2:  Start my own PortaPortal page of useful links for the various math sections I teach.

#3:  Set up a slide show to have running during the open house in October.  Perhaps I could set up the folders now and then import the pictures during the first month of school.

This article was so rich with visions and ideas that I’m not sure where to begin.  The author was powerful and futuristic in his ideas on how education needs to change in order to demand the attention of the younger generation.  As a definite immigrant, I know that I don’t currently have the skills to even approach what Prensky has outlined (though after this week I am more aware of what I’m lacking.)  It seems that a massive retraining of teachers is needed in order for us to make the required shift.  (Perhaps I missed some of this by just recently joining middle-school education, but did the State provide some of this training at the beginning of MLTI?)  I agree that we must find ways to incorporate this technology and parts of the gaming mentality to reach our students and I am one who needs help.

I had to chuckle at the beginning of the article Blogs are Not the Enemy. Yesterday after class, I came to the conclusion that blogs would be a good tool for journaling – with the students writing and the teacher commenting. And now in this article, Jeff Utecht dispels this notion with the idea that blogging needs to be the start of a conversation among a group of people and not a one-way paragraph. That does seem like a powerful idea but I’m not sure how we add this into our classrooms unless discussions are given a much higher priority. Perhaps, in a problem-solving situation in a math classroom, blogging and commenting would be a useful method for sharing ideas on strategies for considering specific problems.

I did think that the comment guidelines were useful, especially the first one the author states of writing meaningful comments. In a literacy novel group this year, I noticed that the students were making quite meaningless comments about each other’s work. The skill of being constructive in commenting is one which is very important for our students to learn which, exactly what the author emphasizes in her 6th guideline to teach commenting.

While I can certainly understand the need for using technology to tap into students’ desire for the ‘cool factor’ and the necessity to keep students’ technology skills current, I am wondering if the current use of technology in the classroom enhances the critical thinking skills of our students. This past year was my first in teaching at the middle school level (and thus teaching with the laptops. ) Yes – while the students often did produce some impressive presentation type of projects (not in my math classes but in other areas),  I often wondered if they had thought critically about the content in these projects and if the process had really furthered their understandings. I truly can not answer this question, because I was not the teacher evaluating the work, so this is really just an impression gleaned from watching the students work.

I hope that as my technology knowledge expands I will find useful tools that will not only better hook my students with the ‘cool factor’ but will also enable them to become better problem solvers and mathematical thinkers. The tools must be out there and I just need to take the time to find them.