Questions and Answers

One of the questions that I find myself repeatedly contemplating is the effectiveness of technology in the classroom, especially a math classroom. I am from a very small town with limited resources, and technology used by my math teachers was limited to graphing calculators. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult for me to see the relavance of incorporating technology into my future classroom. I feel that technology often complicates material that I learned simply through my high school textbook, class lecture, examples/discussion, and maybe the use of a calculator. However, I understand that students in high schools today are used to a much greater amount of technology in the classroom and their daily functions as a whole. Therefore I also understand how teaching the students with the resources that they use on a daily basis is important. I feel that for technology to be incorporated effectively into the classroom, rather than complicating the subject matter, teachers must be very well-educated on the technology themselves, they must plan for a certain amount of time for their students to become accustomed to the technology, and they must have very specifically defined learning targets regarding the intended outcome of using the technology. While teachers should be well prepared for all lessons and instruction, I feel that this preparation is particularly critical when the teachers are incorporating technology that is also new to them as the teacher. Further, I feel the best use for technology is in discovery and exploration. There are many lessons in which lecture and examples/discussion cannot be replaced. However, leading into such lessons with a technology component that allows the students to explore their own ideas and/or create personal conjectures regarding the material is an excellent way to bring technological advancements into the classroom.

New Insights and Their Implications

I have really enjoyed the technology presentations this semester. I particularly liked the mathematical explorer presentation. It was a completely new program to me which made me a little more interested in learning about it. It seemed very advanced in the mathematics that it could perform for you, but took awhile to type in all the information. I am sure that this is something that just come with time as you use it more and more. Watching the video on lesson study one was great. It allowed us to all see how the lesson worked out in the classroom. And it has become aware to me that you could have created a perfect lesson and still would of had a hard time teaching it on that day. All the distractions with halloween made it hard to reflect on how well the intruction was prepared. I am hoping to make some better conclusions from lesson study number two and number three. Hopefully it will be easier to observe the students perspective and their grasp on the material.