The real issue that I would like to address in my techquest is the effectiveness of student to teacher feedback. More specifically, I teach high school math and it is extremely important for the students to practice and then receive feedback on their practice. Currently, I do a few things in order for the students to check their homework (post work and solutions on overhead/board, photocopy solutions and do a carousel, peer check), however I feel that NONE of them serve their purpose. The students completely zone out, use it as social time, cheat/copy, don't end up checking their work and making corrections and therefore learn NOTHING.
If I can find and implement some technology that would help solve this problem, it would have a SIGNIFICANT impact on the learning in my classroom. I feel the best way to learn math is to practice, make mistakes and then fix them (and then try again!!). I'm not sure what the solution is going to entail, however I have a hunch that peer collaboration is going to have to be included. I'm excited to see what I can come up with to help address this problem.
Jen I love your idea right now (especially as a fellow math teacher). I also can empathize with you on trying to find ways to have them check their work and feeling like nothing makes a difference sometimes. The thing I would possibly look into is using some sort of clickers. They can provide instant feedback and the kids actually respond pretty well to them. There isn't as much peer collaboration persay, but I'm sure you could figure something out to work with it. The clickers a few teachers in my school use go through the TurningPoint software and here is a link(http://www.turningtechnologies.com/audienceresponseproducts/) that has some of their products, in case you were interested in using them.
ReplyDeleteWhen you find the answer for student not to copy or cheat just to get the work done, then you will have conquered. I think you are on the right track. I to struggle with the same issues in the art room. I fyou can get the students to want to figure out the solutin instead of just getting the results through technology, that would be awesome.
ReplyDeletePS. Sorry I was so late on this
Providing students with feedback is an issue most educators struggle with. Technology is a motivator that grabs a student's interest. Blogs and wikis comes to mind! A lot has been mentioned lately about using both these tools to teach math skills. You might want to check out http://am40s.pbworks.com This wiki has been designed by the teacher to be "a place for students to help each other learn by writing a collaborative solutions manual! This counts for marks. You must make at least two edits/contributions to the wiki. One must be a significant contribution and the other must be a constructive modification." A second site is http://adifference.blogspot.com the students have to solve the problems and show how they solved them by including annotated calculations and intrepretions. Here is another: http://sargentparkmathzone.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteJen, I like what you are trying to achieve and I believe that each teacher runs in to this same problem. It seems sometimes the opportunities we provide our students are used as "short cuts" instead of what we intended. Its much like teaching a literature class and having students use ONLY Sparknotes to "read" the novel. It could be used as a supplemental guide, but is used as the primary document instead. I will be very interested in anything you can discover or figure out to try and prevent this...you will be my hero if you figure it out. :)
ReplyDelete