Field Placement Process
- I have access to elementary schools in Bethlehem and Allentown. If anyone is interested in working with a multicultural group of students, I know teachers who are willing to get some help at Marvine Elementary as well as Donegan Elementary, both in Bethlehem. In Allentown, I have connections with McKinley Elementary.
Suggestion of classroom teachers
- Meeting the teachers and asking their input on how to improve mathematics awareness.
- Getting to know the students’ strengths and weaknesses with technology.
- Digital divide can be a challenge as many students may not have access to a computer/internet outside of school.
- Does the school have and “open lab” concept or computer time where the students can access the blog/wiki to post their solutions.
Brainstorming
- I would like to introduce some sort of technical blog or wiki dealing with the TI-15 — the calculator that is predominantly used in the mathematics curriculum at the elementary level.
Rationale for the blog/wiki: Due to the amount of instruction time in various content areas, very little time (if any) is devoted to teaching how to use the calculators effectively.
In this blog I envision a teacher posting some kind of (bi)weekly calculator activity with instructions so that the students would complete and post their results. As students post solutions to the activity the teacher would monitor and provide feedback to their posts. Solutions to the activity would be posted and students solution corrected.
Disclaimer
- I understand how busy elementary teachers are, but this blog/wiki could be somehow incorporated as part of the mathematics curriculum. Therefore, communicating with the teacher would be helpful. I would model the blog/wiki communication for the fisrt few posts so that the teacher feel comfortable with the task at hand.
September 4, 2007 at 1:45 am
Alex,
Great ideas on the calculator blogs/wiki. Great for additional take home activities (assuming student has home access) and student-to-student help.
Trish
September 5, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Hi Alex! I think you have a great idea! I agree that this would be a helpful tool for teachers, because I know there’s not many times that the children are taught how to actually use the calculator. I think it would be great to have something like this to guide the students through activities. Also, I think it’s an excellent way for teachers to keep track and provide feedback to the students. As you know, the younger the age, the more directions and simplicity you’ll need! Nice Job!!! I’m anxious to see your presentation!!! Maybe I will be able to use your idea in my own classroom!!!
~Stacy Getz
September 9, 2007 at 12:54 am
I think using blogs for mathematic assignments would be a great idea. Actually blogs and wikkis can be applied to any subject area and as you have said they save a lot of time for the teachers, since the teachers can take some load of the classroom activities into the blog and assign students to do some of the work outside the class. My only concern is that with mathematics, there is generally one or a couple of way of solving the problems. If the hardworking students do their assignment first and post the solutions early, the rest of the class may just copy the solution from their classmate’s blog. Other than that it is a great thing to use blogs. I was planning using them for Language Arts classes, too.
September 10, 2007 at 3:52 pm
I think that is a great idea for a technology-based project. I agree that with all the subject material needed to be covered in a mathematics classroom, calculators are often ignored due to time restraints. In addition, perhaps you could highlight the times when using a calculator is appropriate and when it is inappropriate to ensure students will use these tools to their maximum efficiency.
September 10, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Alex:
Thanks for the leads on BASD and Allentown elementary schools. I’ll bring this up at the class level!