For the TP portion of my project, my goal is to learning opportunities that will cover as many learning styles as possible. Some students like traditional worksheets and notes, but not all so I have provided links to video tutorials that show traditional math techniques, but also some that have music and animation. Also, there are interactive sites like Khan Academy and Larry Green's Applets, and I have an interactive StAIR that can be helpful for a variety of students. I plan on making videos and/or podcasts of my daily lessons to add a more personal touch to the site. In addition to math, I teach/monitor an online curriculum class, and the feedback from every person I've had the discussion with is that they like the traditional classes much better than the online classes (all of which have video and/or audio pieces) because they like to have a teacher with them. CEP 811's and 812's weekly live sessions and our recent leadership project meeting has made me think about offering daily/weekly video meetings to help kids with their homework and to provide students with opportunities to complete group projects.
For the TC piece, I will need to make sure that all students are comfortable with the technologies I use. A significant percentage of my students, especially the ones who have been absent from school, have a high level of stress when it comes to math so I don't want to add any more stress by not having them be well-versed using the website, finding videos, locating tutorials, accessing practice, and blogging. I would love it for the kids to not have to troubleshoot problems and deal with bugs so technical issues need to be minimized.
The PC piece of the puzzle is covered because students will be able to enhance their reasoning skills, both inductive and deductive as there are a variety of activities that will give them chances to visualize and hear the content I want them to learn and also chances to discover things on their own. I am excited about the opportunities for my students!
Scott,
ReplyDeleteCreating videos to help students with daily lessons is a great idea. I am doing something similar with my Wicked Project using screencasts and Moodle. I think that daily might get a little overwhelming for you as a teacher. But maybe not! Also, you mention making sure the students are comfortable with the technologies. This is key, I find that if there are problems with tech, the students usually shut down or feel defeated and don't want to use the program.
I have also had experience with students not learning as much from their online math class in comparison to a teacher led class. I am a Social Studies teacher, and had to oversee students taking online math courses(which ranged from Algebra Readiness- Financial Math) Students indicated that the online content often did not have all the answers. I also agree with Sami about making sure your students become comfortable with the technology first. You may want to think about beginning your classes by introducing your chosen technology. This way, right off the bat you will being to build your students technology skills. Then you can begin to piggy back from the tech skills, and show how they can be used in Math. I know that math was always hard for me, and needed a teacher to explain problems over and over to be able to comprehend it. I think your idea of having a live session for questions like we have in CEP 812. This would be a safety net for students, so you can catch them before they hit bottom and shut down.
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