How are you using technology in the classroom?

In teaching CED 330, we both use the computer workstation to its fullest, teaching with PowerPoint presentations, occasional DVD’s, and often showing manipulatives or examples of student solutions to problems on the Elmo opaque projector. When we have access to classrooms with many computers, we visit interactive websites that bring math alive and show ideas for teaching math to elementary students. We’ve also used the library website and Google Scholar as literature research tools.

How do you integrate technology into classroom activities?

Well, for example, in Audrey’s classroom, students often write math assessment questions tied to the state standards and then Audrey shows them on the Elmo and the class critiques them. In Jean’s classes, she has used animated PowerPoint presentations to illustrate different strategies to solve a math problem. These strategies meet the New York State standards for teaching elementary math.

How are you using technology as a tool to achieving your teaching goals?

One of our joint goals is to involve undergraduate students in publication of their curriculum material ideas and to involve them in classroom action research. Each semester we think of a joint project in which our preservice teachers make a math curriculum material and we devise a pretest/posttest instrument to measure their growth in understanding of the math concepts involved by participating in the project. Last year, students make hands-on sets of materials to illustrate algebraic generalizations and we published an ERIC document (ED 495 307) that showcased students’ ideas and described the pretest-posttest results of what students learned from the project. Other elementary and middle school teachers can then use our ideas in their classroom teaching.

How do you see technology improving learning?

When students in Jean’s class make animated PowerPoint presentations, they begin to appreciate the different mathematical strategies used in whole number computation. The fact that they have to make a presentation forced them to organize the information and think deeply about how to scaffold the concepts. When Audrey has students use digital photographs and images drawn in PowerPoint, students must consider the best way of presenting images so that the mathematical concepts are supported.

How have your students responded to your use of technology?

 Student reactions to technology integration have been overwhelmingly positive. Preservice teachers value technology skills because they know they will need them in their future teaching careers. Audrey uses the “Print Screen” function to produce an image of the window that opens during some computer tasks such as inserting images. She makes a step-by-step list of actions for more difficult technology tasks. This helps those students who are still developing their skills to be successful in completing projects.

What does technology add that would not be possible without it?

Jean says that a lot of her PowerPoint presentations are animated and have links to websites. This allows students who want or need more information about a topic to access information online that parallels classroom instruction. Another aspect that Audrey particularly appreciates is the fact that digital image technology allows students to show their curriculum material ideas in a publication. Digital images of math manipulatives are also a very important component of her PowerPoint lectures.

What new goals do you have for using technology in teaching?

 Jean and Audrey both would like to improve their web sites to include more course-related materials with easy access for students.

How could the University better facilitate the use of technology in instruction?

Continue to have workshops for faculty.

What is your biggest challenge in using technology in the classroom?

Time and access to computer labs during instructional time.

How are you using technology to transform your teaching?

 Students have access to so many more resources through the Internet. Jean guides her students to online resources that she pre-screens. Audrey is using PowerPoint as a drawing program for her students to make their own math manipulatives and games.

How are you using technology in interesting or unique ways?

 This semester, Jean and Audrey have involved their students in each finding a different graph published in the professional scientific literature that presents evidence related to global warming. Students also made graph interpretation statements that were true or false for their graphs and thereby made a curriculum material suitable for teaching math concepts to upper elementary students. Jean required her students to also reference the specific New York State learning standards addressed by the activity.

Is there anything that you love about technology?

We both love the ability of technology to animate mathematical concepts. When preparing a presentation that shows a math process step-by-step, we can use copy and paste to repeat the layout of materials and then just alter the small parts that are changing as the manipulatives are moved.

How are you using technology in your daily life?

Email is one of our biggest uses because of the speed and ease of communication. Students depend on email to allow them to ask a question about an attached file and receive a fast response at a distance.

If you had to pick one technology item that you couldn’t live without what would it be?

Email and PowerPoint!