Journals

Technology is ever changing an evolving. Huge steps in various forms of tech every year and websites and apps are evolving at an even fast rate. Growing up in school as technology would change, I could see most of my teachers struggling to keep up with the times. They would fumble around and try their hardest to keep class going smoothly but the one thing that would consistently stop them was tyring to get it up on the projector or finding it on their laptop. A lot of the time one of us students would be the one to show the teacher how to do it. 

I am afraid that I will be taken over by my students. My generation is one of the first to grow up with technology and there is no way to say what it will be like when we are the age that my teachers were. There is a chance that we could end up just like them; relying on our students to do things that we just don't understand because they are past our time. My hope is that since we are the generation that grew up with technology and we know how to learn the things about it, we will be able to be more adaptive with technology as it evolves and not stumble on it like some have in the past. 

The most impactful aspect of technology that I have learned from in the Computer Applications in Mathematics for Teachers course is that it is possible to make coursework more personalized for students. It does take more preparation work in the long run, but it would help students get the specialized instruction they need to build off of the ideas they are learning and progress to the following topics. Having the ability to do that and more has shown me the impact of using technology in classrooms and how beneficial it would be. My favorite piece of technology that I have seen in this course is Desmos Classroom. It is like having an interactive PowerPoint that can be self-paced and full of communication between the students and then at the same time have the ability to be observed by the teacher and keep controlled environments in order to provide instruction. 

After taking this course, I feel like I understand that there are many straightforward ways to integrate technology into the classroom that benefit the students learning and allow teachers to model, educate and communicate with students in ways that were not possible. I understand that there will always be innovations in technology, but it is something that I am going to have to adapt to and use my initiative to learn more about it. What I hope to gain more from this Computer Applications course are more tools I can bring into my classroom. I do not want my classroom to be the same repetitive thing every day. I want to use all the resources I have access to to make each day exciting and educational for my students. 

I remember using projectors with clear dry-erase paper, and my teacher accidentally used Sharpie one time. That was about the most technology that was involved in my classes. When I was in my math classes, it was mostly about taking notes from the lectures and solving problems that were put on the board. Math education was mainly about teachers giving the lectures, and then you do problems over and over until you can do them again. I had very few times that my teachers would use indirect teaching, and after seeing that indirect teaching in action, I see the difference in how it could affect my student's learning. I am taking a class on incorporating technology into my lessons. The changes that COVID-19 brought were immense, and learning about all the developing ways of bringing it into my classroom has been very enlightening. It makes me even more excited to see the ways that I can change students' learning for the better. 

In the future, I think that education will include less direct instruction than there already is, and the days of receiving, memorizing, and regurgitating will be on the back burner of what we want our students to do in class. There will be more of a focus on the student's experiences and how the things that they learn can be applied outside of the classroom. Project and inquiry-based learning will be growing in the norm. As educators, we must encourage our students to take more responsibility for their learning and provide them the space to do so. We must create curiosity in our students to motivate them to participate in a more involved learning type. For us to provide high-quality education to our students for the years to come, we must become facilitators that can embrace the changing times and use the new resources that come to us to make our classrooms the best place that the students can learn. 

The tech tool that I have found to be the one that I prefer to use is Quizziz. Quizziz is a tool that combines a lot of the preferred technology tools that other teachers use. Although it sounds like this tool is mainly used for online quizzes, although it is an option, this website has so much more all in one place. In the Pear Deck application, we can make interactive slides through Google Drive using a simple add-on. In Quizziz, the only difference is that you can import your slides from Google Drive or make them directly on the website, including all of the same student-interaction features that Pear Deck has. Kahoot has excellent background music when you give them the fun game of a competitive quiz. Quizziz lets you give that same quiz with the option not to have it be a competition between students. I like this feature because some students will not get it as fast as others, and I do not want to make them feel less than others because of it. In Edpuzzle, we can create online lectures that students can watch where ever they want and pause the video for the students to have them answer an interactive question or leave them a note on what was just talked about. Quizziz is unique because they include all of these features and more, including the fact that these can be done in class or assigned as homework for a more personalized homework set of problems or lessons. 

In my classroom, I can see myself using the quizzes as exit tickets to assess students' understanding of what was done throughout the day. I will use the lesson application to enhance my lectures during the day to make them more interactive for the students to engage in the work. I will also use this lesson application to record lessons for students to take home with them as homework. I think this would be a great way to allow students to watch an interactive lecture at home and then answer homework problems in class where there is someone who can guide them in the right direction when needed. This tool is free on the basic plan; however, it is worth the $144 per year for the premium features because of how much this application will benefit the classroom. There is also an excellent school plan and plan for the district that includes even more communication and collaboration features for teachers. 

Now it's time to convince the district to buy into the plan since everyone at the school will want to use it soon. 

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics(NCTM) is the world's most extensive mathematics education organization. Their mission is to advocate for high-quality mathematics teaching and learning for every student. The NCTM provides guidance and resources that support teachers in creating equitable environments for all their students. They provide many tools for secondary teachers, including resources for exciting problems of the week to catch students' attention while challenging them, interactive programs to help students enjoy what they are learning, "math sightings" that help extend students' view of the world by showing how math makes sense in everyday life, and "Notice and Wonder?" tools to help create a sense of curiosity in students minds so that students can see the bigger idea behind problems so that they can gain reflective skills in mathematics. I believe that the math sightings are one of the most valuable tools that they have on their website because showing students how they can apply the mathematics that they are learning in class not only motivates them to think about the lesson in a different way that applies to their life but also might inspire some students to apply it in their life. One of our goals as teachers is to prepare students for life ahead of them and help them to find their future. The next meeting of the NCTM is on October 25-28, 2023, in Washington, DC. 

An excerpt from The Mathematics Teacher is an article about "Integrating Modeling Steps into the High School Curriculum." This article is, as it says in its title, about how to go about integrating modeling problems in classroom learning. The authors discuss the dos and don'ts of creating instruction around modeling and what thought should go into preparing such a lesson while keeping it as effective as possible. They mention that including modeling in your instruction should not just take part in a few projects that are done in the year but integrated into the classroom throughout the curriculum. It is mentioned how to come up with mathematical modeling problems. One way is by adapting problems provided in the textbook. Using the problems provided, we can tweak parts to have students identify pertinent factors, interpret the model's parameters, compare and critique model types and use models to make informed decisions. This article is essential and useful for the future of teaching because it talks about something in mathematics education that I believe needs to occur. If modeling is integrated into our curriculum, students will be allowed to be more involved in their learning and will take more away from the lessons that we have in out class. 

Wendt, T., Murphy, K. (2015) Integrating modeling steps into the high school curriculum. The Mathematics Teacher, Vol. 109(5), pg. 374-379.

Learning about various technologies I can incorporate into my classroom has opened up a new world. There are so many new ways to educate our students using methods that are much more involved than when I was in school. I have realized how wide of a spectrum there is of online applications that have been created to do so many different things. After researching all of these new things, I have gained the skills to find these websites and learn about the features and how I can manipulate them to better my classroom. I can see the use of technology is helpful to teachers because of the ability to collaborate with other teachers and find resources from teachers no matter where they are. It will help in my classroom because it will allow me to model things I cannot do on paper and teach lessons and collaboration in ways that I would not be able to with the traditional "I do, you do, we do" lesson style. I can see technology hindering the students learning since this also gives them access to websites that do math problems for them. This will be something that I will try to mitigate by not only keeping a watchful eye on them in the classroom but also paying attention to their learning. Students who use software like that are not learning how to do the problems themselves. When you can see something is inconsistent between their scores on homework and assessments, we know that something is wrong. 

As I have said before, technology is ever-growing, and there will always be new and better things out there for us to use in our classrooms. I will commit to being a lifelong learner in teaching practices, including learning about these new technologies over the years of my being an educator. I will communicate with my peers in my school and across the nation. I will continue what I have done in preparation for my teaching credential and find the best ways of delivering material to my students. As I am teaching the best way to determine if a new piece of technology is worth my time and investment, I will get advice from other teachers with experience with the application. If I find that piece of technology is something that I can fit into my instruction or can replace something that I already use because it is an improvement, then I would have a test trial in my classrooms. I find that the best way to learn something is to do it myself and that is how I would apply my learning of technology.