Technology Integration Plan

            For this technology integration plan, I used a lesson plan I had previously made for High School Geometry class. This lesson plan focuses on using similarity and congruence properties, analyze information about sine and cosine in complementary angles, and apply previous knowledge to understand and apply the law of sine and cosines in non-right angle triangles. This lesson integrates effective learning through various uses of technology and different teaching strategies ranging from instruction, visual, and audio representations.

In the spreadsheet under access for the first row, the students will be first introduced to the material. The students will use what they know about similarity and congruence and explore how to find relationships in geometric figures. In order to begin, there is an introduction to the material through direct teaching, then a visual and oral presentation introducing the material in different learning methods. The smart board enables the students to be engaged to visual representations, which will introduce their online interactivity. The Elmo camera allows students to see what the teacher is holding or showing through a live camera connected to the projector to make sure all the students see and understanding the concepts from their online interactivity. This will help the students who are still confused about their hands on activity and concepts. The students are also required to be note taking throughout the direct teaching, computer interactivity experience, and hands on experience to combine what they have learned and their understanding through multiple views.

            Later in row two, students are required to analyze relationships of sine and cosine complementary angles. In order to do so the students are guided through direct teaching and the use of the smart board, also so every student can see. Students will be given different examples they will have to represent and compare, then through an online interactivity the students are going to analyze the relationship and use it to answer the online questionnaire that tells the students on the spot whether they are right or not and this will also be used as a formal assessment. Direct response is important, because some students will not attempt to find out if they are right or not and technology makes that possible. Students will also explain why they were wrong or right based on their online questionnaire.

            In order to evaluate and assess in the next row, the students will be asked review the formula for the area of a triangle by drawing. There will be a teacher demonstration through PowerPoint then the students will work in groups. In groups, the students will draw using geometer’s sketchpad for more accurate results. Then the students will come together in a group discussion to share their results. The students will also be allowed to use calculators and Math Input Panel, which is a software that converts written math expressions into text for a faster way of writing expressions on the computer.

            Students will prove the Law of Sines and Cosines using previous work in the class shown on the next row in order to communicate the concepts. Through a Khan video, they will compare their solutions. Through a class question and answer sessions students will analyze their proof and what they were missing or what they did right. Understanding the proof students will apply the laws in real life problem solving. The questions will be displayed through PowerPoint, so all the students could see and the answers will be shown after all the students participate and will be assessed by participation.

            Finally, in the final row, students will be able to understand the Law of Sines and Cosines and be able to apply it to any non-right triangle. The students must also be able to understand why this law only applies to non-right triangles through previous work. Students will work and be assessed in groups conducting an activity called triangles with stars. Students must find unknown lengths of earth to stars using information about triangle sides and angles. Students will then work individually and be assessed explaining their own work. It is important to know whether or not each student understands, so it is acceptable to work together to problem solve, but then each individual student should record and explain their results to ensure each student has understood the lesson. The students will be able to use OpenOffice Draw to explain their results visually if they are unable to by writing. Overall, the students must show they understand it does not matter how they represent their results.

URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al-Ug3kw0QuYdG1XMWl0bllnNzdkTkk5Mms1bUFKZ3c&usp=sharing

Online Math Exams

        More and more schools are giving online exams for students, especially for entrance exams. Online tests may be difficult for students who are not familiar with the format, but it may be especially difficult for students taking math exams on the computer. There are pros and cons for students taking a math exam online some examples are the following.

        The pros to online math exams are a few. Students who take an online exam may receive their scores as soon as they are done taking the exam, unless there is a written part, but there most likely won’t for a math exam. Students can easily see what questions have been or have not been answered. Students may also have an easy accessible reference sheet. Also, sometimes students lose points on standardized tests for not filling in the bubble correctly, erasing poorly, and/or selecting more than one answer. Taking a math exam online won’t make these factors an issue.

        There are cons however. The students may have a hard time taking the online test because they are not use to the format. The students may have a hard time entering fractions, exponents, and negative numbers in the calculator.The students might also have a hard time figuring out how to access the formula sheet. Usually most people prefer to do their math work on a paper, and if the student is not given one they might have a harder time finishing the exam on time. For example, geometry problems should be drawn out for a clearer understanding. The students may also get anxious because as of now it is something new and not commonly used. I know that I do not like to use the computer to solve math questions, so the students might feel the same.

        Overall, this is a work in progress and students should be able to practice in the same format they are being tested if they are going to be tested online.

Online Textbooks

         Online textbooks seem to be used more and more now throughout schools. My first encounter with a math online textbook was freshman year of college. Now more and more high schools are getting online textbooks as opposed to hard copies, sooner or later there will be no more textbooks in a classroom or to take home. There are some pros and cons to this.

         The benefits of online textbooks is that the students will not have to carry heavy textbooks back in forth. Students could have all of their textbooks on their laptop, iPad, or any other tablet. Additionally, textbook companies can include online resources and manipulatives along the text, so students could explore on their own. Students can easily look up unknown words or extra help right away if their textbook is digital.
          However, there are also cons to having an online textbook. The access to the textbook may not be fair to some students. Some students could possibly only have one computer in a household and might have to wait to use it. Some students may also have difficulties using it if not taught properly. Additionally, will the student be able to use their online textbook in class? If the student is allowed to, who is to say the student is not looking at other things during class. If the student is not allowed to, will this help the student if the student is struggling? Some students might also just prefer to have a textbook, since they are use to it.

          Overall, students should be given a choice to their preference and access to the textbook. Each student should be given an opportunity to choose which method will best help specifically to their needs. Each student is different and some might benefit from having an online textbook, while other might not, so instead of changing all the textbooks to being only accessible online the students should choose.

Catchup Math

Catch up math is an online curriculum support for math. Some schools use this website for middle school students who are not at the math level they are supposed to be and need better math foundations. This website allows the students to have an account where they can work at their own pace through lessons, questions, and quizzes. The teacher also has an account to track where the students are and how they are doing.

The students are first shown lessons, which may include videos. The students are given questions to answer about the lessons, where they have to apply what they have learned. If the student needs help with a question, they could ask for a hint or several hints. For each hint they use it takes off points off the student’s final grade. Depending on the type of questions the student gets wrong or asks for hints the website generates questions with what the student needs help with. Although two students may be working on the same lesson, the questions might be different depending on the student’s individualized needs.

This website also tracks improvement and overall work of a student, and is accessible to both the student and teacher. This way both the student and teacher know the individualized strengths and weaknesses of the students and could individualize instruction for each need. This website also only allows students to access calculators only for the problems it is required. This is helpful because this way the student will not feel the need to use the calculator for everything. Using the calculator for everything in classrooms in my opinion is a big problem we are faced with today. Students who become too dependable on calculators do not know how to apply some skills required for further content.

Overall, this website is very helpful for students and teachers. The students are able to do the work at their pace to ensure better understanding of each concept and the teacher is able to focus on the needs of each student, since the website identifies what they need help with and where they are.

PowerPoint for Teaching

            PowerPoint is a great presentation program for teaching Mathematics and any other content area. With PowerPoint, teachers could outline their lesson plan with text and media. Standing in front of a classroom and teaching is difficult because there are many things to cover and it is easy to forget something, but having a PowerPoint presentation makes it easy to follow a clear organized format. Additionally, having an outline of the lesson could be helpful to send students who were absent that day, or to post up. Taking notes is important to refer back to when solving problems for homework or studying for a test, but it is also time consuming in class from focusing on what has to be learned and practice. To make time more efficient students could use the class time to review the PowerPoint, take notes on what is not on the PowerPoint that they feel is important, then spend the rest of the class learning, practicing, and asking questions.

            There are also many great tools for learning that could be used to teach and engage students in learning. PowerPoint allows teachers to add slides with text, pictures, videos, sound, and animations. Having the option to make the power point not only educational, but also interactive engages students to want to learn more. PowerPoint is much more of an attention grabber than just writing on the board. This would be similar to creating a canvas, like for the unit plan, but more detailed and focused on a particular topic. Another great feature for the PowerPoint is creating shapes, this would be perfect for a lesson on geometry. There is also an option that the students may print out the PowerPoint slides as handouts, which the students could use to study, because they would be like index cards. The students could also print out the slides with lines on the sides to have the PowerPoint slides in their notes and take additional notes to each slide that they feel needs further explaining or is unclear. 

YouTube for Teaching and Learning Math

            YouTube is a great website for educational purposes. YouTube is great because there are tons of videos for tutoring purposes, teaching, or fun learning videos. There are many videos uploaded by many users that could help a student learn any math topic and how to apply it for problem solving. The great thing about this is that not every student learns the same, so if the student does not understand the way one user is explaining it the student may simply look up another video.

Teachers today could make up their own videos for students. There will always be those days when a student is out for health reasons that may take up to one or more days. It is difficult for a student to come back and catch up especially if something new was taught and the teacher cannot simply reteach the lesson when the student returns. Even if the teacher does a short 5-10 minute video on the lesson, it is much better than the student having nothing to refer to for help. The other great thing about doing this is the video could also help students that do not take great notes to refer to as well and the video could stay up and help other students from other schools.
There are also fun learning videos that may help students learn in different ways. There are videos that have songs and short stories on different topics for math, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, the distance formula, and many more. There are unlimited amounts of videos that may help students learn and remember through creative videos. Students could also be asked to make their own video as a project to apply what they have learned. I believe a great way to ensure students are learning is to have the students explain or apply what they have learned through numerous ways and making a video allows students to apply this skill. Overall, whether to teacher uses the videos to teach or the students use the videos to refer to for help it is a great technology for teaching, learning, and applying math.

Collaboration Canvas

At first selecting a canvas to remix was difficult, because there are so many options and math could go hand and hand with many other content areas. I decided to choose a physics unit plan on Newton’s Laws because students need to have a basic understanding of algebraic expressions and functions in order to apply these laws. I added many things to this unit plan. The first thing I included was the different ways of expressing functions. I then added the mathematical representations of Newton’s Laws, for example for each law I included the expression and graphical representation of each law underneath. I then added two videos that were both about Newton’s Laws and the math in his laws, for example one of the videos included sports scenarios with some examples that expressed his laws and were solved through plugging in these values into the variables. I did not want to remove anything from the original canvas, because everything was also related to math. Math and physics collaborate very well together in general, so both canvas fit very well together. I believe that these lessons go very well together and support each other perfectly.

URL: http://www.play.annenberginnovationlab.org/play2.0/challenge.php?idChallenge=2589&mode=view#network6