Interactive Math Classroom Adds Up to Success

by Jeffrey Branzburg - from Teaching and Learning magazine online, September 29, 2008.

In a field in which women have traditionally been underrepresented, teacher Kate Beal of St. Joe's Academy, an all girls' secondary school in Baton Rouge, wanted to amp up excitement about math. By adding a computer monitoring system and tablet PCs, not only did her students get excited about the technology, but test scores improved.

Each Toshiba Tablet PC has monitoring software from DyKnow. This allows Beal to monitor, control, and share every student tablet, all from her tablet PC.

"Each student is able to watch, interact and learn from the rest of the class in real time," says Beal. "This is incredible to watch and done with almost no effort on my part."

That convenience factor is no small perk to Beal's busy schedule. She can also use the software to poll students to make sure they understand the math concepts being reviewed.

"The ability to create an interactive lesson each day is amazing," says Beal. "It is almost like a one-to-one environment for each student, because of the interaction between my tablet and their tablet, but at the same time it is cooperative learning amongst the students because they can all participate and work together too."

Beal simply uploads her lesson as a Powerpoint presentation through the interactive software. Opening the file replays second for second what Beal says in class and reenacts what occurred on each slide, stroke for stroke. Students can add notes or comments directly into the file, which can be saved for later review.

"The ability to save notes is one of the favorite features of my students," says Beal. "This also allows the absent student, or the student that didn't comprehend the material the first time, to playback the information as it was presented in class. The absent student can also log on [to Dyknow] and use the Internet to join class from any location."

Beal uses the "anonymous" capability to blindly broadcast one student's work for the entire class. This protects the privacy of the student and allows Beal to "catch" struggling students in their shining moments. Seeing their work offered as an example of success creates an instant confidence boost.

"From their own seat, and without the distraction of students moving around the classroom, I can have one student or all of my students working on their personal tablet, which in turn shows up on everybody's tablet. It incorporates all of the aspects of teaching that are effective and also enjoyable and meaningful to the students."

Adding the interactive spice of new technology to a traditional subject piques the girls' interest and shows in their test scores. In Beal's math class, keeping them connected, both mentally and technologically, equals success.

Distributive Collaborative Educational Research

This is from an article that I am current working on in collaboration with Dr. Melissa Pierson and Dr. Mary Friend.

Researchers in the field of technology and teacher education have been charged with designing inquiry methods that allow us to speak broadly about the impact of technology in the preparation of teachers – beyond that which is possible through the use of localized case studies and small-scale investigations alone. Since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the reality of early 21st century educational funding requirements is hinged on research that can meet the “Gold Standard” that show rigorous evidence of improvement with controlled and randomized methods ("Coalition for evidence-based policy", 2003). To meet this requirement, studies not only need a sufficiently robust number of participants, but it is also common for federal grant proposals to require evidence of real partnerships.
Such a task is daunting. Common research convention dictates that the only way to effectively compare disparate data in a rigorous fashion is to quantify it, yet the belief of many educational researchers is that analyzing only quantifiable data would mean sacrificing rich, localized, qualitative case data.

Distributed, collaborative research is a subset of the larger body of online-facilitated scholarly work, which also includes such activities as utilizing online databases and collaboratively writing online journals. The collaborative nature of the Internet, pushed to new and exciting depths by the easy access options afforded by Web 2.0 tools, make it an obvious area for scholarly exploration across disciplines.

Two years ago participants in this DCRM model were among the early adopters of wikis as collaborative tools, in many cases using wikis for the first time. Innovation diffusion theory research has consistently found that technical compatibility, technical complexity, and relative advantage (perceived need) are important antecedents to the adoption of innovations (Bradford and Florin, 2003; Crum et. al., 1996). The bestselling business book Wikinomics, (Tapscott, D. & Williams, A., 2005; 2007) has heighten the perceived need for collaboration as a competitive advantage for all types of organizations, including education.
Also in the intervening time, newly emerging collaborative tools such as Google Docs, Adobe Buzzword and Microsoft Office Live, are lowering both technical compatibility and technical compatibility of users operating on different computer platforms and skill levels. For example, the recently released version 9.0 of Adobe Acrobat Pro, provides the capacity to turn multiple application and formatted documents including web site, wikis, excel files, word documents, powerpoint documents, images and multimedia into single pdf files or a portfolio of related research files that can be shared and freely edited by all who have the freely downloadable Acrobat reader on their computing devices. In addition, Acrobat Pro 9.0 has included a build in link to Adobe Connect, to allow for spontaneous or planned live video conferencing discussion and editing of the collaborative prepared research document. For example, an excel data file of collected research data by a principal at one school could be up loaded and combined with similar data files from other schools in a different state during a live video Connect session, that might also include researchers with different kinds of interest and expertise from different universities who could use a statistical application such as SPSS or SAS to analyze and collaboratively discuss the results. Each participant could then share in the reporting process regardless of the platform or the application used in the process. Using one of these collaborative document tools, such Acrobat Pro 9.0, the combined work could be combined and collaboratively edited into one document ready for publication submission. A You Tube video found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuhAokemuH8 shows that collaborative scientific and technical article authoring in the field of engineering and medical research is already been organized that could serve to further guide the development of an DCRM model . Also a new social networking creation tool found at http://www.ning.com might also be used to aid in the process of building a DCRM community that would permit members to learn quickly about each others.

This lull in the progression of the DCRM model— perhaps the reaching of a plateau—presents an ideal opportunity for enticing others into the process. So, as a conclusion, we invite our colleagues in technology and teacher education to think, inquire, communicate, and otherwise get involved with working together for the common good. The groundwork is laid, a structure exists . . . now, how next might we collaborate to demonstrate sound educational research for the better understanding of the use of technology in teacher education in ways that might even influence the larger field of educational research?

Building E-Portfolios

By Sascha Zuger from http://www.techlearning.com/content/ednews/index.php#article3 for 8/18/08.

Slowly your classroom fills with a sea of unfamiliar young faces. The first day of school always poses challenges, but this year is different. You call on a boy in the front row and ask his name. Scanning your list of notes for a "Robert Harris," you smile, asking if he returned to the Mediterranean this summer. He glances up with a look of wonder and returns your smile. Instant connection! All thanks to Robert's ePortfolio, shared by his last teacher and filled with seaside watercolors of his grandparent's Costa del Sol home.

Tech-using educators know the many benefits of ePortfolios. They help get a handle on kids' interests, difficulties, and strengths. Techno-loving student thrive on the real-time interaction. Administrators like that ePortfolios record student progress digitally, making a convenient shared resource between students, parents, and other teachers.

Tech-using educators know the many benefits of ePortfolios. They help get a handle on kids' interests, difficulties, and strengths. Techno-loving student thrive on the real-time interaction. Administrators like that ePortfolios record student progress digitally, making a convenient shared resource between students, parents, and other teachers.

Graphic arts and animation are obvious fodder for ePortfolios. However, teachers across the country also motivate kids through traditional subjects, such as math and reading, by creatively adapting ePortfolios in their classrooms. Here is a sampling of these innovative programs.

ADDING UP TO SUCCESS

Palie Cantu of the Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, in Bellevue, WA, noticed a recurring issue with her middle school math students. "They just weren't using the paper space needed to work through the problems in an organized manner," says Cantu. Trying to cram scribbles of calculations onto one sheet of paper resulted in careless mistakes that had little to do with the student's understanding of the subject.

Palie used Forest Ridge's one-to-one program to create an interactive environment. Cantu e-mailed a "problem of the week," chatted the kids through confusion with audio-accompanied graphic files, and supported vacationing students through distance learning.

Cantu recognized the benefit of the electronic progress report these actions naturally created. Then she decided to take it one step further. "I chose this year to have my 5th, 6th, and 7th grade math classes create an ePortfolio by using Microsoft OneNote 2007," says Cantu. "OneNote 2007 helps my students keep their work organized and helps me keep track of their progress. It also supports a paperless learning environment.

"Finding new ways to use technology led to new ways to learn," says Cantu. "I would choose one student each session to be in charge of creating notes for the lesson." This ensured students actively listened and digested the information.

Parent-teacher conferences became a breeze. Cantu simply pulled up the ePortfolio, pointed out the problems when and where they occurred, and devised a cohesive plan with parents to correct the issues. Cantu hopes to create a system of ePortfolio sharing between teachers to ease transition years.

Understanding Digital Kids:

From Understanding Digital Kids, Looking Inside the Brains of DNs

Ian Jukes, Inforsavy Group, 2008

The cover article of a recent issue of Scientific American Mind is titled The Teen Brain. In this article there are some photographs of people of different generations doing specific mental tasks. What the article and the research say is that if you were to take a digital electronic scan of our parents’ brains doing a specific mental process and compare it to a digital electronic scan of ours doing the same mental process, we would quickly see that we use SLIGHTLY different neural pathways to process, retain and use the same information than our parents. But in the same way, if we were to take a digital electronic scan of our brains doing a specific mental process and compare them to those of digital children’ brains doing the same process, we would find that they use significantly different neural pathways to take in, process and store the same information we do. We see this particularly in the area at the back of the brain known as the visual cortex.
The Effect Of Digital Bombardment Let’s consider the effect of digital bombardment on the visual cortex. Consider that the average video game takes about 40 hours to play, the complexity of the puzzles and objectives growing steadily over time as the game progresses. A study by the University of Rochester found that visual processing dramatically increases with as little of 10 hours of gameplay. According to a recent 3M study, if you were to present 100 photographs to people of different generations, Digital Natives , those who have grown up in this new digital landscape, would be able to recall about 90% of the images. People of our generations, the Digital Immigrants , would be able to recall only about 60% of those same images. And people from our parents’ generations, the ones affectionately know as the Digital Dinosaurs who grew up in a primarily audio and text-based world would only be able to recall about 10% of those same images. Further, research from 3M says that the eye processes and interprets images 60,000 times faster than it does words. This is because the brain is much more suited to processing visual information than anything else. The reason is because nerve cells devoted to visual processing account for about 30% of the brain’s cortex, compared to only 8% for touch and 3% for hearing. It’s completely natural that today’s students might be far more inclined toward visual processing than text processing. Do you think that this might hold any implications for the way they learn most effectively? Further this study says that because Digital Natives think graphically, the eyes of Digital Natives move differently than the eyes of Digital Immigrants when they reading materials.
Digital Readers
The eyes of older generations unconsciously find intersection about 1/3 of the way down the page and 1/3 of the way in from the left side - the Greeks called this intersection the Golden Mean - and then we read in what’s called a Z curve. A complex Z curve if there’s lots of information, and a simple Z curve if there’s only a small amount of information.
But research tells us that the eyes of Digital Natives first skim the bottom and edges before they read the page in what’s called an F-pattern. This is a series of thermographic prints developed at Kent State University for a company called SirsiDynix from Toronto. A heat map tracks eye movement of students in different reading configurations and then sums the records. The brighter the color the more the reader has focused on the information in that area.
As you can see here, digital natives read in what’s called an F-Pattern. Typically they will unconsciously ignore the right side and bottom half of the page. Unless they are highly motivated Digital Natives typically tend to unconsciously ignore the right side and bottom half of the page and will only read content on the right side and bottom of the page if they are highly motivated to do so. Do you think this holds any implications for designing engaging reading materials?
Color of Text
And while Digital Immigrants typically find it distracting to read text of different colors, specific colors attract and repel Digital Natives when they’re reading. Blood red or pink (depending on gender) draws their attention first, followed by neon green and burnt orange are skimmed - and unless highly motivated, black is ignored completely. Do you think this finding might have any implications for strategies we might want to develop to teaching of reading?
Both of these findings become even more significant because according to respected writer Eric Jensen and others, at least 87% of students in any given classroom are NOT auditory or text-based learners. Increasingly, because of digital bombardment, because they think graphically, because they’ve grown up in the new digital landscape, they’re either visual or visual kinesthetic learners. They’re visual kinesthetic not because they’re trying to drive us crazy, but because they’ve grown up that way in the new digital landscape. They’re Digital Natives wired for multimedia. Yet as Jensen points out, despite this knowledge, at least 85% of the questions on test and state exams continue to be based primarily on text.
How Much Digital Bombardment?
According to Prensky, by the time they’re 21, digital kids will have played more than 10,000 hours of video games, sent and received 250,000 emails and text/instant messages, spent 10,000 hours talking on phones, watched more than 20,000 hours TV and 500,000 commercials. Almost none of these are experiences our parents or we had while we were growing up.
Because, as Prensky also points out, at the same time these digital kids will have spent less than 9,000 hours attending school - less than 4000 hours reading books - and much of that time is spent unengaged or under-engaged. Do you think these experiences, do you think this digital bombardment might have any impact on the way they think - on the way they learn – on the way the view the world –on what engages them?
Many of the recent findings from the neurosciences validate what we already knew from psychological sciences. Things such as social learning theories, the need for context and relevance, the need to make connections to older learning, high challenge, low –threat environments and so on.
However, some of the research has also exposed some widely held assumptions, myths, and simplistic beliefs about learning that can impede learning or that are just plain wrong – things such as gender stereotyping, left-and right-brain learning, enriched environments in early childhood, fixed intelligence, IQ as the measure of all intelligence, that all learner learn in the same way and or that memory fades as we age.

The English Sky is Falling

by Gwen Solomon, Director TechLEARNING.com

As a former English teacher, I sympathize with my colleagues today who are confronted by texting language in their students’ papers and reports. It’s a fact of life that young people spend their time using Instant Messaging and texting. And educators worry about the carry-over into the formal writing students do. Yet a recent Pew study, Writing, Technology and Teens, found that they know the difference and 86% of teens believe that good writing ability is an important component of guaranteeing success later in life.

While 85% of youth ages 12-17 engage at least occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication, which includes text messaging, sending email or instant messages, or posting comments on social networking sites, 60% of teens do not think of these electronic texts as writing.

And many of us over the age of 30 don’t understand the lingo. So Terry Freedman’s blog C? I tld u so, didn't I? txtN isn't so bad aftr ll, unl ur /:-), makes the case that languages change over time, civilization hasn't collapsed as a result, and different English-speaking countries manage to understand each other reasonably well. So what’s the big deal?

So what do think?

Make Students Info Literate

By Judy Salpeter

May 22, 2008
URL: http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196605232
from Technology & Learning
There remains a larger challenge for Publish Postschools: how to develop a new generation of knowledgeable digital citizens who can operate in the unregulated online world.

Podcast: NBC News Launches Learning/Networking/Engagement Platform

Adam Jones, NBC News - Senior Vice President of Network Development and CFO is interview in this interesting podcast on a great new learning too.

iCue is a combination of journalists, media specialists and learning professionals working in this group. And, NBC has partnered with MIT on developing the design of this next generational learning model. The ability of the learner being able to manipulate and contextualize video content with the platform is impressive.

iCue takes "e-learning" a huge step forward, with the introduction of small video chunks (from the NBC News archives), social networking and gaming. They blend these learning and engagement components in new ways, which will form the basis of new pedagogical approaches.

iCue is a free service and is starting with content/courses aimed at Advanced Placement classes for high school students. In the future, the platform could be ideal for learning design for a wider range of learners and content.

Go to http://www.masieweb.com/nbcicue for the Podcast and links to the service.