Always Time For Technology

            In today's classrooms one question teachers ask themselves when lesson planning is "How can I incorporate technology into my lesson?" There are numerous apps and websites available which can be used to enhance a lesson or for student aid. The challenge for teachers is to explore these methods of technology and decide if they are purposeful towards student learning.

            

       One purpose technology should serve in the classroom is to foster math talk. During our class this week we were working with the website Desmos, more specifically we used the feature Polygraphs. In this feature teachers create a class account and students use their own electronic device to login to the class game. This game is just like an electronic version of the board game Guess Who where students are provided with a grid of different representations and need to guess which picture their classmate has picked. In our case we were working on the quadratics section and were provided with multiple images of parabolas. In order to make an educated guess the students must ask questions (through the app) in order to eliminate the incorrect pictures. This process forced us to practice our math language and knowledge relating to quadratics and translations of parabolas. For example the first question a student may ask "is the parabola concave up?" If the response is yes then the student can eliminate all parabolas facing down. I found the game to be fun, interactive and it tested my math knowledge not only when I was the question person but also as the person answering. 

Class having fun with Headbanz

To compare to a more traditional lesson without the use of technology, we also did an activity called Headbanz. In this activity the teacher presented each of us with an equation written on a card which was attached to a headband. Without looking at our equation we were suppose to wear our headband and ask yes or no questions to our classmates in order to identify our equation. This activity was also excellent for fostering math talk as students needed to clearly explain their thinking in order to describe their equation. Both these games are great for the "Minds On" portion of a lesson as they get the students into the math mindset and prepare them to think critically. I'm sure positives and negatives can be described for both methods however I would not designate one activity to be better than the other since they both accomplish the same goal.  

            Another purpose for technology in the classroom is to make it easier for students to apply their knowledge to real life scenarios. Using Geogebra we were able to overlay a parabola on top of a freeze frame video of a man shooting a basketball towards the net. From the students perspective we were able to see what would happen to our graph as we manipulated different parts of the equation in order to match up with the path of the ball. I enjoyed this activity so much that for my next lesson plan I will have my students find their our picture or video of something that resembles a parabolic curve and have them come up with the equation of the curve using the tools in Geogebra.

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