Make Mistakes - Do More Math

Making Technology a Tool

What teacher hasn't had to worry about how technology is being used in their classroom? We worry about students surfing Facebook, using calculators for basic addition, and even have to think about the capabilities of a student's glasses. So what do we do about technology in the classroom?

Recently I came together with a group of math educators and discussed an article about technology use in a spiritual environment. The article we discussed can be found here. It's well worth a read for any teacher; not just for those who teach in a church environment, but for anyone in a classroom.

Summary

The article describes a few different approaches that teachers can take to improve classes by using technology. Teachers are encouraged to use technology in a variety of righteous ways, both personally and as a teacher. In order to do so, we must be familiar with the technology and make it a part of our lessons. The article also points out that our students are more likely to use their technology in productive ways when we justify rules about technology in ways that do not critique the technology itself but instead focus on the reasoning behind the rules. However, the article does make certain to point out that technology cannot and should not replace face to face interaction between teacher and student.

As we discussed the article in our group, while we discussed the highlights of each section we seemed to focus on how to set rules and the process that we need to go through to learn about the technology. When we set rules in our classroom we should have justifiable reasons for setting those rules. Trying to force our students to obey an arbitrary rule may only encourage our students to rebel. This is especially true with technology since our students are likely to be more familiar with the technology than we are. At the same time, as teachers we need to do what we can to be familiar with technology and the tools available to us. By doing so we can improve our teaching and supplement our interactions with technology.

Critique

During our discussion, I realized how important it is that we keep abreast of the technology. It was pointed out that many years ago teachers were worried about students using erasers. Apparently teachers thought that writing would degrade because students could now erase their mistakes. This was clearly a mistake, pencils and erasers are extremely useful in the classroom. We must not make the same mistake in our classrooms. Instead of fighting a fight we can't win, we should figure out how to use new technologies to help our students learn. 

Connections

Something that was very interesting to me about the article and discussion was the importance of setting principle-based expectations. In my mind, I see students being much more willing to follow the rules of our classroom when they know the reasons behind them. This is a big part of adolescence, and our students want to be respected and treated as adults. Setting rules and explaining the "why" behind them allows our students to have autonomy in their behavior. This is something that is key to my personal teaching philosophy, and something that I wish was the case when I was a student.

When I was in high school, I was very involved in learning about technology. I actually explored how to use a graphing calculator and computers to generate and analyze prime numbers (see Golbach's Conjecture). None of my teachers knew how to program with a calculator, and I could have used that to do a variety of things. However, because I was so engaged with classes and other explorations with mathematics, I didn't ever make trouble with my knowledge. I believe that it will be the same with my future students if I can help them be engaged in the mathematics. Technology will be a tool for our students instead of a crutch or distraction.