Summary: What was our tech all about?

[Maria Droujkova]

This is another end-of-semester summary for the open course  http://p2pu.org/en/groups/ed218-developing-mathematics-the-early-years/ It expands on the saying, "The medium is the message"  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message 

Every week, there was a networking assignment for connecting with colleagues in current online communities. Most other assignments also involved several computer tools each. 

What were our main media and what were these media's messages?

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P2PU open course platform: You are peers in a community that includes novices and advanced professionals. You have the power to change how you learn. You are a part of an open, large network of learners beyond your class - and the network will persist after the class ends.

Email groups (Google and Yahoo): You can form gated communities for more secluded, private and controlled learning experiences. You are welcome in lively math ed groups.

Webinars: You can closely communicate with colleagues from anywhere in the world. You can organize online conferences. Your voice can be heard. You can collaborate live. Math collaboration needs visual live communication, not just voice, text and pictures.

Wikipedia: Articles come from people like you. 100+ million of editing hours over 10+ years have not yet managed to describe all the major content in your field, mathematics education. 

YouTube: You can record and share your mathematical processes. Math needs videos, because it's a process, not a collection of artifacts. Math is beautiful. You can share little snippets of math beauty casually. 

Twitter:  You can closely communicate with colleagues from anywhere in the world. You can join an open flow of short messages about a focused topic during scheduled chats or conferences that have a Twitter back channel.

Facebook: You can mix professional and personal networks. You can casually like ("Like") a mathematical project or community. There is much serendipity and content discovery in a network with only 2-3 degrees of separation.

Blogs: You are an author: you can publish essays, videos and other substantial content pieces. You can communicate with other math authors if you only dedicate long enough time to their content and yours. 

Screencasts: You can record and share your mathematical processes. You can easily blend the physical world (your voice) and virtual worlds (screens you capture). 

Scratch: You can program. You can design games and interactives. Programming means mathematics.

GeoGebra: You can model mathematics. Algebra and geometry, and possibly other branches of mathematics, are inseparable. You can reason and do math in visual representations, without going through words, formulas or tables.

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As I estimated in the previous summary, participants suggested about 90% of the course syllabus, by topic. In contrast, me (the professor) chose all the technology. Why? Largely because the technology is not the direct focus of this course, so I did not want it to be a primary focus of attention. The message is that there are many tools to use as needed. We can pick up new tools without much fuss, in minutes - unless it's a major new area of expertise (like programming). For tools in new areas, we will have to invest hours rather than minutes in learning the tool, but it's still doable.

One exception to professor-driven tech was the request, from multiple participants, to have asynchronous options for networking in addition to synchronous, live options such as webinars. The need and desire to fully control the working schedule is very strong. Also, students commented on emotional barriers to live communication. In the future, much more scaffolding will be necessary to support live networking.

There was another reason I did not try to crowd-source choices in technology: protecting participants from intimidation. From past experiences, I knew that most people don't feel they have enough overarching expertise in technology to evaluate tools. Everybody believes they know enough about elementary mathematics education to pick and choose curricular topics. The belief is useful in math ed peer courses: you can ask for opinions and content, and you shall receive them. Not so with technology. Many people are quite hesitant to judge tech! Next time, I want to try an assignment where people claim and research technologies and platforms from a very large list of options. This may convince people they are at least as qualified to evaluate tech as they are to evaluate education.

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Here are some short stories made of comments from course participants. They illustrate the general points summarized above. 

Sandra

When I first saw that we would be discussing modern math, I was unsure what that meant. It seemed to me that unlike English that is alive and evolving every year, math seemed unchanged. After attending #mathchats on Twitter, I see that there is as much debate in the math world as there is in the world of languages. The ideas aren’t as old as Pythagoras, and they have changed and are changing. There is active debate over seemingly many issues in the math world, and it seems to be a very active, inspired community.

Digital storytelling is an obvious tool for language arts and social science departments, but I would not have thought to use it in a math course.  What a great idea, though! (...) When I looked for my required video for the task, I found a story made be students on Youtube, and it was obvious that they were motivated and took the assignment seriously but had fun.  I thought it was fabulous to combine something creative, fun, and digital with math.

I was very intimidated by the introductions of some of our classmates. The backgrounds and credentials of some were very impressive, and coming at this from outside of the math field made me apprehensive; however, I learned that whether you are an English teacher or a math teacher, all educators have the same goal:  educating students. So, even though I may not have had much to add to the math concept discussions on Twitter, I could add my perspectives as an educator. This taught me that, despite being in another department, networking could be really beneficial with everyone in a school.

I also learned that I enjoy using technology and am far more comfortable than I realized—even when it is a program that works with an intimidating subject.  When asked to create using Scratch, I never thought that I wouldn’t be able to do it.  I knew that if I played around, I would see similarities with other programs I know and would make my way through it.

It isn’t a specific person, place, or thing, but this course has helped me get over my reluctance to join online communities. I have always been reluctant to participate in discussions that involved registering as part of the process. I have protected my digital privacy and limited my digital footprint as much as possible. Not only do I feel safer registering as myself, but I have gained some ideas for registering in a way to still protect my privacy.

Laura

I never would have imagined how many teacher resources are available online! I always assumed there would be lesson plans and maybe articles, but there are multiple live, thinking communities of math teachers out there! This group on P2PU is one such example. When math teachers and experts get together, the results are fantastic. Interacting with some of the math professionals over this semester has made me think critically about various topics, and gave me a taste of online networking. Now, if I'm struggling with teaching a concept in math, I know there are supportive communities online!

I've also learned that I benefit from collaboration, and have a beginning set of skills to use in the teaching profession. I enjoy interacting with fellow teachers, and have an interesting perspective. Like Sandra, I was intimidated at first that so many of the participants in this course were experts in math and hosting entire websites and blogs. They all seemed so advanced! Yet, there's no shame in admitting what you don't know and learning from those who do. Plus, I was able to hold my own in most math-based conversations. 

Open Education Week really changed my opinion on OERs. Attending webinars was quite beneficial, as I was able to hear a real perspective on the topic of available resources. As a student, I was appalled that the textbook companies made so much money selling material that deserves to be free. As a teacher, I was intrigued by the idea of opening these resources, allowing both students and teachers the opportunity to learn without having monetary limits.

I'm very glad to be involved in the Living Math Forum group on Yahoo. There's a great community that knows so much about math instruction! A lot of them are well-versed in the different programs that kids could use for math instruction, and everyone was so friendly! I think it was more helpful for me to use an online forum, as opposed to commenting on random blogs I found. I don't think I got many replies for my comments, and I think it's difficult to connect based on a one time interaction. I also really enjoyed using the Webinars! Because of time constraints, I wasn't really able to attend many, but I liked the ones I did attend! I enjoyed being able to talk to people in real time. The internet has gotten us to a point in communication where emails and comments make real time talk nearly impossible. It was nice to just sit down and talk with actual experts! There are so many people who want to share what they know and learn from others.

Carolyn

I have learned so much about blogs and webinars and even twitter from this class. I have never taken an online course before and I wasn't sure what to expect. Even more so, I would have never expected to learn so much more than math from this course. Coming into the course I always thought I was tech savy, but really I can just use my computer for Facebook and checking my e-mail. The world of blogs never interested me, basically because I never took the time to look at any of them. However this course, for lack of a better word, forced me into blogs and I couldn't be more grateful. I have really began reading different blogs, not all related to math, but I am appreciative for this new world this course has opened up for me.

Before this class I hadn't had much experience with just about any of the thigns we have used this semester. Each week I was challenged to use something new, including Twitter. Twitter is one thing that I found out can be more benefcial than at first sight. I always thought Twitter was updates on celebrity's lives, which it still is, but it is also so much more. Even beyond this class I have learned about Twitter and its benefits. 

I think Geogebra could be a great tool used in the classroom. With much of the new technology that is being created all the time it is hard to comb through all of it and find some that is worth using in the classroom. In my exploration of the different projects I found just as many science projects as math. Although the two are closely related, I haven't seen many sites like this one that facilitate both. Therefore I think that as a teacher you could use Geogebra as a math tool, but also for science lessons in chemistry or electricity or anything that needs to be graphed or illustrated mathematically.

I "liked" lets play math on Facebook for this week's task. When given the choices of different forums to join I immediately went to this one because I am all about incorporating playing into anything, especially math. However, play is not what I gravitated to first on this page. I scrolled through a few posts and found this article from The Huffington Post called Khan Academy: Good Bad or Ugly? I had heard of Kahn Academy before but never really looked into it. Therefore I pulled up their site and did a little digging...

This class has definitely opened the door of educational technology to me. Anything that is out there I am open to exploring and reviewing for legitimacy.

Amanda

I have learned several things about myself in this class. One thing I learned is that I wasn't as technological and "modern" as I thought I was. I thought being modern just meant using computers and smart boards - I didn't realize all the programs that were out there that could benefit the student and teacher equally. For example, Scratch is really awesome and I think could be used in any math class for any age. GeoGebra is another PLN that I never knew about prior to this class that is really useful for students and teachers. I guess I always had a more "old fashioned" approach to math and didn't realize it.

Another thing that I learned is how reliant I am on hearing other people's opinions and ideas. Not only did this class open my eyes to blogs, but it also gave me the opportunity to interact with people directly through Twitter chats and enabled me to hear my fellow students' ideas and opinions. I used to be more of an independant worker but this class helped me realize how useful it is to exchange ideas with other people.

I also LOVED Scratch. While it was difficult to understand at first, I quickly caught on. After watching tutorials made by our class and on youtube, I learned all that Scratch is capable of. You can make diagrams, graphs, videos, and a lot more using Scratch, and they all can be brought back to math. I think Scratch is a great mathematical tool for students because it is unique and challenging enough to be appealing to students of various ages and it has so many capabilities."

Keisha: "Just like SandyG mentioned P2PU is a community that I will always use as a tool in the future. Even though I've never met anyone in this community I've learned so much from everybody. Everybody has come here with some fantastic ideas and great information for us to use. It's cool to communicate with people with the same dreams as me. I love how we can share our opinions, struggles, and findings with each other without feeling like we're being judged. I like how we created a safe enviornment to learn in. I can tell that everyone will do great things as teachers.

I explored MoMath for this task and really like this page. I see why so many people like this facebok page. I found a post about math paper and when I opened I came across something wonderful. This website shows so many ways we can apply math to our everyday lives and have fun with it. It looks like every Monday the author posts a new way we can use math. There’s one I found to be funny which is make a mathematical haircut.  I can see a little kid now looking at this and wanting a mathematical haircut hahaha. http://momath.org/home/math-monday-make-a-mathematical-haircut/

I don't know of any other tool that I can use because I haven't been a part of any other community. But I will surely explore more places to expand my resources. This picture I found on the link made me realize that I use a lot of other search engines that can be useful for teaching and as my PLN. I usually use them for leisure and other stuff. I never thought of taking advantage of them for teaching and learning. Now I have plenty of tools to use."

Kathy

I hope that when "crunch-time" is past, I will have more time to further explore some of these PLNs we've learned about, and participated in this semester.  At the P2PU online presentation I became curious about other courses offered via P2PU.  I was really inspired by some of what their speakers had to say. 

I was also glad to be introduced to "Let's Play Math" on Facebook which is a great resource for teachers, and future reachers, like myself. 

"Scratch" was also really fascinating to me.  Although it's not exactly a personal learning network, MIT does have their own community where "Scratch" enthusiasts create and share projects and interact with eachother. My husband and I plan on getting more creative with Scratch this summer, and teaching my son what we have learned.  It will be a great activity for the whole family.

Yesterday I took part in Twitter's #mathchat.  I generally like chatroom formats, however this was a very fast moving forum. I found it rather difficult keeping up with the conversation because when talking about subjects such as math, I need time to think and reflect.  That said, I do think Twitter Chats are a great resource, and I plan on exploring other discussions done in this format. Although the participants had differing opinions, it was quite obvious that they were all very serious about mathematics, and sincere in their desire to be effective in the classroom.  I believe whether through play, experimentation, games, charts, or question-and-answer, the most important aspect of teaching is the underlying desire to impart knowledge successfully."

Carolyn L.

This was my first online class so it was very eye opening how much you can do on here! Of course being 20 in this age I use the computer constantly and use it to look up information and do work, but I never thought of really creating aids to help in math learning. Scratch was really cool and I think if I practiced more with GeoGebra I could get a lot of use out of that as well.

I really enjoyed participating in webinars and other networking choices. I never used webinars before but I see that they are a great way to communicate new and upcoming ideas and to just staying on top of things. At first I was nervous doing these live chats but after a while I started becoming more comfortable. It is a good way to meet new people as well and to make connections throughout the world. Making these connections give us a much bigger perspective of the world around us which is something that is important to me. I was also introduced to a lot of webinars that deal with education which is great and something I can continue to follow for years!

I liked the fact that we got to help create a Wikipedia page. In my summer intern I was supposed to help create a page for a company product and I was totally lost but when I go back this summer I will be able to do a much better job. I never got into wiki before this because as a student my teachers said never to use it and that the information isn’t always reliable. This could be true but it is a great starting point to learn basic information. I think as teacher I might be able to create some kind of project for my own students to do which would really help them to see how these kinds of sites work.

I wrote a few comments on the Facebook page math circles. It was really interesting and something I hadn’t really heard of before. From reading and commenting on this site I am thinking of finding or creating my own math circle. I am going to do more research on it because I am still not sure exactly how it works but the concept seems basic enough!

I think the main thing I learned is how much I actually use the computer to do work. It was my first online class and obviously you are going to be using internet for it but I never realized how much I depend on it. I really don’t know what I would do without it.

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Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
919-388-1721

Make math your own, to make your own math