Week 8 Readings

Obviously technology can be beneficial in an educational context or this class would not exist. For each educational challenge we encounter, we can look to technology for a solution. The difficulty, though, lies in choosing the right technology to integrate into the right situation. It is important to note that new technology is not always the answer. It could be something that already exists, implemented in a different way. Also, there may be more than one way to realize a solution to the educational challenge using technology. This seems trivial, but just as students learn differently, and teachers each teach in a distinct manner, technology must be integrated in a unique way for every setting. This all depends on the knowledge of both the instructor and the students about the technological tool as well as the effort put forth into integrating it as a part of the learning process, not just another way to regurgitate the same information.

If I were to use PowerPoint to give my lecture as opposed to handwritten notes on an overhead projector, it could potentially be the same exact lesson -with a few variables (in handwriting and pace of the lecture). The content is the same and the presentation of the content is the same. The key to technology is creating a new perspective on the material in order for the students to develop a deeper understanding, not to simply reiterate the same information typed as opposed to hand written.

Hooper describes the difference between using technology in education and educational technology. Technology in education is just the same information presented in similar manner using a technological tool - such as a tv or overhead projector, whereas an educational technology is pulling beneficial attributes from technologies that may or may not exist in order to create the best possible learning environment for each individual student. The idea is that no two students are the same. Each learn in a unique style; so in order to appeal to each student, the teacher must present the information from multiple perspectives. Each manner in which ideas are presented will bring a different level of understanding of the material to each student.

Just as students are introduced to division - knowingly or not - they learn two types of division: quotative and partitive. Partitive division is when the number of groups is known but the size of each group is unknown whereas quotative division is when the size of each group is known and the number of groups is the unknown. That's basically just a fancy way of saying that 24 can be broken up into four groups with six in each group, or groups of six, in which case there are four. Either way there are four groups of six that compose the 24 units and it really depends on how you visualize partitions.

Similarly, each student learns differently, and sees things from a different perspective. In my eyes, inquiry based learning is exponentially beneficial to each student because of this. It gives each student, or group of students, an opportunity to use their personal perspective as a tool to solve the problem at hand. It allows for students to see problems in different ways and take different paths to reach the same conclusions - or maybe different conclusions the teacher couldn't have even dreamed of.

The Four Eyes Lab

Obviously the Four Eyes lab was really cool to see. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to see the projects they've been working on. Personally, I liked the demonstration upstairs with the augmented reality in-flight simulator more than the Allosphere, probably contrary to most. That kind of thing could be implemented to online classes or kind of real time online lectures or office hours. I imagine having a split screen with a video call office hour and the other is whatever presentation being given that can be altered and edited in real time on each student's screen.

 The allosphere, while definitely cool and useful for medical advancements quite honestly made me dizzy being inside the brain so I didn't pay too much attention. Unfortunately the technology is also way too expensive to implement in a classroom setting. Being 3D also makes it difficult to demonstrate other than through modeling - at least until 3D tv's become more popular. 

The Solution

After our in-class brainstorming session and countless hours talking to myself trying to come up with ideas suitable for high school students to practice their arithmetic, I narrowed it down to two pretty good ones (I think at least). 

The first is a game - it could be computer based or ipod/ipad/mobile device oriented. Since many high school students listen to a lot of dub step/trance/techno, I would create a dub step math game. In this game students could create their own song or replicate mashups where each note or sound is represented by a number and they would have to find some way to add/subtract/multiply/divide to get that number where each time the arithmetic problems are different.

If the student was replicating the song, the software would give them equations to solve whereas if they were creating their own, they would have to create the equations and then have a classmate solve them in order to listen to their mashup.

The second idea I had was to replace CAPTCHA phrases required with simple arithmetic problems. You could program the browsers so that each time the students wish to change websites, they had to solve an arithmetic problem. I think it would annoy the students enough that they might actually memorize their times tables to be able to surf the web faster. Also, there could be some way to integrate this into the wifi system that the students are allowed to connect to similar to the way they are able to prohibit access to certain websites. Worse case scenario some tech-y student develops a program to override the new arithmetic CAPTCHAs, in which case - more power to you!

Parallel Prototyping

It seems obvious that parallel prototyping would yield better results in an experiment like the one from the article simply because the designer has more tools to choose from when creating his/her final project. The three designs were critiqued together thus giving the designer the opportunity to pull from each design the aspects that he/she likes the most. It provides and opportunity to optimize the final product because there is more to choose from. However, the difficulty with the parallel prototyping lies in the designer's ability to come up with the first three prototypes.

My struggle in this experiment would lie in the first step of parallel prototyping- coming up with three distinct designs. My tendencies, I think out of pure laziness, is to come up with one idea and run with it - until I hit a wall. Then I look to other sources for inspiration. I fear that should I have three ideas to chose from, I won't be able to chose. I wasn't able to narrow down a challenge for our last assignment. Who knows? It seems like leaving my challenge open ended may have been beneficial. Here's to accidental parallel prototyping.

I, and I am sure many others, have definitely experienced the frustration that goes along with serial prototyping. In serial prototyping, you put so much work into tweaking and perfecting one idea that it seems like a waste to start over, even if starting over would produce better results and sometimes even be more efficient. One thing that stood out to me in the analysis was how the serial prototypers took the feedback negatively. I think it is because they became attached to their one particular design. They spent the entire allotted 2+ hours modifying and perfecting their one design. Their design became a part of them, something personal. That's why they had the defensive reaction to criticism because it wasn't just a critique of their work, but a question of their ability. 

Week 3 Readings

I have relatively recently been formally introduced to inquiry based learning and it has moved me. The high school students I have worked with struggle to make logical conclusions without guidance. For the most part, I believe it to be a confidence issue, but it also has to do with the fact that inquiry is not common in high school math. These high school freshmen, who are barely getting through Algebra 1 have never been good at math. They've been told their whole lives they were struggling, whether by comparing themselves to other peers'progress, grades, test scores or even themselves or educators.

About a month ago, my mentor teacher gave them a lesson on finding the point of intersection of two lines by graphing. We had spent the previous 2-3 weeks (10-15 hours of class time + homework) on coordinate planes, plotting points and drawing lines. She asked them to plot two different lines on two different graphs, which the students did with no questions asked. Then, on the third problem, she asked them to plot those same two lines on ONE coordinate plane together and see where they intersect graphically. Arms went up in the air, productivity diminished, and they just quit. As she and I canvassed the room helping students 1 or 2 at a time. Once we got them to graph the two lines, I had them circle the point of intersection. They simply could not see that the procedure for graphing the point of intersection was the same as 1 and 2 put together. They knew how to graph points, and then a line, but had absolutely no concept of what that represented. They lacked either the desire or the ability to think critically.

Just as Patrick highlighted in our first meeting, "all learning is emotional". Squire introduces a way to implement an activity the in which students will engage emotionally. In this particular activity, the students were able to enhance their critical thinking, deductive reasoning and decision making skills as well as social skills like communication and cooperation. These are all skills the students can utilize within a traditional classroom environment. Using augmented reality or other technologies to implement unique inquiry based activities can be a tremendous advantage to the students' ability to conceptualize. However, these activities are time consuming not just to realize with students, but also for the teacher to plan. They also require a great amount of facilitation by the instructor, but this integration needs to be properly thought out. We would not only need to change our K-12 curriculum but also our TEP teacher training. Given the way our K-12 education system is set up today, these activities would need to be carefully selected and executed in order to maximize learning opportunities.