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!