UTS Digital Generation – Danny Mavromatis

I took on writing a Scratch application as my immersion task for Elective ‘E’. To avoid starting from ’scratch’ (is that where the name comes from?) I loaded an existing Maths project (solving quadratic equations) from the collaborative web site and improved it by changing the interface and adding a graph of the parabolic curve.

My fairly modest effort can be found here.

It may be interesting to recount how my efforts went. I am an experienced programmer so it didn’t take long to pick up the basics of how the coding was done and how events were handled in Scratch. The biggest difficulty I had was understanding how the ’sprites’ interacted with the ’stage’. From there things went fairly smoothly. Say about 2 hours all up. Putting in all the changes and additions I wanted took probably about another 8 hours. I would say 90% of that was fiddling with the GUI aspects of the application and the effects I wanted. Only about 10% of the time was actual coding.

Since this was a Maths application, is this something I would give to a Mathematics class? Definitely not, as there is too much superfluous activity and very little in the way of actual learning about mathematics. However, I would certainly consider it (or something similar) for an IST class.

I have just discovered an even better resource here:

Wikipedia selection for schools

“SOS Children UK, in coordination with the Wikimedia Foundation, has released a complete 2008/9 revision of the Wikipedia Selection for Schools, which is perhaps the most successful ‘checked content’ project derived from the English Wikipedia. Previous revisions have been distributed off-line widely across the globe including by the Shuttleworth Foundation to South Africa Schools, by the Hole in the Wall project to rural Indian children and through SOS offices worldwide. The updated selection has the content of a 20 volume encyclopaedia – with 34,500 pictures, 20 million words and articles on more than 5500 topics. This revision, which can be freely downloaded or collected free from SOS Children is selected and organised around the UK National Curriculum and aimed at 8-17 year olds who broadly follow the UK National Curriculum and similar curricula elsewhere in the world.”

This looks like an absolutely fabulous resource to draw upon, especially given that adult topics have been removed making it safe for students. The best place to start is the pictorial subject index. I have had a look at the Maths section and it looks quite good. There are several hundred entries ranging from elementary to advanced. Something for everyone.

It’s probably time for a little rant on my part. I worry about the prospects facing us as teachers in our first year of full-time teaching. It seems to me that the current system of assimilating graduate teachers is inherently flawed and in need of reform. Let me explain why.

We come out of our university training all fired up with a burning desire to avoid direct instruction teaching (yuck!) and put the theories of student-centred learning such as constructivism and discovery based pedagogies into practice. But what are we typically faced with? We will be teaching an average of five classes each day. Every Maths teacher I have spoken to has told me that we will be leaning heavily on textbooks. When you have to prepare lesson plans for five lessons per day together with all the administration matters, preparing assessments and marking, is it reasonable to expect a teacher to produce a great student-centred lesson for every class? Bear in mind that such lessons require a great deal more planning than following a textbook.

On top of all this we are being encouraged to incorporate technology into our lessons to make them more appealing to the ‘digital generation’. We all agree that this would be a good thing, but who will have the time to do the legwork required? The sad truth is that most beginning teachers will resort to teacher-centred instruction with perhaps a smattering of other approaches as time and opportunity permit. What is even sadder is that, in this all-important first year, a pattern will have been established and it will be difficult to break out of it. For many the die will have been cast even when pressures ease in subsequent years (assuming the teacher survives their first year).

A related problem is the reinvention of the wheel that seems to occur throughout the education system. In teaching practice, schools are islands that are cut off from each other. Even within a school each teacher is usually left to their own devices in preparing course work. In my experience I observed very little sharing of lesson resources. This simply has to change in future if we don’t want teachers to end up teaching out of textbooks.

A rethink is sorely needed in the way that new teachers are thrown into the workforce. Obviously mentoring and support will vary from school to school. However, I believe a more consistent approach is necessary. One suggestion I have heard, and with which I agree, is that new teachers should be allocated only a half-workload in their first year. This would certainly enable them to be more courageous and creative with their lesson planning than has to be the case at present.

There is one ray of light in all this gloom that I only just discovered today during the “Portfolio” lecture. Apparently the NSW DET Centre for Learning Innovation (CLI) has been in the process of developing multi-media teaching resources for some time now. Why weren’t we made aware of this in our course earlier in the year? I, for one, could have incorporated some of the content in my lessons during first practicum when I was teaching using an Interactive Whiteboard. My feeling is that such initiatives will be invaluable to teachers in the near future to ease their workload and improve student outcomes as they draw upon such rich resources to formulate lessons.

These are not really specialised e-learning resources as such. However, used wisely, these two relatively recent innovations to the Internet can be invaluable learning aids. As an example, if you went to wikipedia and entered the topic name “Mathematics” the following page would be displayed.

Mathematics

Not only is an interesting history of mathematics provided, but the various fields are presented as separate sub-topics:

• Quantity

• Structure

• Space

• Change

• Foundation and philosophy

• Discrete mathematics

• Applied mathematics

Under the sub-topic of “Space” are links to:

Geometry

Trigonometry

Differential Geometry

Topology

Fractals

It is clear that this can be a wonderful resource to students in doing mathematics assignments or gaining a more complete understanding of mathematical concepts. For teachers, the “External Links” section of each topic usually contains an excellent set of resource links. Sometimes even links to lesson plans for the topic are provided.

In terms of multi-media content, most topics have a number of images on them. Some can also have embedded animations such as:

Sine drawing process

Whilst it is recognised that the level of the material can vary (too advanced or too basic) depending on search being performed, nevertheless this can be an excellent starting point for self-directed research by students.

This is educational software for mathematics that is widely available in Australian schools. I have seen it used in both of my practicum experiences and it seems to be accepted and enjoyed by the students, mainly in years 7 to 9. The software can be used in two ways. The first is that the teacher assigns a task that all students must complete but it can be done at their own pace. This is usually revision on a unit of work and ‘drills’ the students on typical exercise problems the students may encounter. The second mode is that the students can test themselves against other students anywhere in the world at a particular level (age level). There is a time factor involved as to who can complete a series of related problems first. The students seem to particularly like the live ‘play’ mode.

One very good feature of the software is that it provides a help button. If a student is stuck on a problem, they can press the help key and it will then step them through slowly and meticulously on how the problem can be tackled and solved. The software also provides certificates when the user has accumulated certain levels based on a points system. A major plus is that the product is completely web-based and so it can be used at home (as homework) or at school (in a computer laboratory).

I come from a background of having had a long professional career as a software developer which means that I am tech-savvy in most respects. (The use of multi-media might be an exception where I probably haven’t kept up with the latest developments. However, I embrace new technology where I can see it adding something to enrich people’s lives). The Internet is an extremely valuable information resource (Google, news), a convenience (banking, paying bills), and a source of entertainment (Facebook, games).

Having said the above, in my KLA of Mathematics, we have barely touched on the use of digital technology apart from scientific and graphics calculators. The emphasis in our coursework has been on the style of teaching (constructivist – learning mathematically) rather than any technology aids.

In my first practicum, my co-operating teacher used a Smartboard to deliver his content to his class and I did the same. The teacher mailed the lessons to his students to serve as their study notes. Whilst I saw some positives out of this approach such as being able to make the content brighter and more appealing with diagrams and so on, I came to realise that there were also drawbacks. The students did very little writing in class apart from working on exercises and I have concerns about mathematical literacy and the learning and use of a maths vocabulary.

In terms of my next practicum, I have no fixed ideas about strategies to incorporate technology into my lessons. It will very much depend on the resources available at the school and what I may learn from the remainder of this subject. I am open to ideas but I have to be convinced that the use of technology is more than just window dressing, but serves a real purpose in engaging the students and producing better educational outcomes.

Image source http://verovera.edublogs.org/files/2008/06/180.png (no attribution)

The commentary “Building Software Beats Using It” caught my eye as I was looking for articles to read. I was a computer programmer in a previous life and can vouch for the fact that writing games is much more fun (usually) than playing them. At least I found it so.

I have to say though, that whilst I agree in principle with the laudable aims of the article, I find that the claims are somewhat exaggerated. For example, it seems that the students were given four months to think about fractions and design something that would help students in the year one level below them. Four months on a project on fractions is an incredibly long time. What teacher in practice could afford to do this? Something else in the mathematics curriculum would surely suffer.

The other thing that concerns me is the complexity of the task. The students were asked to learn and program in a fairly complex environment using the Logo computer language to facilitate a better understanding of a relatively less complex concept, ie. fractions. That seems slightly self-defeating to me. The students in the lower year were also, on the face of it, doomed to an instructionist approach from a newly developed computer program rather than a constructivist approach. Is that fair?

I worry about the claims made for constructivism. I’m convinced that it is a good method of learning given that enough time were available. However, is it the best ‘bang for the buck’ so to speak given that time is at a premium in most teaching environments? The proponents of constructivism denigrate instructivism but I see a paucity of relevant research indicating that the former is more effective for getting through all the material that a student needs to get through in a particular year.

I know from my own personal experience that if I want to find out more about something, I go and read about it. Google is a great, great resource with Wikipedia a close second. I don’t try and re-invent the wheel by trying to discover the answer for myself, at least not in every instance. Isn’t that an instructionist approach? It would a very rare and exceptional individual who constructed all their knowledge from first principles!

I have just finished watching the two ABC commentaries “Growing up in the digital age” and “Concern over teen Internet habits“. Previously I had read “Want to be my friend? What you need to know about social technologies“, so I thought maybe I should just have a look at how much social networking was occurring between adolescents in my area.

I first went to www.ratemyteacher.com and searched for the high school that my son is attending (year 7). There were only about a dozen entries (one per teacher) in all. Each teacher only had one or two comments and, in general, they were quite short and mostly positive. I then tried the high school at which I did my first practicum and it was a similar story. In summary, there did not seem to be much use of the Internet in this area.

I then logged in to www.facebook.com and searched for my son’s high school under groups. There were a couple of entries with about 50 members each, mostly ex-students or “the class of year xxxx”. Again, there didn’t appear to be much social networking occurring amongst current students.

From my own experience, my son’s main use of the Internet is for online research for assignments, and for playing games such as Runescape with his school friends. Mainly the latter! He has a small circle of boys in his class that he phones, or they phone, so that they can coordinate being online at the same time. They are also starting to explore using IM to avoid making the phone calls.