Observations on Learning

In considering the one on one aspect of my student teaching my cooperating teacher considered a non native English speaker, U. as a candidate for me.  He felt that U. was struggling and that it was due to language issues.  After reviewing some of her homework I realized she was struggling in the class.  I choose her as one of my subjects to observe.  To contrast my observations of U. I also choose to observe a native English speaker, M, who through her homework was showing success in the class.  My assumption was that both girls were similarly capable of math but that language had created a barrier for U. that didnot exist for M.  I think if the roles were reversed M. would be struggling in class.  This is a vast oversimplification of both girls but it did focus my attention during my observations of both.  I was always thinking about language as I observed both girls.
M.’s attention during class was almost exclusively on the screen at the front of the class where work was being explained. Or it was on her own work and notes or the work of others tablemates during group work.  I would say this represented 90% of where her gaze laid, with another 8% on the teacher and a last 2% on other things, like other students, the windows, or the clock and these were usually in the form of quick glances.  Her gaze was steady, as she maintained a rhythm of raising and lowering her eyes from her notes to the screen.  When she looked at her notes it was almost exclusively to write more, she almost never just looked at them.  As the teacher moved through the figures on a table I could almost see her eyes movements mirroring the movement of his pencil on the screen.
As the teacher conducted a lesson or reviewed problems he would address the class with questions.  Typically about half the class answers questions.  M. would almost always answer.  There were two forms the delivery of her answers could take.  She might state her answer with and interrogatory tone, posing her answer as a question, in a voice just loud enough for the teacher to hear but few else.  Another possibility was her clearly stating her answer, with slightly more volume than her interrogative style of response.  The two responses seemed to indicate two different comfort levels with the answers she was offering.  When stating an answer with the interrogatory style a sense of doubt about the response’s correctness seemed to be intoned.
Occasionally M. would ask a question.  When she would ask a question she would look into the teacher’s eyes when stating it and then look at either the screen or her notes as he explained it.  Clarifications of the question and the response might or might not follow but she would end the exchange when asked if the explanation satisfied her by making eye contact with the teacher and saying “OK” while nodding her head in assent.  M. used English in her moment to moment participation in the class, she answered questions out loud, and she posed questions as well.  Language was simply not an issue for her in class.
U. had a different style in the classroom.  During lessons she would maintain attention to the screen and to her notes but when looking at her notes she was not always writing.  Sometimes she would be studying her notes without writing anything, with her gaze going back and forth from her notes to the screen and back.  She probably took as many notes as M.  but spent a lot more time looking at her notes.  Her gaze was mostly upon the screen or her notes or the work the work of others tablemates during group work.  She spent very little time with her gaze anywhere else.
U. did not speak in class.  When the teacher asked the class a question she never vocalized an answer, she also never asked questions.  Yet she was not afraid to talk or timid in one on one conversation as evidenced daily when she would speak in her native tongue to another student of her nationality.  She was also willing to ask questions one on one, as I observed one day after school when she came in to ask for some clarification of some homework problems.  Her questions related to word problems which my cooperating teacher had suspected might be a source of difficulty for her.  She would give the problem number and he would walk through it step by step with her acknowledging each step as he asked if she understood.  When he would complete the problem and ask if she understood she would say “Thank you.”
What I really want to do is start a conversation with her over her next homework and try to get a sense of how fluent she is in English.  I think that could lead me to some strategies for her approaching problems, especially word problems, that might help her in class.

Observations on Learning

Today marks five days in the classroom with students.  We have three sections of Algebra 2 and two sections of AP Statistics.  My activities in the class have involved posting descriptions of the day’s class, and uploading files, to “The Source”, the Seattle school district’s site which allows students and parents to check on what is happening in class.  I also have been learning all the classroom related computer programs involving taking attendance, recording grades, and the smart board.  While I regularly help students one on one, most often with calculators, I have gotten my toes wet in two related areas: checking and reviewing homework.  This has been confined to the Algebra classes. The way we check homework is to go around the class while the students are working on a warm up problem and look over the assigned problems.  We are not really checking the work in detail but we are looking for a few correct answers and certainly an indication that the problems were tried.  My cooperating teacher (CT) and I have been handing this task off to each other and I really enjoy it.  The most valuable part of it is that it forces me to learn names as I say every name directly to the student to try to cement it in my head.  It is slowly teaching me all the names.  My CT will go over the warm up problem while I check homework. 

In considering what observations tell me whether students are learning, checking the homework ranks high for me so far.  After checking several student homework’s I can see what the students have learned and what they have not learned.  This can be really helpful if I get up and review some of the homework which is what we do after the warm up problem has been explained.  One day I reviewed a problem without having checked a single homework.  I was at a loss as to whether the students had learned anything from the homework or my explanation.  I was in front of a sea of faces I could not read as hard as I tried.  When I asked if they got it or not I got no response.  My CT made the point that specific questions to specific students would give me a better sense of what they understood.  With the benefit of having seen some of the homeworks I can address specific problems I saw directly to the students.  This seems to get conversation flowing and I get a better sense of what they have learned and what they need more help with.

The biggest concept of the last few days in Algebra has concerned the role of u_(n-1) in recursive formulas.  With the introduction of u_(n-1)  there was some bewilderment as to what it was all about but as the days have progressed I have observed students using u_(n-1) in their speech in a way that indicates fluency; they are equating it with the prior term.  This has been the strongest evidence I have that new concepts, which did not immediately make sense, are being learned.  Tomorrow is our first investigation: modeling the height of a bouncing ball with a sequence.

Executive summary on practitioner based article.

For my practitioner based article I am reading an article about cell phone use in the classroom. Gabcast is one of the technologies that cellphones can use to publish to the net. Here is my first experiment with Gabcast (click on the small play button on the Gabcast logo to hear the embedded audio if you click the link you will go to my Gabcast channel):
Gabcast! beduc566 #1

Weekly blog from November 19th

I saw some pretty cool probes for the ti calculators. The motion detector was the coolest. I wish I had had it earlier in the semester in physics. I would have tried to capture the essence of the slope of a distance vs. time graph in my motion. The ti technology seemed pertinent in a way other technologies have not. Since these calculators will be in the classroom any help in using them to help bring alive the math or science they are used for is welcome.
Is is a conspiracy that ti calculators are so clunky? It is a little like using dos. I later thought of the possibility of getting the calculator to calculate your velocity and graph that against time. I might be wrong but I suspect the calculator could not do that. I think ti will have a day of reckoning when pda's and laptops get close to the $100.00 mark. Running those probes through a computer with fathom would be sweet. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth I learned I will need to become familiar with all the ti probes and have ways of using them creatively.
I want to take the time to look into all the probes and perhaps those usb hook ups can be used with a pc.
To beat a dead horse I think the motion detector added a new dimension to the often dimensionless Cartesian coordinate graph. The motion detector and Robin's demo were a power full use of technology.

Weekly blog from November 12th

I have talked about this before but I think that we need to agree on what we are trying to accomplish in education. Video games are great ways to learn I don't deny that, but are they in line to allow learning what we consider knowledge that schools should be teaching. The argument I hear is that currently schools don't even teach what an adult needs to know in the world. The world seems to be functioning just fine with people who supposedly haven't been taught what they need to know. Do we really need to teach it then? Is it possible that one just learns it and that if schools take care of the critical thinking most people can learn the specifics of our brave new world.
If education should prepare people for what they are going to be doing day to day we should throw out history and start teaching driving, I do a solid hour of that every day. We don't because we assume that people will learn to drive as part of growing up, if they need it they will learn it. A lot of technology is that way too. If it is so ubiquitous in society and we should be teaching it, how did all the people who are currently using (and improving it) learn it, apparently not in the technology phobic schools.
What I learned is that there do not seem to be games that can teach academic subjects that match the level that games designed for entertainment. I worry that the video game apologists think that just saying that what the engaging video games teach is good does not address any common values on what should be taught in schools and that is where we really need to start.
I found out that Supercharged!, the software that taught unintuitive theories of physics is not available, it was developed on a non PC system at MIT. None of the other games developed by the same lab seem to be available. So what is it going to take to develop games that can address academic subject and achieve some sort of interest, be truly endogenous. It seems a huge hurdle to overcome.
The promise of Supercharged! intrigued me. If such games can be developed and can clarify and maintain interest in subject that loose learners in traditional teaching settings I say bring them on. I am no programmer so it is going to take some inspiration on someones part to create these games

Given the view of schooling in the readings for this week, which technologies do you think are most likely to be taken up in schools? Why? Which techn

Technologies most likely to be taken up by schools will be technologies that schools can afford and are reliable.
The technologies that push my thinking of teaching and learning are technologies that can teach subjects that when presented in traditional ways are not effectively taught to some students. An obvious model is the ability to model in 3-d concepts that are difficult to visualize in 2-d. There is software that can manipulate on a level that concrete models cannot and this can really illustrate concepts that otherwise might never make sense for certain students.
An example that immediately comes to mind is Sketchpad and the dynamaps that show dynamically the relationship between independent and dependent variables in a function. The ability of software to illustrate in such a unique way intrigues me. While math and science seem great subjects in which to apply such such technology I would like to think that social sciences could benefit from software applications that can illustrate as well.
I think inexpensive reliable technology that can help illustrate difficult concepts are here and cost will continue to go down while choices of software will increase and grow more sophisticated.

Weekly blog from November 5th

I learned two words I still have trouble pronouncing: Exogenous and Endogenous. These describe two different game types. I and my group who played a video game on a laptop were the only ones in the room who got to experience both types of games. We played Math Blaster and it is exogenous. Repetition of discrete facts (arithmetic) will get you through this game with a little keyboard tapping. I think a session of flash cards with a comedian would be more interesting. How would you make arithmetic into an Endogenous game? I heard a story once of third world children who would help out at their parents' stall at the market, as a byproduct of their having to occasionally run the stall themselves they were really sharp at arithmetic. It would seem that if arithmetic was woven into a game as a real organic tool, not the main attraction, like the third world sales-children you might see a mastery of arithmetic.
My group grew very bored with Math Blaster, we needed an Endogenous game, we watched another group play Spore. Very Endogenous. Tools were offered and could be used creatively. This clearly was the venue for some learning.
As a teacher though I can see why Math Blaster was developed, it is basically flash cards and if it can create interest then it could help in learning arithmetic skills. So how do you create an Endogenous game that can help teach arithmetic. It seemed the answer was Supercharged!, a game developed at MIT to help physics students understand the unintuitive concepts of electromagnetism through a game. It was reviewed as a great prototype of an Endogenous game and as a current physics student I was very interested. Supercharged! does not seem to exist, searches find articles that cross reference each other but never a way to get the game, no download no sales. Clearly there is more to this story. Why is this game that supposedly was developed five years ago nowhere? Is there more to making a endogenous game that teaches a specific academic subject? This will be my search. I want to find such a game and see if it is possible. Stay tuned.