Originally posted to Moodle Sunday Night_Copied and Pasted Tuesday...
A little late in getting to our first assignment but better late than never. I am a high school math teacher that wants to continue his education and keep learning how to infuse technology into my classroom. In addition, I want to get an idea of how the future of my profession might look in 5-10 years. I already see some virtual learning options being implemented at the school I teach at now.
I formerly taught in NYC (for 6 years) which is how I became involved with Teachers College but now live in RI, so I already am taking advantage of online learning to keep some continuity in my professional development. The online course I took at TC was Computers and Problems Solving which basically focused on Web 2.0 tools. What I liked about it was being exposed to some tools I could use in my classroom. I experimented with google docs, wikis, Flickr, and Webspiration. It was nice to gain some exposure, however, I sometimes find it a little frustrating to "experiment" with new tools that may or may not be commonly used or transferable to my profession (or may become out of fashion in a year or so). Most of the tools we did use could be applicable to the high school community (my students) but I still find technology roadblocks in my school and a lack of time to efficiently implement the tools while meeting other curriculum demands.
I also found the "collaboration" in that course to be very poorly defined and ineffective. There needs to be some very clear norms/expectations in any online learning environment. I hope this course can help define some new paradigms that are useful for us and for a high school or other k-12 learning community.
I also took 2 online courses to learn Geometer's SketchPad. An awesome technology tool for teaching Geometry. This was more of a "product" course where I just had to independently complete assignments each week. It was agressive but productive and I found the assignments really helped direct my learning and I got just enough feedback to focus my independent learning.
Looking forward to the course.
Gus Steppen
Hello Gus,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Jung. This is my second semester at TC in the Computing in Education program.
It's a pleasure to meet a fellow math teacher. I've also been teaching high school math for the last 7 years. I'm not sure about you, but I've had quite a difficult time using technology in my classrooms. I used to teach math courses from Algebra to Calculus, but have mainly stuck with SAT math the last couple of years and have enjoyed teaching it the most. Do you currently use technology in your classroom? If so, in what capacities? You also wrote that you were given online training to use Geometer's Sketchpad... Is there a website you could recommend for such training? I see that many math teachers use Geometer's Sketchpad. How do you like it? In any case, thanks for taking the time to read my post and I appreciate any and all suggestions and advice. I look forward to learning from you and everyone else in this course.