Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Do you ever feel as though you are behind the technology power curve as a teacher?

After reading Partnership for 21st Century Skills, I felt like the world has past me by, even though I consider myself tech-savvy and technology-wise up-to-date because of an Associate Degree in Media Integration Technology, a certified computer technicial, twenty-three years of military service working with communication computers and teaching computer technology in a middle school.

Somehing that I would like to do is visit the School of the Future (SOF) in New York City.

I would like to learn more about the demographics of the student body and teachers.
Don't get me wrong, I think the SOF is a great idea and I certainly believe that America needs to change the way we teach our youth.

But, in the back of my mind, I keep thinking about demographics because it is so important toward student success - parent/teacher communications and support.

With that said, the video by Ben Mook caught my attention because of the real-life activity.  I have taught slope in my math class but I never thought about using stairs as a manipulative. Since our school doesn't have stairs, that's probably why I did not think of using them. We do have bleachers which can serve the same purpose.

The use of the stairs was matched with the NY City compliant codes. Why didn't I think of something like that?

Another eye opener was the iGeneration phrase and using voice threads to produce authentic student work. This (i) seems to be the indicator that separates digital learners from the rest of us.

I am glad to read that P21 has not abandoned the 3 R's, but expanded the skill set to include the 4C's, communications, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.

If you are familiar with Gaggle, which is a program similar to our course where students can blog, collaborate, use a homework drop box, and other features. I started to teach students how to use it, and most of them seem to accept this technology as a normal part of life.
This brings me to teacher professional development. The P21 e-paper addresses pre-service teacher training in information and communications technology and "just in time" preparation for in-service teachers.
The problem is the lack of trainers to teach in-service teachers.
At my school we have teachers that have taught for forty years and their sentiment is that a chalk board was good enough for them and it's good enough for their students.

I have spoken with my colleagues and some of them - in mathematics - think that the use of technology is hampering the development of student math skills because they rely on a calculator to do the simplest task. In other words, students feel that, "why should I memorize the multiplication table when I can use a calculator"?
And yes, to some degree, I agree we my math colleagues that students have become too dependent on technology to the point that they cannot solve problems without technology.

There are some things where rote memory is a good thing.

Here is an example that some of you may have experienced, a student needs to call their parents, so they come to you and ask for their parents phone number. I ask the student, "why don't you know your parents number", and they reply, " It's in my cell phone and I don't have my phone with me". This is not an isolated event.

I remember growing up, and knowing your street address, telephone number and how to tell time on an analog clock were taught in school at the elementary level. 
I have "digital natives" that cannot tell time on an analog clock that does not have the numbers.

                        What are the implications of the digital age?
         In summary,  my theory is that humans and machines are becoming integrated to the point that humans will not be able to function without a machine. When the power goes off in the classroom, what do you do when your lesson is totally dependent on electronics? I have witness some teachers stop teaching, because they had no back-up plan. And students do the same thing, "I could not do my homework because my computer crashed and I could not access the on-line math book". My reply is, "why didn't you use the written textbook that I gave you?"
Students look at me as if I said something offensive.

What my students want to blog about.

To find enlightenment I asked my students what they would like to blog about.

To get their feed back, I went to their School Gaggle accounts and started a blog. I asked two questions: the first is:

"I am interested in knowing what students would enjoy doing in math. Please provide your comments".

Since I am the only teacher at my school with a student blog, I had no one to offer advice.

But, my students have given me what I was looking for, and that is 'What do they think is important'.

 The downside is that I missed my suspense for the Master's Course, but I feel that what I did is relevant and a real life application of technology.

Here are a few replies:  (please excuse the spelling)

I would enjoy doing angles and adding fractions. I like math because Math helps you with money and shopping. Math is in everything you do like running miles, weghing things and building things.


 i sorta like math. But its sometimes hard. I like working on the computer and what we are working on now!

In math I like the games on the computer that we play . I don't really like all the work that we have to do tho . I like the subject (GCF) we are working on now . It is really easy .

Well math has always been my favorite subject. So learning more stuff just makes it better. sometimes some things are kinda hard. But knowing I have a teacher who can explain it very well makes it better. I also love the computer math games you allow us to play. Those are my favorite(:

After reading student's blog replies, I feel better about what I have been doing in class and decided to combine my teaching of the TI-84 Calculator with blogging. I did this with the following question.

The second question is:
 Suppose your calculator will not allow you to enter three numbers into the GCD function. How could you still use your calculator to find the GCF of the three following numbers: 4,896; 2,364; and 656? EXPLAIN your strategy and why it works.

Students loved this question because they were able to blog their ideas and develop the best way to explain their strategy.

Here are a few replies: (please excuse the spelling)

well to being with it would be hard beacuse u can not do 3 numbver on the computer so i woukld just do it on papper and have 3 cirlces and use the rules for the gcf and go with that and try to find my answerWell I would first multiply any possible ways to get the GCD. Then I would  put the to numbers in the caculator and use the way that mr. Garret showed us in class. After finding the GCDs I would add the other number to the GCD on the caculator and press enter and then GCDs should pop up.
The following is one of my favorite replies.

The first thing I would do is take the two biggest numbers and find the GCF then with the GCF of those two numbers , I would take the last number left and with find the GCF of all of the numbers .

Struggling to find math blogging ideas.

I look at other peoples blogs and try to find a common ground for having a math blog, but my mind is thinking about numbers and how do you get students to write about them.

Stuck.

Changing how our brains are wired.

I have a theory about today's children. That is, their brains are being wired differently than past generations, because of technology.
They seem to see the world in terms of push a button and "things" happen. It doesn't seem to matter what is happening behind the button, just that they are getting the desired results.
The only people that understand what is happening behind the buttons are engineers, scientist or technologist. So, there are two sets of people, users (common people without degrees in technology, but they know what buttons to push), and developers (skilled people with the knowledge and or degrees who can bring about advancements in technology.
With each advancement comes a new "button" that users must understand what the effect will be. Therefore, they (the users) are considered to be tech savvy.
Just my theory.