After the 21st Century Tools class last week, I had high hopes for

Teaching Math in the 21st Century. I did come away with some things I can

use in my classroom, and I am happy about that. However, I do have to say

that this course has left me questioning what teaching math in the 21st

century really should be. What many people have interpreted as teaching

our subject matter in the 21st century really doesn’t strike me as being 21st

century. But more on that shortly.

First, I would like to review what I did get out of the course. Randy’s

Fee presentation on Monday about how he uses the SMART Board and

SMART Notebook software was very enlightening. Although I have seen the

SMART Board used before, I have not seen how the software works. I will be

getting a SMART Board in my classroom in the fall and although I have the

software on my computer to learn, I have not had the opportunity to do it

yet. I really appreciated Randy’s willingness to share what has worked for

him as well as how to do different things in the software. I really am looking

forward to using the software and I feel a lot more confident about playing

around with it on my own this summer.

I also will definitely use his OGT review idea. I had already been

contemplating doing something similar next year for OGT practice and I had

not had time to formally map it out. I really like the excel spreadsheet he

presented and I can see how it will work rather nicely for all of my classes

that need to prepare for the OGT. I can also see using it for ACT/SAT prep

and if I were teaching AP Calculus, it could be used to help prepare the

students for that as well.

Another really useful application is GeoGebra. I had been exposed to

GeoGebra in a previous course, but it was really just introduced to us and we

were given very little training in it. We had done some work with it as far as

different geometry concepts for the OGT, but that was it. I really liked the

tutorial that was provided, especially the third practice involving the slope of

a tangent line to a curve for Calculus. I will definitely use that activity with

my Calculus students in the future. It was nice to see how GeoGebra could

be used in other ways, not just geometry applications.

I also appreciated that you brought in Amanda Gray from SmartEd. I

had seen that the SMART Notebook software had math tools but did not have

time to play with them before my 30 day trial was up. Just like with Randy

Fee’s presentation, it was good to see how to use the different tools by

someone who knew how to use them properly. I had seen the Turning

Technology clickers used before quite some time ago and it was good to

have a refresher on them as well as seeing the SMART clickers. I am

definitely hunting them down when I get to school next because I am pretty

sure that no one else is using them. I would definitely like to see some

examples in the future of how to use them in the math classroom beyond

review and assessment if there are other ways.

So, I did leave this course with some useful material for my classroom.

However, it also left me with some serious questions. At the beginning of

the course, the 4 C’s were brought to our attention: Critical Thinking and
Problem Solving, Creativity and innovation, Communication, and

Collaboration. As I watched Randy’s presentation on Monday and reflected

on it later, the thought I had was that most of what he showed us pretty

much looks like what I do in my classroom now, except that it’s on the

SMART Board and he’s added some sound, video, and some manipulatives

on the computer screen. How is that really different from what I am doing

now? Does putting the presentation on the technology really make it 21st

Century? All that really seemed different to me was the manner of

presentation. Maybe that’s innovative, but that’s about all I was able to

come up with out of the 4 C’s. I guess I expected to see different ways of

presenting the material or different ways of designing the lesson.

I also expected to see more integration of the Web 2.0 resources we

talked about in the 21st Century Tools course last week. Although I learned a

lot from the course, I left wanting much more. The hardest part for me in

attending classes that are not specific to mathematics is finding examples

that work in math. Mathematics seems to be its own animal when it comes to

teaching it and the technology applications seem to be the same way. There

were other Web 2.0 applications that were in the handout that we didn’t get

to and I am curious about how they could be used. For as many times as I

have seen the Ohio RC and the Ohio Success website, one of the things I

have wondered about is how to use the rich problems that you find on these

websites.

For having taught 18 years, I still very much feel like the only way I
know how to teach is the way I was taught. When I was in college and

preparing to be a teacher, we didn’t get into many of the things that are

considered to be good ways to teach today (of course, that was 20 years

ago). It would be nice to see how to use some of the new ideas in a math

classroom. As I have heard about Marzano and other new education buzz

words, most of the reading I have found has had very few math examples. I

would like to see how others have actually used these ideas in a math

classroom, not just see what the author believes is a good way to use the

idea.

Over the course of the last four days, I have learned that I learn best

from other math teachers. I really don’t know who in our area is taking these

ideas (Marzano, Standards Based Grading, Assessment for Learning, etc.)

and using them effectively in the classroom. I do know that it would be great

to hear and see from someone who is actually applying these ideas

successfully and that it would help me be a better teacher in the 21st

Century.

**I hope that the ideas I presented in my reflection help give you some other

ideas as far as what professional development will be helpful. I very much

feel that I needed to offer some other possibilities since I didn’t feel that I got

as much out of the course as I hoped. To be honest, I am sure there are

other ideas along what I suggested that could be useful too. Part of my issue
at the moment is that I don’t know what is out there and I am looking for

exposure to as much as possible so I can find something that works. Thanks

for taking the time to put the course together and thanks for reading this!

--Lisa