TPCK and SAMR: Models for Enhancing Tech Integration

IB Americas has developed a set of backward curriculum maps in order to help high schools increase participation and success in the Diploma Programme by strengthening the articulation between the MYP and Diploma Programme. These maps define some of the skills necessary for success on Diploma assessments, trace these skills back through grade 9 (level four of the MYP), present assessment and scaffolding ideas, and offer examples of MYP units that can help prepare students for the Diploma.

The real question is whether a secondary stream would be a learning advantage to your students. To find out, I checked with a couple of experienced backchannel wranglers to find out what worked well in class and what didn't.

Here's a complaint you often hear: We spend a lot of money on education, so why isn't all that money having a better result? It's because we're doing the same thing over and over again. We're holding 40 or 50 million kids prisoner for x hours a week. And the teacher is given a set of rules as to what you're going to say to the students, how you're going to treat them, what you want the output to be, and let no child be left behind. But there's a very narrow set of outcomes. I think you have to open the system to new ideas.

Some nice visuals to explain how to use the Unit Circle.

A simple tool for finding the bearing between two locations in Google Maps. Not perfect, but very simple to use!

An interesting historical use of parabolic dishes.

Finally, any theoretical benefit of practice homework must be weighed against the effect it has on students' interest in learning. If slogging through worksheets dampens one's desire to read or think, surely that wouldn't be worth an incremental improvement in skills. And when an activity feels like drudgery, the quality of learning tends to suffer, too. That so many children regard homework as something to finish as quickly as possible - or even as a significant source of stress -- helps to explain why it appears not to offer any academic advantage even for those who obediently sit down and complete the tasks they've been assigned. All that research showing little value to homework may not be so surprising after all.

A community library of technology tools, lessons, activities, and support materials for teaching and learning mathematics.

Technology Problems of the Week (tPoWs) are freely accessible problem-solving challenges modeled on our Problems of the Week that take advantage of interactive mathematics tools such as Java applets, TI-Nspire™, The Geometer's Sketchpad®, Fathom™, or spreadsheets. Students are invited to use the link "Submit your answer" to share their solutions, and then "self-mentor" using specially designed hints, checks, and suggestions for extensions.

The Math Forum's mission is to provide resources, materials, activities, person-to-person interactions, and educational products and services that enrich and support teaching and learning in an increasingly technological world.

It would be great to get a set of collective resources that can be used. Props to Dan Meyer.

When we teach math we are helping our students establish a framework for interpreting the world. One of the worst ways I know to help them establish that framework is to print an illustration of a real-world scene in a textbook, write in only the relevant measurements, and tell the students in the text of the problem which formula or strategy to apply. This leaves a student helpless and unprepared (in the mathematical, analytical sense) should she ever encounter the world that exists outside the pages of her textbook.