Posts Tagged ‘teach math’

learning educational technology

Three lessons from rigorous research on education technology

Hope seen in “personalized” software for math

http://hechingerreport.org/three-lessons-rigorous-research-education-technology/

an August 2017 working paper, “Education Technology: An Evidence-Based Review,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research with clear tables on which technology improves learning and which doesn’t.

1. Computers and internet access alone don’t boost learning

Handing out laptops, providing high-speed internet access or buying most other kinds of hardware doesn’t on its own boost academic outcomes. The research shows that student achievement doesn’t rise when kids are using computers more, and it sometimes decreases.

2. Some math software shows promise

math programs such as SimCalc and ASSISTments. One popular program, DreamBox, showed small gains for students, as well. Only one piece of software that taught reading, Intelligent Tutoring for the Structure Strategy (ITSS), showed promise, suggesting that it is possible to create good educational software outside of math, but it’s a lot harder.

One commonality of the software that seems to work is that it somehow “personalizes” instruction. Sometimes students start with a pre-test so the computer can determine what they don’t know and then sends each student the right lessons, or a series of worksheet problems, to help fill in the gaps. Other times, the computer ascertains a student’s gaps as he works through problems and makes mistakes, giving personalized feedback. Teachers also get data reports to help pinpoint where students are struggling.

3. Cheap can be effective 

a study in San Francisco where texts reminded mothers to read to their preschoolers. That boosted children’s literacy scores.

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more on educational technology in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=education+technology

storytelling and stem

Could Storytelling Be the Secret Sauce to STEM Education?

Could Storytelling Be the Secret Sauce to STEM Education?

Using Ursula Le Guin short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,”  has allowed Fruchter to make his computer science math classes entirely project-based, which in turn draws the interest of kids who might not have otherwise liked computer programming.

teaching computer programming with fiction into a curriculum called StoryCode. He classifies STEM fiction into three categories: explicit, science fiction and implicit STEM texts.

“When you can call a line of code a spell, then you are getting somewhere,” Fruchter said. After all, isn’t computer code basically modern magic?

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Ursula K. Le Guin on Art, Storytelling, and the Power of Language to Transform and Redeem

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/01/30/ursula-k-le-guin-walking-on-the-water/
The paradox, of course, is that because our notion of history is rooted in the written record, words are both our instrument of truth and our weapon of distortion. We use them both to reveal and to conceal — a duality which Hannah Arendt so memorably dissected in her meditation on lying in politics.

Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want, too. If we never find our experience described in poetry or stories, we assume that our experience is insignificant.

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more on storytelling and education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=storytelling