Final Blog Post

Wow! 18.5 days left and I am ready for summer just as much as my kids are! The past month has been very emotional for me since I have had an ill grandmother who just passed away this past week. It was hard to balance my personal life and wanting to be with my family versus needing to be at school with my kids. I am looking forward to getting back to 'normal' this week after being gone since last Tuesday. Overall, I have learned so much this year and I am relieved that it is about to end since I have many things I want to change and start over for next year. I am excited to start in the fall with a fresh group of students now that I know a little more about what I am doing. Next year will be very different though since our school will have a new principal and vice-principal in the fall. I am excited to be almost finished with my comps paper: I only have the 'data analysis' section left to do before May 14th. Overall, I wish I could have done more with technology but I really didn't have much to work with at all. At the beginning of the year in my instructional technology plan, I talked about our team website and getting students involved with it at home and at school. Students have gotten on the website all through the year to post comments, check homework, search math links, print off pdf files for math games or just make up work in general. I also had a business math class where the students were in charge of picking a stock to check bi-weekly. They accessed this via internet by looking on websites and local newspapers. They were in charge of recording the stock and any increases or decreases in stock prices. They also researched their specific stocks. My business math class also researched chosen careers during our career unit.

The main way I implemented technology into my classroom on a daily basis was by using graphing calculators. I have a set so that each of my students can have one at their own desk. In our algebra unit we took information from graphs and tables and entered the data into the calculators to form equations displaying the data. This was done earlier in the year but was very successful. Learning was active since they were constantly changing one variable of the equation to see how it would change the graph in the calculator. They were able to see how slight changes would make a big difference and also look for patterns in the numbers. The goals for students were to reflect on these changes and patterns and see what new equations they could create for themselves. Since multiple lines could be graphed in the calculator, they could directly compare the process and learning was intentional since they were so curious to see how a number could change the graph. Students could each 'research' their own equations when they were finished with the initial lesson and goal so therefore, students had more freedom when finding answers and setting their personal goals. At the end students had to tell me what the learned and how they learned what they found. I always have students reflect at the end of an investigation and I do believe this helps them tie together what they have just learned. On page 238 and 239 of the text, I believe my students were mostly in the middle-high category. I lead them to do many of these things, but they were doing them well (ex: reflecting, mental models and making meaning, setting own goals, tool use, etc.) Overall, the activity went very well and students learned how to put the numbers and data into the calculator and then check to see what they graphs looked like and how they would change.