Maps of interactions in Math Classrooms

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The slideshare presentation embedded below posted by Maria Andersen, Director of Learning & Innovation at Area9 on Oct 02, 2010 summarizes a research paper from Vilma Mesa titled «Student Participation in Mathematics Lessons Taught by Seven Successful Community College Instructors» (see page 64).

What it caught my attention was how easy is to demonstrate that:

  • 1. Almost all the interaction is instructor-to-student (not student-to-student).
  • 2. There are many students in every classroom that are never involved in an interaction.

Probably none of these assertions are a surprise for a teacher. The interesting thing is that the Vilma Mesa’s map corresponds to traditional math classrooms without technologies for education. Maria Andersen uses that map to point out how little interaction among students actually exists in traditional classrooms. She says in another presentation that:

The classroom is highly interactive for the teacher and engaging for all the about 3 students.

On the her hand Cathy Woods, Educator at Secondary School, posted a comment to say that the most questions (interactions) looked like to happen in traditional blackboard classrooms and not in ICT equipped classrooms.

I do believe that it’s easier to improve and extent the level of interaction in lessons with ICT (devices and applications) than without them. In other words, the best planned and carefully designed  traditional lesson will never allow the level of synchronous interactions that can be accomplished with some apps. For example:

  1. Ask all your students to write in 2-3 minutes a question about the lesson topic.
  2. Show a question or a survey on a IWB or on a screen and ask students to vote for or choose the correct options.
  3. Ask your students to reply to the question previously posted by any classmate sitting down around them
  4. Ask them to complete a short and quick quiz at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a lesson.

All of these examples can be carried out with a cheap kit:

  • WiFi connection
  • An opensource LMS as Moodle
  • A cheap projector in front of the students (or a more expensive IWB)
  • and inviting your students to bring their own devices to interact during the lessons.
  • Not less important is to give some ‘extra credit’ for those who do their jobs.

Administrar la configuración del Adobe Flash Player de tu ordenador remotamente

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Adobe_Flash_Player_Setting_PanelNo se si os ha pasado que al cargar una página con contenido en Flash y con un tamaño grande, como por ejemplo alguna presentación en Prezi o Glogster, os aparece una mensaje pidiendo autorización para aumentar el espacio de almacenamiento local disponible. El problema es que el cuadro de diálogo se quedaba congelado sobre el contenido flash impidiendo su correcta visualización.

En teoría ese cuadro de diálogo es el mismo que voluntariamente podemos activar al pulsar el boton derecho del ratón sobre un unen vídeo de YouTube u otro objeto flash. Pero, por alguna razón no me funcionaba como se esperaba en Firefox y en ninguna de las dos versiones de Linux (Debian y Ubuntu) que utilizo.

Al final la solución fue ir a esta página en la web de Adobe: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html y desde allí modificar los valores necesarios.

Es posible que, antes de asignar nuevos límites de almacenamiento local, debamos borrar los valores que por defecto se hayan asignado a algunos sitios WEB desde donde ya hayamos descargado anteriormente ficheros en flash.

Correlations among problem-solving and PISA performance in maths, science and reading

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Reviewing the last PISA report (2014) about «Are 15-year-olds creative problem-solvers?» available at European Schoolnet Academy (PDF) site, I found this figure:

Correlations among maths, science and reading skills found in PISA analysis

Correlations among maths, science and reading skills found in PISA analysis

It shows the latent correlation between performance in Mathematics, Reading, Science and Problem-solving. Probably nothing unexpected in the overall data but I’d like to highlight, in my modest opinion, two noticeable correlations:

  1. Problem-solving skills correlate almost equally with Science (0.78) than with Reading (0.75) skills.
  2. Science and Reading correlate higher (0.88) that Maths and Problem-solving (0.81).

Quite often I heard colleagues arguing that Problem-solving performance mainly depends on Maths and Science Skills. Although that assertion is indisputable, it’s also a partial truth because Reading skills score almost equally higher than Science. On the other hand, we (as STEM teachers) need to understand that our contribution to student’s achievements in Reading skills is greater than we could suspect.

Either way, what in my opinion all these data are saying is that, at least Math and Science teachers, must work together as a team. I’m not talking about Science or Maths departments where teacher meet to coordinate vertical syllabus and common strategies. I’m talking about STEM teachers who teach the same courses. I don’t know how teacher’s meetings are planned in other countries but the usual in my country are:

  • Department meetings: Foreign languages department, Science department, Maths department,..
  • Course meetings: All teachers teaching the same course meet to talk about common issues
  • Tutor meetings: In some Schools tutors meet to discuss about behaviour, performance, relation with families, etc.

I’m not trying neither to underestimate these meetings nor to add more meetings to the already existent.  What I’m trying to say is that I’m missing time to share with other STEM teachers teaching the same courses/classrooms. In my opinion that time will bring more benefits in terms of teacher effectiveness and student’s performance. In other words and simpifying, one plus one would be more than two.

Some years ago I had the chance to visit a Finish School where the Math and Science teacher was the same person. That teacher told me that it was the usual in lower secondary schools in Finland. I think that their approach is quite sensible because in certain courses, there are strong links between contents from both subjects.

I know that organising a whole schedule for schools and assigning teachers to subjects and courses is more difficult than it usually looks like. Matching subjects with teacher’s certifications is another issue which can make more difficult to try this approach. Although some innovative  schools already found a way to sort it out I believe that the best would be if policy-makers facilitate it. For example, through a common syllabus for STEM subjects and new frameworks for allowing STEM teachers to teach as a team in every classroom.

I anticipate huge changes in the future of the Education for all levels. I can’t say how long will it take to change all which need to be changed or adapted. But I suspect that interdisciplinary teaching as it was described in this post will be one item in the list of future changes.

Neuroscience findings about learning and the usage of digital technologies

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As part of the week 2 module «Your future classroom – towards a realistic vision» of the course Future Classroom Scenarios (#FCSCourse), I found an interesting video where Dr Paul Howard Jones talks about What is the Internet Doing to our Brains?

I found the whole video very interesting because Dr. Paul tried to explain scientifically what are the effects on brains of using digital technologies. Neuroscience has developed so much in the last decades and some of its findings are key to understand how do we actually learn. But now, it’s even more important than before to know what happens (or can happen) in our brain as a consequence of being hugely exposed to a fascinating range of e-devices and a broad connectivity. We live surrounded by smartphones, tablets, consoles and traditional computers all connected to internet and constantly sharing data. Schools and educational authorities all over the world are trying to get on this train desperately and quite often, chaotically .

If you are concerned about video games effects on children, isolation or learning achievements derived from using digital technologies I think you should invest 26:29 min on watching this video:

Student works deserve an equivalent Teacher feedback

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Today I rescued this picture from old annotations to reinforce, once again, the power of teacher feedback. I titled this short post as «Student works deserve an equivalent Teacher feeback«. A good complementary picture could be another one to insist on giving feedback as soon as possible to be more effective.

Author: Ken Whytock (https://www.flickr.com/photos/7815007@N07/):
«The equal size arrows represent the equal importance of both, for no learning occurs without feedback«.
CC BY-NC 2.0

21st Century Skills

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Roger Blamire, Senior Advisor to European Schoolnet, provides in a 9:01min video a clear introduction to what is commonly referred to as 21st Century Skills.

Roger defined in 2014 Skills as expertise or the ability to do something well. Paul Kirschner would define skill  as the ability to successfully carry out a procedure, so Paul argues that procedural domain-based knowledge is essential. On the other hand, Roger defined Competences are a combination of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that can be applied effectively to a particular domain.

The 8 EU Key Competences for lifelong learning are:

  1. Communication in the mother tongue
  2. Communication in foreign languages
  3. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology
  4. Digital competences
  5. Learn to learn
  6. Social and civic competences
  7. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship
  8. Cultural awareness and expression

However the idea of teaching to develop the «21st Century Skills» (at least as it is presented by the OECD) is been largely debated in recent years. To contrast, it is worth to watch how Paul Kirschner debunks with strong and solid arguments and examples the idea of the «21st Century Skills» in this video recorded in February 2019.