Half and Half: Managing Technology Use During Math Assessments

I'm just saying....this is new for me.  I have tried it once and would love some feedback on this idea.  

Splitting up the time a student is able to use technology on an assessment is not new.  You have seen it before where you give the first part of the assessment as "No-Technology" or "No Calculator" and the second part of the assessment as "Technology Allowed".   So this idea of giving the whole assessment at once and then splitting up the time half and half for "No Technology" and "Technology Allowed" is new for me.  It accomplished a few goals that I had for it.  Let me tell you how I worked it and then you can give me some feedback on what you think.

1.  Give the whole assessment to the students at the beginning of the class.  (You are not giving a part of the test to be no-technology and part of the test to be technology allowed)  

2.  Do not allow technology for the first half of the assessment.  

3.  Then allow the students to take out their technology to finish their assessment.  

Here are the positives.

1.  Students are usually looking at a problem twice.  

2.  Students are making predictions about the problems without technology and then confirming their predictions with technology.

3.  It affirms the use of mental math.

4.  It forced students to make a plan instead of just guessing with technology.

Negatives

1.  It takes away a really useful mathematical tool for part of the assessment.

2.  Students are a fearful to be without their technology

3.  The traditional problem solving approach is thwarted by not having all the math tools available.

Please give your thoughts and ideas in the comment section.

Getting Rid of "No Calculator" Questions on Math Assessments

I have typically given assessments with both calculator questions and no-calculator questions.  I've reasoned that students ought to know how to do a few things without the use of a calculator.  (maybe we should say technology now instead of a calculator)  Now I've reevaluated my opinion.  I've changed over to the idea that all my questions on any assessment should be allowing the use of technology.  Why?  That is a question I hope to answer for you. 

1.  Change the question if you think they can solve it with technology too easily.  You will find it probably wasn't a good question in the first place.  I like to change my "too easy with technology" questions to be reversed. Example:  Change....Solve x^2-4x-12=0  to be this...Create a quadratic equation to have solutions of x = 6 and x = -2.

2.  Technology is a great way to reinforce answers.  My tests often have this as the directions.  Solve using algebra, and verify your answer using technology.  Justify your work.  Or even simpler, solve in two ways.

3.  No Calculator questions strip the students of their best and most visual resource:  THE GRAPH. What No Calculator questions do is get students to forget that GRAPHING is a GREAT way to solve almost anything.  Don't we want to encourage graphing?  I don't mean graphing by hand either.  I mean a really fast way to analyze a problem.   Are we discouraging graphing because that is too easy?    When we take that away from students that is a major loss for their problem solving skills.

4.   My assessments are changing.  I no longer have 30 questions on a test.  I given less computational questions and more conceptual questions.  I have fewer questions which will help my students focus in on the difficult ideas.  They often have to show answers in multiple ways.  I'm always asking them to explain WHY did you do something.  The questions are a little more challenging and need to be able to use technology to solve.

5.  Technology is NOT CHEATING!  Solve this problem.  3x + 5 = 23   How about graphing?  We have two lines and they are intersecting.  This is a system.  Maybe y= 3x + 5       and      y = 23.  Then find the intersection point.  Is that cheating?   I think the way to give this question is to ask students to solve this problem by graphing and algebra.

6.  A student without technology is often asked to find an answer a certain way.  It might even have only one way to solve it.  I think this takes the creativity away from a student.  It also causes them to be fearful of not making a mistake because they can't even check it with other methods.

7.  What about the argument that we need to have our students get better at computational math skills?  I AGREE.  However, I don't think that a student with good computational math skills equals a complex math thinker.  

8.  I'm going to give more messy number problems.  Technology allows us to give our students weird numbers.  We should be doing that on most of our questions.  Messy numbers actually will encourage them to understand what is happening.  (By the way, have you ever been asked by a student if the answer was wrong because it had a decimal in it?)

9.  Having students use or not use technology is not going to change their number sense during an assessment.  I think we have to promote number sense in many ways during our classes.  But I don't think we should force them into manual calculation during an assessment.  I also don't think that a bunch of calculations by hand will change their number sense too much.  It will probably just build the hate they already have for math.

How about you?  What do you think about having "no calculator" questions on your assessment?  I'd love to hear from you.

Give Meaning to Numbers with Technology

A colleague and I were talking about math problems a few days ago.  He told me that he really likes to give meaning to numbers because it helps the students put the numbers in context.  I completely agree. We were working on percents at the time in my Introduction to Algebra class so I decided to give a little more meaning to my percentages.  Here is what I did.



Since my students have laptops,  I had them go to Kohls.com and pick out an item that they liked. They got to choose a 15% off, 20% off, or 30% off coupon.  (I thought they all would pick the 30% coupon too, but they didn't)  Take the price of that item and reduce it by the coupon amount.  Then they were asked to add on 8% tax.  Lastly they had to post their work to a padlet.com site where all could see their work.  You can see their work too: http://padlet.com/dsladkey/kohls  Padlet is a great tool for student collaboration.  www.padlet.com   

Here is the progression of the assignment

1.  Find an item at Khols.com  Find the price.  (even if it is already discounted)

2.  Choose a 15% or 20% or 30% off coupon.

3.  Reduce the price by the amount on the coupon.

4.  Take the new price and add 8% tax to it.  

5.  Show your picture and all your work on a common padlet site for all to see.  http://padlet.com/dsladkey/kohls





What were the big takeaways?

1.  They learned the material without a bunch of problems without meaning.
2.  Choice.  It gave students a choice for what they wanted to work on.
3.  Pride.  When we shared these out, there was a lot of pride happening.
4.  Recall.  A student asked a question on the test and I just said "Do you remember what you did with the Kohl's activity" and they said, "Oh yeah"
5.  Engagement.  This activity took about one 50 minute period. They were diligently working the whole time.
6.  Accountability.  All students could see all the posts.

Dave
@dsladkey

5 Random Technology PD (Professional Development) Thoughts

Technology is tricky. Everyone is at a different place. So PD (Professional Development) time is very important. Here are a few random thoughts that have been rolling around my head since our latest Technology PD day.

1.  Whole group "how to" technology training rarely works. Most of the time 1/3 of the people are bored, 1/3 are with you and 1/3 are completely lost and frustrated. Group "how to" technology training certainly has it's place at times but should be avoided if possible.  

2.  Let the computer teach the "how to" technology through tutorials and a self guiding pace.  Offer 1 to 1 help for the very few who can't do self guided. 

3.  Design PD activities that model good teaching practice (above the SAMR bar or higher in Blooms taxonomy) and forces the use of the technology within the activity. This way you can show a good teaching idea and you can help them learn a new technology. 

4.  More than a half day of whole group technology PD is too much.   If you want a whole day of PD then maybe half the day is spent in a whole group atmosphere and half is spent in very small groups  or with a partner or alone.   

5.  I think some self reflection time must be built in to our PD.  i.e.  15 minutes of journal time reflecting on the things you have learned and the questions you still have out there.   We put a lot of emphasis on closure in the classroom, and rightly so. Self reflection is a type of individual closure that will help us process what we've just learned and help us remember it. 

I welcome your random thoughts or comments.