At the end of each math class my class writes an answer to the day’s essential question in our notebooks at the end of the day’s notes. I could set up a class blog where I list all of the essential questions and I could have student post one or two of their answers to the essential questions each week. The students could then see other student’s responses, compare them, see if their answers were on the right track, and get into discussion about differences between responses. This would also give me an opportunity to see what my students answers are to the essential question so I could see how well they grasp the material.
What makes this idea difficult is that I teach high school mathematics in an urban school district. In my Algebra classes over half of the students do not have computers at home or do not have easy internet access. It would be impossible for me to do anything where I expected participation outside of the classroom because I would alienate the section of students who do not have computer access. This means that any time spent blogging would have to be class time. This would be at least 45 minutes every week going down to the computer lab, logging onto our decrepit old computers (a 4-5 minute process), and interacting on the blog.
In our Algebra classes we try not to slow down because we do not have spare minutes to waste in a class that is crammed beyond capacity. Every year we choose which topics to not teach our students because we will run out of time by the end of the course. To decide whether this is a good idea and to justify the time expense, I would need to determine if there is a weekly 45 minute chuck of time that my class spends doing something that is less educationally advantageous than an essential question blog. At the present time I think it would be more efficient if I had students pair up or get in groups of four for fifteen minutes once a week and have them share their answers and discuss each essential question for three minutes.
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Could you arrange a short field trip to the public library for your students? Show them that even though they do not have access at home, that there are places that they can gain access for free? Do the students get a study hall that they can use to go the computer room once a week? Obviously you still wouldn't be able to have blog participation as a requirement, but maybe you could increase the participation by giving them this as an option.
ReplyDeleteSo you would use the blogs like an exit ticket for the day. I like the idea of this a lot, because I like exit tickets for help seeing if students understand the material for the day. As an algebra 1 teacher myself I know how it is to find time in the classroom. I also know how it is having only half of your students having availability to a computer. These are problems I would have said that you might have with this idea.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of ideas that I have to help fix some of these problems that you have with this idea. One would be to see how much availability they have to computers in school during the week. The reason is at our school every student has at least one study hall, and during study hall they are able to go to the library where they can get on the computer. I was thinking if you gave them a week to do a post that would let them have a chance to go some were in school to get on a computer. The second would be to partner them up with someone that does have a computer and make it a group project. These are just two ideas that I had to maybe help you out.
Unfortunately we do not have study halls at school. We are on a block schedule so we only have four classes per day and it isn't reasonable to make one of them into a study hall, it is just too much unused time. I will say that I like the idea of having a mandatory study hall in a school which would allow students to access computers during school or do projects at school if groups could be arranged in a class around study halls.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the field trip goes, I do not know how a trip to the public library computer lab would go over for a suggested Algebra I field trip. I think this would be a hard sell. If schools started focusing more on technology and had required technology classes, this would be an excellent field trip for that type of a class.
I can see where your limitations on technology may discourage you. I am not sure if this is an option, but in my school, students are able to access the computer lab in the Media Center during their lunch time. I am not sure if this is feasible, but is there a possibility to have your students maybe go to the lab at that time. Maybe even 2 or 3 a day and you can have bi-weekly or monthly exit tickets.
ReplyDeleteIt is a real shame that even though there is such a push to integrate technology in classrooms there is little or no money for some schools to provide their students with even the basics. This is something that has been an issue for some time and keeps being ignored. I don’t understand how in a society where technology is such a necessity, why state and federal governments who are putting these pressures on the teachers are not providing the technologies to provide it.