A common thread of lament that will run through my blogs and discussions is that math is a different animal to teach. When I observe other classes in my school, I see students engaging at various levels. It appears to me that the level of engagement is a product of both the understanding of what is being taught and the quality and quantity of background knowledge that the student brings to the discussion. In these classrooms, students can be what Dr. Kalantzis referred to as knowledge producers, helping move the learning forward through their own contributions.
The problem I face, however, is that, while my students often have a reasonable level of understanding of what I am teaching, they almost never have any background knowledge that can help them be producers. For the most part, all teaching comes from me. On a rare occasion, someone will offer a comment or idea that will be productive, but that is usually the result of that student having learned that concept before. It is typically not the result of the student connecting the current topic to something else they have experienced in their lives. So, while I would love to see myself as someone who promotes a participatory culture in my classroom, for now I do not. I promote participation in the traditional sense. "Mary, what is the next thing I want to do to isolate the variable?" That is the best that I can do for now.
If I could do something truly participatory, I would like for it to be in the vein of Henry Jenkins' project involving Wikipedia. To have my students attempt to navigate the vetting process and actually change the information contained in a Wikipedia entry is the most authentic and participatory endeavor that I could hope for.
Bryan, maybe students can engage in teaching math in a participatory way, even if you don't think they can learn that way yet. I put a relevant picture on my blog, but I copied a link below too. What if students made their own teaching videos and posted them on YouTube to help OTHER people learn math? Or if there's a way to apply the mathematics to features of daily living (bureaucratic efficiency, public structures, proposed architecture, etc.), students could use their knowledge of math to post feedback, opinions, or ideas in real space... that would be very Henry Jenkins of you. :)
ReplyDeletehttp://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/aatienza/images/participatory-media-2.png
Bryan I hope you got some good ideas this week from Andrew in our call. He suggested something similar to what Alli suggests above - his idea was a screencast using one of free recording tools (Screen-cast-o-matic is a good one if you can get past the name.) I'm not a math teacher but Alli's ideas sound really good. Having them teach others, or use an online white board to work on problems collaboratively - there are some good tools. I hope you find the video I posted this week, "The Mathematics Classroom," helpful! Yes - by the time we're finished you will have at least a touch of Henry Jenkins in you :)
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the things that perhaps we need to have more conversation about - how all of the pedagogies and practices that have been enhanced by technology apply to the different subjects and content that can be taught within a school. It's tough with Math because everything is absolute... 2+2=4 no matter what experience you've had in life!
ReplyDeleteI like the idea to use an online white board or even Google Docs to have the students work on problems collaboratively.