Technology supports learning success for all students. DI and UDL are often associated with instructional changes designed to meet the needs of students with special educational needs, gifted, and talented learners, or English language learners (Maloy, pg 277). It's amazing how we benefit from technology. I wouldn't imagine to be born in the past centuries!! Back then it was hard to success without technology support. Now on these days, all students can be someone important in life without obstacles.
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| Photo credit by Toban B. on Flickr |
Calculators? what can I say about this "wonderful" tool. Now on days calculators make lives easier, specially for students of all ages. Also, this tool help students with disabilities, who have short term memory deficits and who lack confidence with number operations (Maloy, pg 287). However, I don't like scientific calculators that perform more than just complex operations. That's the reason why we don't use our mental math strategies. Many educators teach students how to do math only in a scientific calculator, but what about when they have to present a National or International test and universities will not allow to use them on the test? I want to be clear that I am not against these potential machine, but I thought that good math teaching was about developing mental skills, not on how to press buttons!
Resources:
De La Garza, D. (n.d.). Tagxedo - Word Cloud with Styles. Retrieved February 24, 2015, from http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Fun Tagxedo - did you use one of your blog posts? I think there's so much potential for word clouds as they are so visually appealing. My eyes are always wandering through the image looking for relationships and patterns. In addition, I think they spark curiosity and the desire to seek more information - all great ways to springboard learning. :)
ReplyDeleteThe use of calculators for math can be very controversial with both sides having good arguments. From my perspective, calculators are more helpful in more advanced mathematical topics for efficiency purposes - even for those relatively easy operations. But students need to develop a number sense and that happens only with a variety of thoughtful lessons and learning activities, including but certainly not limited to calculators. Perhaps the early use of calculators has taken away the natural curiosity to understand numbers and their functions/relationships due to ease of use. Either way, calculators are not likely to go away, so it is best to think about how to effectively use them in balance with other learning tools! :)