Project Based Learning with Technology

Project Based Learning with my students have helped them comprehend and retain the material better with the use of an iPad app of Explain Everything.   The students will make their own video and explanation of an example.  This has caused the students take their time to understand how to explain the processes they are showing on their iPads.

Most of my students' responses have been positive in working on those examples.  Another benefit of student created examples is the use of the math vocabulary in their explanations which would show how much do they understand the uses of those words.

The students are able to upload the videos into a common Drop Box account so the students are able to watch other student's examples.   I feel the students are going to be more attentive when they are getting an explanation from their classmates since the students have a better connection with student talk.

To have an accountability of their work, the students are assigned a different example from a different section of the chapter so they will get a review of another concept that was different from the one they made.  The video checkoff sheet will have questions of 1) did they answer the questions, 2) did they do the proper procedure, 3) what terms did they use, 4) could they have used more terminology in their explanation, and 5) did they explain their example with confidence.

I believe this has challenged the overachieving students to go beyond the doing the math and getting the answer right.  The students will have to show that they can communicated effectively with their writing down the example and also talking through the process of doing the math.

I have challenged the students to do one example from each of the different types of example in a chapter as a review.  The students had more confidence in understanding the material for going into the test and did better.  A few of my students who did take the time to do this made a remark to me of how much better they did on their test since they had to slow down the process of understanding the material.

This is one of the benefits of student iPad uses in the classroom I have seen when I changed towards a project based learning focused classroom.  I hope to find other ways for students to show their creative side and make a product that other students can see and learn something from each other.  

Backward Design

The backward design has helped me plan out how will the students show me evidence of understanding of the essential question.  Listing out the different assessment tools and separating out the evidence by Of, For, As learning can help separate out how your assessments can be used at the different stages of learning for the students.

The backward design has helped me in my class by the video notes that I have already laid out and can plan which day we will go over the material.  I can then plan out how I can use some of the assessments tools for the students to make their own example recordings for their project based learning and when the other students can see each others product.

AR Abstract

Does teaching literacy skills in a math classroom help increase the retention of the material and increase achievement?

My action research is on the impact of teaching literacy skills in a math classroom to increase the retention of the material through vocabulary development, written communication of mathematical concepts, and increasing dialogue among the students.  The research has shown how students reflecting on their work and clarifying their thoughts has help them consolidate the concepts.

The strategies that I used for increasing literacy skills are classroom word wall for vocabulary, journal questions to process their thoughts, and student dialogue through classroom discussions and student example explanations by using iPad recordings.

I will collect data from student journals, formative assessments of their recorded explanations, and end of chapter survey.  I hope the students will be able to reflect on how their thought process is slowed down to process the material better.

According to dictionary.com,

Presence-1.  the state or fact of being present, as with others or in a place.
                3.  immediate vicinity; proximity:  in the presence of witnesses.

I like these definitions as we move on into our 4th semester and starting the school year with our action research topic in the forefront of our minds.  The experiences of our last year together learning from each other as classmates has given us ideas of what we can do to change in our classrooms.  We have the opportunity to put these ideas into practice from the start within our classrooms.  The presence of these ideas put into action will give us opportunities for us, as teachers, to grow and self-reflect on how or if it fits into our teaching styles. 

From the research that we have done over the summer, we must be mindful of the presence of our students' learning as we are exploring the new ideas put into action.  We are hopeful for the opportunity for growth for ourselves and finding positive results from our students.

Circles of Self Reflection

The Circle of Self Reflection was an activity where you identified what roles you see yourself.  The roles were tied to our family and professional lives.  The two roles that I got rid of first was easy since they were tied to my professional life.  That left with roles in my family that I saw myself.  To take one role off my plate was difficult but to take two off eventually was really difficult to identify.  It made you think of what role do you want to have for the present time or in the future with your family.  I can see where it can vary from different seasons in our lives.

The roles that our students see themselves as would be similar to how we selected our roles.   I would see the students pick friends and family over being a student because that is a small part of their lives and the values of family would trump the importance of being a student.

The lessons that I would take away from this activity would be the importance of what we teachers want the students to learn.  At times, it is not the most important thing in the world since people struggle with the importance of family issues and our own personal issues.  When students are struggling with their schoolwork, teachers will need to reflect and ask the students if things are fine at home first before emphasizing the importance of their homework.  Then I can help them learn and grow as they struggle with balancing family life and modify the schoolwork to make them feel successful in my class.

Achieving Holonomy

Holonomy is the ability to see and achieve goals for themselves as individuals but also sees the benefits of the whole organization that they work in and how they are dependent upon how the organization supports the individual.

I have seen the benefits of holonomy within the MEd program as we have worked independently on what our individual goals are in our classrooms but we have been learning concepts together as a class.  The benefits of working together as a class or with classmates have helped us support and help one another with our individual goals by listening to our experiences and suggestions.  I believe everyone is striving to become more holonomous in their profession at their schools in our program.

I do not believe any parts of holonomy is more important that others because there needs to be a balance of the five states of mind to improve.

The five states of mind are:

Efficacy is the ability to positively affect the world around themselves and on to others.  It is also the ability to cope with the changing world around them by problem solve the situations given.  It is especially true in my math class as we help one another in solving the problems at hand.

Flexibility is the ability to see situations in a different perspective.  They are able to approach situations and conflicts in different ways to come up with a solution.  It would be evident with the way that I teach mathematics and that there is no right way to solve any problem.  There may be a more efficient way but individuals think differently so you need to keep that in consideration.

Craftsmanship is taking pride in your work and is looking to improve upon itself.  I have always reflected upon how I am teaching certain concepts to my students so that they can understand the concepts well.  There are time when I do try things that don't work so I look for ways to improve on them.

Consciousness is to be mindful of what are the things that are going on internally and externally to oneself.  The classroom consciousness of reading the students with teaching the concepts and watching if they are understanding the process or do yo move on is important with being mindful of how you conduct yourself.

Interdependence is the ability to work together with your colleagues and classmates towards a common goal.  The ability to help others and to receive help with the common goal of teaching our students to understand the concept is important and can benefit ourselves when we see things in a different light.

ROL/AR Abstract

The question that I want to explore is if an accountability sheet for my flipped classroom has helped my students build a sense of ownership of their learning?  The students will be able to self rate themselves in tracking of what videos/notes are completed and the understanding of the material.  With each day, I have the students in different places in my curriculum so it was confusing where some students are in the unit.  This accountability sheet with a rubric has helped the students keep track of their progress and what areas they would need to work on.


 I have three sections of Honors Algebra 2 class where one of my sections are not offered an accountability sheet, another section is given the accountability sheet but not reminded of filling out the form and another section is reminded to fill out the forms each day.  I did this for one unit of the book.  I will see the results of who did fill out the sheet and how they felt about their understanding of the material.


I am still working on my results of my action research.

iPad Created Examples using Explain Everything App

For my flipped classes, I have my students watch my video notes for Algebra 2 and Honors Algebra 2 classes at home.  The students are use to going through the motions of checking their homework if they understand the material but how do I know for sure they understand the process in getting to their answers.  In class, the students have the routine of checking off the homework if they got them correct and hope that they are understanding their mistakes.  Then they will start homework in class on their own in their desks writing in their notes.  Some of my students like to write on the whiteboards and see what they are doing and are able to correct their mistakes much easier.

I want all of my students to be able to explain the process in solving their example.  I have requested that all of my students will have the app Explain Everything because it can import pdf's of my examples and they can work through them and write on their screen.  I will challenge my students to write and explain their work to imitate me.  I hope the students will see it as a fun way to review the material and gain a better understanding of the material.  I truly believe that if you can explain an example, then they will grasp the concepts better.  After they record their example, they can upload their video explanation to a common Dropbox account so that other students are able to see their classmates work and hopefully find another person's explanation of a concept.

Action Research

Action Research

I want to teach my students how the effort that they put into their work will see results in the progress of their understanding of the material.  I have done a complete flipped class for my Honors Algebra 2 and Algebra 2 classes.  Now that the novelty of watching and reviewing their notes by video, they are losing interest in keeping up with the notes.  They seem to get frustrated with not understanding the material because they are not focused in trying to comprehend what I am saying in the video. 

So I have been reading of how ownership of learning is more effective when the students develop their intrinsic value of their education.  Having time for the students to reflect on their comprehension level of the material and having an accountability sheet to see a concrete evidence of understanding has helped. 

I have done this accountability sheet with all of my classes and have asked the students to fill it out and submit it with a test at the end of the unit.  I have passed back their tests and accountability sheet to see if there is a correlation between the questions on the test that they struggled with to the homework understanding on their accountability sheet.

I would like to see if some students do better when they do have a physical sheet for them to see where they struggle to students who try to keep track of what they know or don't know on their own.  I will offer the accountability for one class period and require everyone to fill it out for a chapter.  For another class period, I will off the accountability sheet but not mention to fill it out.  I will see how many students will fill it out on their own.  Then for my last period, I will not offer the accountability sheet unless they ask for it. 

After the end of the chapter, I will collect the sheets and correct their chapter tests.  I will hand back both and give a survey to see if the students used the accountability sheet to keep track of their own progress or did they try to keep track on their own.  I will ask if the sheet helped for those who used the sheet and ask the students who did not use the sheet if using an accountability sheet would have helped.

Spring Conference 2013

  I am looking forward to St Mary's M.Ed Spring Conference this April to hear and discuss the topics of Physical vs. Virtual Manipulatives, Cooperative Learning impacting student motivation and participation, Incorporating technology-based assessments, Flipped math classroom, and Implementing literacy strategies in math classes.

From the physical vs virtual manipulatives, there seems to he a high level of engagement of the students when they do have manipulatives  to see and touch.  Technology is becoming more prevalent in our society so the students are using more virtual manipulatives and the level of engagement seems to be higher.  I hope to see how often do using the virtual manipulatives keeps the students interest as I relate it to my class.  I hope to see which activities and manipulative other math teachers have used and what strategies have worked for them.

For the cooperative learning, know that the students are able be more active in class and build a stronger community.  They are learning how to communicate in the academic language and to learn how to interact in the relationships of their peers.  I would like to see how other teachers create different structured cooperative activities that are productive in the learning process for the students.

The technology-based assessments in the classroom is promoting how society is using technology in everyday life.  Through different modes of using technology, we are building relationships in helping one another in learning how to use the technology given and it weeks the students more engaged and motivated in working towards understanding the material.  With the different ways of using technology, it enhances the students learning because it keeps them interested by the variety of assessments that are given.  I hope to learn how other teachers have used technology to enhanced their curriculum especially in terms of assessments to hopefully lead to project based learning.

The flipped classroom is a session where the notes of the lessons are taken outside of the classroom and the homework/practice is done in the classroom.  By having the structure of the the flipped classroom for the math, there will be more time for the students to help one another and differentiate how each student learns.  I hope to learn how does the student interact in the class with the different levels of abilities.  Is there a more structured learning process for the students to follow in understanding the material.

Literacy in a math classroom is seeing if the student are learning the academic language of mathematics is helping the students retain more of the material than just going and doing examples.  I see that the students are more verbal in their classroom and are retaining the material better.  I hope to find ways for me to incorporate the terminology of mathematics in my classroom so that they are remembering the material better.

21st Century Learning

21st Century Learning is moving beyond the standard passive learning of being in a desk and memorize the content.   It requires the students to learn how to communicate effectively with the technologies around them.  Learning to collaborate with their teachers and peers and beyond.  Using critical thinking skills to formulate their answers and to creativity in producing and demonstrating their knowledge. 

How I implement these skills in my classroom is to first communicate with them by having my lessons in videos.  They can email me questions that they have from those video notes.  In the classroom, I have the students work in cooperative groups to help one another and they are able to explain the examples in different ways that they understand.  Using the technology of their iPads, the students are able to produce their own examples to demonstrate their understanding of the material.

 The challenges that I face in implementing is finding opportunities for the students to demonstrate their creativity in solving problems.  How do I measure their critical thinking skills from projects and finding time to do this in the classroom?  I have the students work in groups at times but how do you get the reserved kids to collaborate and communicate with others?

Writing about a change I would like to make in my classroom.


A couple of changes that I would like in my classroom is for the students to keep track of their own progress in the learning of the new topics.  I hope to create a self-reflection worksheet that would correspond with the material.  It would keep track of how much effort they put into their homework, keeping up with my video notes and how often do they come in for help.  I want to challenge the students to be more specific in their action of getting help or identifying how they can help themselves in understanding the topics.

This blog spot is for my grad school material.