Spring+2010

Jeff Hart January 2010 Field Study Proposal

1. Focus and Rationale for study

Currently I am an eighth grade teacher at Kwayhquitlum Middle School. I work on a team with two other teachers. The main curricular areas that I am responsible for are Math, French, Language Arts and Physical Education. Part of my assignment also involves being responsible for Athletics at the school. This term I will be focussing on how to better engage my students in the Math curriculum. I will try using a variety of technological tools and try to discover which, if any, are useful in improving students’ engagement with the curriculum. This topic is particularly of interest to me in my teaching because I spend a great deal of my time teaching Math. I find that very few students are truly engaged in the Math curriculum. As a Math teacher I would like to make Math as interesting and engaging as possible. I find that currently I seem to do the same things over and over again and that along with the students I am not truly engaged with the curriculum. I am hoping that this Field Study will allow me to reach the diverse learning needs of all of my students. The students that I teach have a very wide range of abilities and using a variety of different tools will hopefully allow students to work at their own pace. I am hoping that some of these tools can be integrated with my Sharepoint site. This will allow students to access the information from home and allow many of the tools to be used as tutorials. Essentially I am hoping that using a variety of technological tools will allow students to become more engaged and more self-directed.

2. Essential Question

· What teaching strategies and tools can be used to facilitate student engagement with the Math curriculum?

Sub-questions

· Why are students not engaged in the Math curriculum? · What tools have students used in the past to learn Math? · What technological tools are useful in Math instruction? · Do students have experience working with these technological tools? · What are the curriculum areas that students have the most difficulty with? · Will the use of these tools give the students more choice and sense of ownership in their learning? · Will students be more accountable to themselves and their parents if the tools used allow their work to be posted online? · If students are engaged in the curriculum will it have a distinct impact on their achievement? · Will using technological tools keep me as an educator more engaged in my teaching?

Some technological tools that I hope to use to engage my students include videos, wikis, and discussion boards.

3. Outline of the design of my inquiry:

My first challenge for this inquiry is to choose and become familiar with various technological tools that can be used to engage my students in the Math curriculum. Once I’ve chosen particular tools I will need to teach my students how to use the tools and then start integrating them into my Math instruction. Likely the first tool that I will try using is a discussion board. This is something that my students are familiar with and have used in the past. I will likely simply post a question to a discussion board on my Sharepoint site and have students respond to it. During this inquiry I hope to have my students teach a lesson to their classmates. Part of the criteria for this assignment will be that students have to use some type of technological tool.

Plan of Action

January 2010 · Familiarize myself with various technological tools that would be useful in the instruction of the Math curriculum. · Have students complete a survey to see if they are engaged with the Math curriculum. This survey will also provide students with the opportunity to express what types of technological tools have had a positive impact on their learning in the past. · Interview a several students to gather information about their thoughts of the Math curriculum.

February · Begin using videos as part of my instruction. · Post questions in a discussion board and have students respond on a weekly basis. · Post Math tutorial videos onto my Sharepoint site so that students can access whenever they want. · Begin conferencing with students to get information about how the technology is impacting their learning. · Have students find one technological tool that they think would have a positive impact on their learning. · Introduce the major project for the term. Students will be working in groups and actually teaching a particular concept to the rest of the class. Students will need to use some sort of technology in their lessons.

March · Continue with the major project. Students will actually be presenting their lesson during this month. · Continue using discussion boards as a means of having students answer questions. · Conference with students to see if the technological tools are having an impact on their engagement with the curriculum. · Introduce the students to wikis. · Create a class wiki and have students post their major projects to the wiki.

April · Conduct a second survey of students to see if they feel they have become more engaged in the Math curriculum. · Conduct final conferences with students to see if they have become more engaged in the Math curriculum. · Synthesize the information that I have collected and begin to prepare for the final presentation.

4. Strategies for Documentation

During this inquiry I will collect a variety of data to measure whether or not students have become more engaged in the curriculum. Throughout the inquiry I will be extremely reflective in looking at whether the tools that I use are in fact successful in engaging the students. I will monitor and keep track of how my own teaching changes as I start employing more and more technology in my practice.

Data Sources · Student surveys – Students will be surveyed at the beginning of the inquiry as well as at the end of the inquiry. These surveys will gather information relating to how engaged the students feel with the Math curriculum.

· Student conferences – Students will conference with me to first come up with ideas about how to improve student engagement. We will then conference at the end of the inquiry to see if any of the ideas that we came up with were successful.

· Student work – Samples will be taken of the students work to see if there is any change in the quality over the length of the inquiry.

· Field Notes – I will observe and take field notes to see just what the students are doing and whether or not they are engaged in what they are doing.

I will be reflecting on the data throughout the inquiry. I am hoping that the data collected during the initial stages of the inquiry will help guide what types of technological tools are used and how we use them. I will try to reflect several times a week and try to come to weekly conclusion regarding what worked and what did not work.

5. Connection to Educational Research

Academic Resources ·  __ALTEC Learning Games: Successful Integration of Learning and Gaming__. By: Bacon, Melanie A.; Ault, Marilyn M.. Online Submission. 2009 13 pp.

· __Textbook Deathwatch__. By: Salpeter, Judy. Tech & Learning, v30 n1 p26 Aug 2009

· __This Rock ‘n’ Roll Video Teaches Math__. By Niess, Margaret L.; Walker, Janet M.. Learning & Leading with Technology, v36 n8 p36-37 Jun-Jul 2009.

· __The Realities of K-12 Virtual Education__. By Glass, Gene V.. Education Policy Research Unit. 2009 18 pp.

· __Creating Effective Video to Promote Student-Centered Teaching__ By: Gainsburg, Julie. Teacher Education Quarterly, v36 n2 p163-178 Spr. 2009

· __How Learning and Teaching of Mathematics Can Be Made interesting: A Study Based on Statistical Analysis__ By: Abbasi, Sarwar J.; Iqbal, Kahkashan. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, v40 n4 p505-515 2009

6. Other Resources

During this inquiry I will likely be seeking a great deal of help from colleagues at my schools. I have several colleagues who are very skilled with technology. These people will likely be able to guide me in the right direction and help me deal with any potential technology issues. I will also use my students as a resource. They will need to seek out at least one technology that they would like to use to learn Math. Using this technology they will teach a particular Math concept to the rest of the class. My mentor group will also be a very valuable resource.

7. Connection to Program Capacities

· Participate in and help develop learning communities to support your teaching practice · Engage in a critical cycle of action reflection to understand and develop your practice · Use, evaluate and integrate existing and emerging technologies into your practice · Draw on educational theories, research and philosophies to inform your use of technologies to support teaching and learning · Access, evaluate, use and participate in new media interactions in education

I would hope that as I work through this field study that I am touching on all of these Program Capacities in some way. The capacities are fairly vague and you could argue that working through the field study is essentially working through each of these capacities.

8. Sharing the field study learning

It is difficult to say at this point how I will share my learning from the field study. I would imagine that my journey through this field study will be chronicled with some type of technology such as Power Point, Prezi or a Digital Story Telling medium. Hopefully I will be able to show that I have met all of the program capacities in the next few months.