Author Archives: gbruc10

About gbruc10

I am a Digital Technologies teacher in an Australian primary school. I am also an ipad enthusiast and advocate. My professional goal is to continue to develop my digital learning skills as a teacher and as a Digital Learning Coach for supporting teachers.

Engaging Teachers with Mathletics

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Mathletics is not the ‘be all and end all’ of success in maths. There are many ways in which to improve students abilities and confidence. My observations of other teachers have proved to me that teachers are highly competent and knowledgeable at doing this. Having said that, Mathletics has proven itself to be a standout tool for: increasing student ownership of math learning; providing teacher-led student differentiation; and encouraging parental buy-in. Yet, many teachers, who have access to Mathletics seem to remain unconvinced of  its value and reluctant to embrace and promote it. Consequently, as teachers are the drivers of Mathletics engagement and success, many students will not engage to any significant degree with Mathletics in 2015. Considering the potential benefits, that would be disappointing.

Why Mathletics should be used with our students.

1. We live in an increasingly competitive global market. Millions around the world are already engaging in self-driven, online maths. If our students fail to commit to their learning, how will our students compete in future job markets?

2. Classroom learning can only go so far. Practice is what will embed it into our students’ minds and increase confidence.

3. Students will engage and do voluntary homework if they feel it is helping them (and if it is fun!).

It has been incredibly exciting to me to see substantial engagement with Mathletics occurring across most of the students in our double classroom. Students of all abilities were completing bronze certificates and aiming for mastery right up to the last week of school! It was equally encouraging to see parents  support this initiative by encouraging their child. The reward? Students displaying an obvious increase in confidence, answering in-class questions,  peer tutoring and improving on test results.

If success in Mathletics is teacher-driven, how is this supposed to be done? In a word, ‘homework’. As teachers, we are only allowed to give a minimum amount of homework- about 10 to 15 minutes per night. I ‘sell’ Mathletics as an ‘optional extra’. We need to play ‘coach’ and encourage students to engage. We can set targets. I ask students to aim for a bronze certificate every week (1000 points). I also set two tasks weekly that align with class learning for that week. Students are encouraged by weekly handing out of certificates, praise in class and tapping into our reward program (I use Class Dojo, gotchas and weekly prizes).

Accessibility

One of the most frequent arguments against more substantial use of Mathletics, is lack of access to computers at school. This should not stop it from being encouraged and promoted as a home personal development programme. In my experience at schools with few devices, my students have always engaged heavily at home with Mathletics.

Of course, if you do have access to devices at school, Mathletics can play a role in various ways to support your other lessons and strategies.

Eg:

Live Mathletics. Students compete at their ability level with other students in the class, or around the world (This is a number facts program designed to increase speed and accuracy).

Assigned tasks. Students complete tasks assigned by the teacher that align with in-class learning.

Practice tests. Students can do NAPLAN practice tests to identify areas of weakness for targeted teaching.

 

You will find that most of our students even in low socio-economic areas have access to a computer device at home of some kind and the internet (Mathletics is now accessible via ipads and other tablets). In fact, I have found that parents, once they have found out about Mathletics have made sure that their child has access.

Reasoning

Another reluctance from some teachers to use Mathletics, particularly in higher year levels of maths has been that students think that they have to do all the maths in their head. Naturally, this is not practical as students need to reason through multistep problems. Teachers simply need to teach students to write down the problem and show their working out. Solutions can then be entered for instant marking.

Mastery

One of the things that is most attractive about Mathletics is the focus on ‘mastery’. As a teacher, it is important to put on your ‘coach’ hat and encourage students to make ‘mastery’ their goal. Mathletics is data rich. Students have access immediately to how they are going; and so do teachers. The reporting system in Mathletics offers colour coded graphs  that show what has been mastered, what is being passed, and what is not being understood. This means that areas of weakness can be immediately identified and targeted. Students can watch animations or videos demonstrating how to do a specific task. If they still don’t understand, they can choose an easier level, ask a parent, friend or the teacher.

As a teacher, it is not enough to simply hand out log-ins to students and occasionally use Mathletics in computer lab time. This is not going to make a substantial impact on their math ability. Significant engagement and practice at home is the key. Teacher promotion, coaching and teaching of Mathletics to students and parents throughout the year is imperative. As Mathletics represents a significant financial investment in our students, it is critical that as teachers, we make sure that it plays a key role in our learning and teaching philosophy.

 

Image: under Creative Commons Share alike from http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Math_class_in_Da_Ji_Junior_High_School_2006-12-1.jpg .

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Create beautiful ebooks and movies with ‘Book Creator’

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As an educator and a passionate advocate for ipads as a learning tool, I have tried many apps in the search for a child friendly, open-ended, creative app. ‘Book Creator is an app that enables the user to create their own ebook. The best part, like any great app is that it is so intuitive, young kids can use it. Once a user has completed their book, their finished product can be exported to ibooks.

Ibooks bring a little magic to reading with glossy, sharp images, videos and graphics and a range of special features such as accessibility for those with learning impairments, dictionary and the ability to create study cards. However, in the past a short-coming of Book Creator was the inability to export a child’s ebook in a format that was accessible for parents without an ipad. It would export the file as an epub (which isn’t easily accessible), or pdf (which doesn’t have the same impact). It was the only complaint I was hearing from fans.

Now, you can export your ebooks from Book Creator as a movie file. Brilliant! I have gone back to a couple of my favourite ebooks and made the transition and the result is terrific! Oral narration seamlessly glides through the text, while you view the imagery on your pages. Video files automatically play in sequence. The end product looks and sounds fantastic!

‘App smashing’ is the latest trend to hit the digital learning environment. It refers to the combining of two or more apps to create a final product. Book creator is an excellent app for this. Take a look at my student’s work above. She has incorporated her own art using ‘Paper by 53’; narrated and written her story via Book Creator; and added sound effects via ‘Garage Band’. Quite an effective result don’t you think?

So you’re a teacher and you want to create engaging learning materials. You want to flip the classroom, create an exemplar, or develop new literacy product. Book Creator. The movie below shows a non-fiction text I created about erosion and weathering. How do you think it compares to a Powerpoint? I’d love to know your thoughts.

For those unfamiliar with Book Creator, don’t go past this one. For those who are already sold, the new movie feature is a great reason to use it more.

Differentiating with Mathletics

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Mathletics has long been a favourite teaching tool of mine.  The main reason? Kids love it! Learning maths online is fun. Even when I set homework, it doesn’t seem to feel like homework. In fact, kids will voluntarily complete way more tasks on it than I have asked them to. In fact, I actively encourage students to ‘own their learning’ by working hard on Mathletics.

Teachers can’t just expect it to magically work by itself though. Teachers need to promote it to their students; coach their students; and use it in class. One of the best reasons to do this is student differentiation. Mathletics makes it easy to provide maths at levels that are achievable and challenging no matter what skill level a student is at.

The first thing to help, is to set up groups within your class. These groups should be set up based on ILPs (individual learning plans), or simply by using data to determine where your students are at. You might use NAPLAN or PATMAS test data for instance. Don’t forget that you can also use this strategy to extend your clever students. Click the ‘Classes’ tab to set up groups (Please see the attached video for a detailed ‘how to’).

The second thing you can do is to set tasks at different levels. If you have already created levelled groups, you simply go into ‘Results’ and set tasks for each group. You will find that each group may be operating at a different year level for instance. This way students will be assigned tasks at a level that they can manage and be successful, as opposed to being intimidated or discouraged.

Glenn Bruce

 

 

Sliding to Learn- A conference with a mobile focus

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As an enthusiastic iPad-toting teacher, I raced off to Sydney last week for my second dose of a ‘Slide2Learn’ conference. Two days of hands-on ipad experiences and exposure with like-minded enthusiasts was especially rewarding. I left with my Evernote brimming with new ideas, apps and things to try. So many that….quite frankly, I’m not sure where to start.

‘Slide2Learn‘ is an organisation whose sole purpose is to connect digitally enthused educators with each other and with new tools and pedagogy to take back to their classroom. Their mantra? ‘By educators- For educators. The team generously volunteer their time to prepare for their annual events and clearly put much time and energy into creating something that members really can become excited about.

As a member, once again I found the experience incredibly rewarding. Being able to access top speakers and leaders in the field on a personal level; and to participate in a range of hands-on learning experiences was fantastic! The ‘hands-on’ is what I really love! Being exposed to apps that were not on my radar and being able to play and see learning opportunities for the future is what was really exciting.

Of course a conference without keynote speakers wouldn’t be a conference now, would it? Slide2Learn managed to organise some excellent speakers with valuable wisdom and experience to share for all. Punters were madly typing notes during all sessions.

Tony Vincent, who seems to be a Slide2Learn veteran was being his most personable and amusing self again. He seems to have an incredible knowledge of the latest apps and websites and how they can be used effectively. My take home was ‘Poll Everywhere’, a website that allows you to poll or survey an audience using devices and instantly display graphical analysis as you watch. Very entertaining!

As a lover all apps that are creative, I was particularly impressed with ‘Comics Head‘ and ‘Yakit Kids‘. When you smash these apps in an ‘imovie‘, you have the ability to create amusing animation movies very quickly. There is great potential here for student use with assessment pieces.

All the speakers offered valuable insight into education and digital learning. The outcome? About 150 or so pumped up and re-invigorated teachers at different stages of their digital learning journey, ready to go get ’em!