Week 3 Task

•Students often feel bad about making mistakes. How can we help students feel safe to take risks and make mistakes in the mathematics classroom?

•What is the iGeneration? What has changed in our classrooms in the past 100 years?

•Should our classrooms focus on ‘just in time’ or ‘just in case’ learning? What are examples of these? [contribute to class forum to answer this question]

What do employers want?

•Persistence? Or spoon fed

•Communicator? Or isolated member

•Problem Solver? Or rules based

• Just in time, just in case or a combination approach?

•Thinking differently, not afraid to make mistakes?

The iGeneration

•They have never known a life without the internet, let alone computers, and many don’t know a world without mobile phones. - Sarah Cornish, Total Girl magazine

•Net Generation, Generation Y, Generation Z, the Gen Nexters, the Look-at-Me Generation, the Millennial Generation, the Echo Generation, the ADHD Generation, or the iGeneration.

• iGeners - born after the early 1990s

•Parents may use the Internet to gather information, they use it to gather together.

Intellectually bereft?

•Minds of iGeners work fast, but do they think deeply or accurately?

•‘The dumbest generation’

•‘infosnackers’

21st Century Skills

•Creativity and innovation

•Critical thinking and problem solving

•Communication and collaboration

• iGeners are almost universally plugged in

•See technology as a tool for participating

•Turn to the Internet first

•Willing to experiment. Emotionally open. Like working in teams

•Gamers. Social Networking.

•US Teenagers spend almost 325 minutes behind a screen

Academic Performance• Lag behind competing countries (Australia, US)

• 15-24 year olds spend under 9 minutes a day reading for any reason (Hess, 2008)

• Whatever their virtues, these minds know far too little, and they read and write and calculate and reflect way too poorly. However many hours they pass at the screen from age 11 to 25, however many blog comments they compose, intricate games they play, videos they create, personal profiles they craft, and gadgets they master, the transfer doesn’t happen. The Web grows, and the young adult mind stalls. (Bauerlein, 2008, Kindle location 1683-1685

21st Century Learners

•Should we be teaching today’s students differently to in the past?

•What worked/didn’t work for me should work for them?

•Do as I say, not as I do?

Active learning•Completely engaged in challenging and authentic

learning activities

•Self motivated, and self regulated learning

•Technology can help to create this environment. But the focus is not on technology, but on engagement.

•These tools foster and facilitate active learning, and most of them support and encourage collaborative learning.

•“Everything else has become so engaging. N-geners who go online regularly to play video games or interact on MySpace expect better experiences in the classroom. Look at today’s curriculum, though, and you won’t find much interactivity. We’re still learning through reading and regurgitating.” (Tapscott & Williams, 2006, p. 51)

Collaborative Learning

•Mirrors students’ innate desire for connection (interesting relevant content & with other students)

•Collaborative learning can create an emotional connection. Memories are much more likely to be recalled, and accuracy goes up.

•Can increase participation and interest

•Goes hand in hand with differentiation of instruction

• Maths. Geometry. Grades 4 & 5.

• Work on a team, as architects and builders, to design a futuristic house that is aesthetically appealing because of its geometrical design.

• Formative/summative assessments

• Lessons on design and home building

• Architect, foreman as invited guests

Problem Solving

• How often do student-driven, problem centred learning experiences happen in your classroom?

• We have a world full of problems (global warming, poverty, depression, greed)

• How can we teach problem solving effectively in our classrooms?

Types of Problems

• Jacob Getzels:

• Type 1 problems - easiest to solve. Problem is clear to both presenter & solver 5 x 4 =

• Type 2 problems - method & answer are not immediately apparent. “If Johnny has eight slices of pizza and he sells each for $2, how much money will he raise?”

• Type 3 - No clear correct answers. Presenters and solvers might not know the method or the outcomes.

• Real world problems usually require a team effort to solve. Not individual experts.

• Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?

• In the course of the show, studio audiences picked the right answer 91% of the time

• Which workplaces rely on collective wisdom to solve type 3 problems?

• According to Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds), groups must be cognitively diverse, independent, and decentralised in order to solve problems effectively.

Example: Best Buy• Most companies rely on senior

management teams to establish vision, make decisions, give directions.

• Best Buy: 155,000 employees across fifty states and five countries. How did they harness collective wisdom to improve their company? https://vimeo.com/2084915

• Wikipedia is another example (285 languages, 25 million articles, 100,000 active contributors)