Challenge Grant Abstract
Most adults who took a high school algebra
class remember calculating the slope of a line from a memorized
equation: m=delta(y)/delta(x). Unfortunately, few learned the
applications of m or understood the concept of slope. Though this
abstract approach was deemed adequate for many children in the past,
many of today's students are not responding to this approach and are
not learning. For example, only 17% of students taking Algebra I in
the San Antonio Technology in Education Coalition target schools
passed the state-mandated End-of-Course Algebra I Exam in 1996. Sound
teaching begins with questions about real world events that are
interesting and familiar, not with abstract concepts. Students cannot
learn to think critically, analyze information, make logical
arguments, explain natural phenomena, or work as part of a team
unless they are permitted and encouraged to do so over and over in
many different ways.
When students connect their basic learning
to concrete experiences, they develop a foundation for understanding
more complex ideas. Because the computer helps to rapidly collect,
organize, and analyze data, technology enables students to quickly
and easily replicate previously laborious experiments that used to be
too time consuming to complete. Once data has been collected,
students can grow in their ability to make observations and
generalizations, reason logically, manipulate symbols, and derive
"formulas."
Over the past twenty years, as educational
institutions have embraced technology as a means to improve school
and student performance, the major emphasis on resources acquisition
has been on obtaining hardware. Only recently has there been a
recognition that training and appropriate placement of technology and
its application within the curriculum, are important components of
successful
technological curriculum integration projects.
The San
Antonio Technology in Education Coalition (SATEC) seeks to connect student learning to concrete
experiences through the seamless integration of technology into
curriculum and instruction by developing a training and application
model. This model will first be piloted in the Coalition's critical
need area of mathematics through a hands-on, data-driven approach to
the learning of algebraic concepts using such tools as
computer-interfaced probes, image analysis software, and
spreadsheet-based simulation activities. These technology tools will
radically change the environment of the teaching/learning process for
mathematics. We will infuse this systemic change of current
teaching/learning practices through technology training and into all
curricular areas.
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