Teachers need to develop a willingness to play with technologies and
an openness to building new experiences for students so that fun,
cool tools can be educational.
also cut the music samples into smaller units of sound and arrange them.
What makes this a powerful lesson is
that students actually get to manipulate the trakAxPC software to help
them describe and explain ratios and
percentages. Relating mathematical
concepts, such as ratios and percentages, to rhythm, music, and tempo is a
way to creatively build patterns. These
patterns form a relationship between
concepts (beats per minute and ratios)
that belong to different disciplines
(composing music and math) but
can, and should, be integrated. This
allows students to cross disciplinary
boundaries and transfer ideas from
one realm to another, deepening their
insight into both domains. Moreover,
Resources
Clusty: http://clusty.com
Cuil: www.cuil.com
iBreadcrumbs: www.iBreadcrumbs.com
Koehler’s blog: http://mkoehler.educ.msu.edu
Mishra’s blog: http://punya.educ.msu.edu
TPACK wiki: www.tpack.org
TrakAxPC: www.trakax.com/software/pc
Twitter: www.twitter.com
Viewzi: http://viewzi.com
this is a powerful way to bring mathematics alive to students in an intrinsically motivating manner.
In each of these cases the technology was not constructed for educational purposes. Making it an educational technology required creative
input from the teacher to redesign or
even subvert the original intentions
of the software programmer. This
would not be possible without a deep,
complex, fluid, and flexible knowledge
of the technology, the content to be
covered, and an appropriate pedagogy.
Teachers need to develop a willingness to play with technologies and an
openness to building new experiences
for students so that fun, cool tools can
be educational.
Punya Mishra is an associate
professor of educational technology at Michigan State University. He is interested in issues related to technology integration in teacher education,
design research, and creativity.
Matthew J. Koehler is an
associate professor of educational technology at Michigan
State University. His interests
include the affordances of technologies, the design of learning
environments, and the profes-
sional development of teachers.
Connecting the dots to inspired learning...
Think like a Teacher
TeachersFirst’s in-the-classroom
ideas help you make connections
to take teaching from the obvious
to the innovative.
Teach like a Thinker
TeachersFirst.com
From
For teachers. For families. For excellence.
iste-ad-0905.indd 1
3/18/09 11:17: 33 AM
