Learning and Leading - June/July 2012

Tip

When Will We Ever Use Math in Real Life?

What Do You Do with All Those Business Cards?

Problem: You attend a lot of conferences and professional development trainings and pick up a lot of business cards. But you can’t seem to keep track of them once you get home.

Here’s a solution: grab your cell phone and download one of the many apps that will easily transfer your burdensome business cards into electronic files. With BC reader for apple and android devices, you just take a picture of the business card, and it turns the information into a contact! You can fill in additional fields, add contacts to groups, and more. The app even saves the picture of the card for you in case you need to look at it later. it’s simple and quick and frees up space in your desk drawer!

Julie LaChance is
an instructional tech
nology specialist for
grades K– 12 in Stanly
County, North Carolina,
USA. She is also an
adjunct instructor at
Rowan Cabarrus
Community College, where she teaches
educational technology. Her passion is
helping teachers find efficient ways of
incorporating technology into
the classroom.

Scan this Qr code to submit your own classroom technology tips on the discussion forum titled “Classroom Technology Tips for L&L” on the L&L group page of the iSTe Community ning ( www.iste-community.org/group/ landl), or email it to dfingal@iste.org.

it’s a common refrain from high school students about to endure another math lesson: “When are we ever going to use this stuff in real life?” As teachers, we understand that there are “real” uses for math. For high school students, however, it’s not as apparent. To respond to this challenge, we invited professionals in science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) careers to help us showcase the basic math concepts that are prevalent within their fields. We wanted students to see that the math they learn in school has value outside the classroom.

Our program, Scaling Up STEM Learning with the VCL (Virtual Computing Lab), works with high school algebra and geometry teachers in four counties in North Carolina, USA. We train teachers to use technologies such as Geometer’s Sketchpad software via a cloud computing resource, the Virtual Computing Lab, developed by North Carolina State University.

We also explore ways of motivating students to consider pursuing STEM careers, which requires higher-level math. We feel it is important to show them “what math does” by providing examples of math uses in everyday workplaces.

Our initial plan was to bring the experts, or role models, into the classrooms. But because of the distance, only a few were able to make even one classroom visit. We needed to find a different way to bring them to the students.

We decided to go to the role models’ workplaces and create a series of short videos. These videos would include an introduction, one or two examples of how math is used in their careers, and personal thoughts or examples about their own high school math experiences. By creating a role-model video library as a resource, teachers would give the students access to not just one expert, but up to 18, all representing different careers and workplaces. The final videos run three to four minutes and include images of the workplace (including labs, test facilities, and equipment) and, in some cases, graphs and charts.

When the architect speaks about solids, for example, he is pictured in front of a house with a digital overlay of the geometric shapes that inform the structure and design projected on the house.