In order to engage digital native student into effective learning, educators need to know the language of today’s students. Today’s students, grown up with new technology, are different from those of past. We need to learn and incorporate technology into our pedagogy and facilitate technology enriched learning environment to motivate today’s students actively involve in constructing knowledge and help them achieve better learning outcomes. Otherwise, the embarrassed situation could happen in classroom when a teacher is taught by some students how to use technology. How are other students thinking about?

Reference:

Jonassen, D. (2006). Modeling with Technology: Mindtools for Conceptual Change (3rd Edition). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall.

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-  The technology-enriched pedagogy shold be promoted in secondary classroom. Use technologies that are relevant and available such as CAS calculators, computing software to help students understand mathematical concepts rather than use them as computational tools.

-  The role of a mathematical teacher should be transformed from a teacher-centred practitioner to a learner-centred practitionner. Use of technologies could facilitate student-centred learing environment and encouge students to graphically explore and better understand mathematical ideas and principles. It depends on to what extent we understand and employ constructivst approaches to teaching and learning.

- As a pre-service teacher, I am aware of that the prefessional community  of mathematics teachers will have an impact on a teacher’s attitude to use technologies, and vice versa. I need to update the knowledge of technologies and prepare for the technology-enriched pedagogical practice.

As we know, some children are academically behind other kids partly because of over indulgence in games. Their parents think their kids have wasted too much time on games. Games will not be generally accepted as a learning tool by most parents. People usually have the prejudice against games.

Eck (2006) in his “Gigital Game-Based Learning (DGBL)” maintained that games as learning tools are effective and engaging. He also suggested that Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) games are currently the most cost-effective approach of three DGBL approaches in terms of quality and functionality.

Salend and sylvestre (2005) emphasized that active academic games can be one of  effective ways to integrate novelty into instructional process. They also believed that “games should be cooperative rather than competitive and should be structured to involve all students”.

I suggest that we should focus on

1. How effective the educational games will be?

2. What are the academic games? Or how can we choose good games with the balance of high academic quality and amusement?

3. How can we incorporate DGBL into secondary classroom?

I will continue to explore the topic of DGBL…..

The core of Maths teaching is working mathematically. It requires teachers to consider if their teaching content is related to everyday life in the real world. It also provides teachers opportunities to become risk-takers by incorporating technology into their teaching methodology to help these digital kids ‘attack’ some real world problems. The technology includes graphics calculator, spreadsheets and geometer sketchpad software, and even more sophisicated software like Mathematica and SPSS. Using technology is one of the requirements of NSW Mathematics Years 7–10 Syllabus.

In terms of our next practicum, we have no fixed ideas about strategies to incorporate technology into our lessons. It will very much depend on the resources available at the schools and what we may learn from the remainder of this subject. We are both open to new ideas but have to be convinced that the use of technology is more than just window dressing, that it serves a real purpose in engaging the students and producing better educational outcomes.

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My blog just started. I am a pre-service maths teacher. All welcome to join me to discuss the philosophy of teaching maths in secondary education.