CAS, CDGS, wikis ... and teaching resources

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CAS, CDGS, wikis ... and teaching resources

• Matija Lokar, Faculty of mathematics and physics
• University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

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ICT and teaching process

• UNESCO study (2005) ICT potentially offers
  numerous advantage and provides opportunities
  for
• facilitating learning for children who have
  different learning styles and abilities,
• making learning more effective, and
• providing a broader international context for
  approaching problems as well as being more
  sensitive response to local needs.

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ICT and teachers

• ICT enables teachers to save time and increase
  productivity in
• preparing and updating daily lessons
• plans, making hard copy visualisations and
  handouts for classes, as well as individualised
  educational plans for slower students and
  students with disabilities or with special
  problems
• presenting visual/oral content materials, tasks,
  and questions to the audience
• maintaining grade books
• compiling a data bank of exam questions
• online inspection and correction of students
  work on their computers

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ICT impact review (2006)

• Use of ICT in education has been priority in most
  European countries during last decade (or at
  least it is said so in official policies)
• Progress has been uneven
• Small percentage of schools have embedded ICT
  into the curriculum, demonstrating effective and
  appropriate ICT use
• Most schools are in early phase of ICT adoption
• Uncoordinated provision and use

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Points about teaching math

• ICT impacts positively on educational performance
  in primary schools, particular in English and
  less so on science and not in mathematics.
• there is a positive association between the
  length of time of ICT use and students
  performance in PISA mathematics tests.
• Schools with higher levels of e-maturity
  demonstrate a more rapid increase in performance
  scores than those with lower levels.
• Schools with good ICT resources achieve better
  results than those that are poorly equipped.

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Use or not

• Political issue
• Technology is here!
• Ask teachers
• Year 2000 all secondary school math teachers
• Approximately 1/3 strongly against CAS in
  teaching math
• Follow up survey scheduled this year
• Not performed, probably increase between those
  against!

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Teaching resources

• One of the main concerns
• Give us appropriate materials and we will be
  probably convinced

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Interviews with teachers

• Electronic teaching materials (ETM) often offer
  too much guidance without the possibility of
  turning this function off or to fine tune it
  according to the teachers or learners needs.
• Lack of suitable ETM
• Dubious quality of some of the teaching
  materials,
• Too demanding ways of adapting the materials
• lack of proper classification of the materials
• Problems with searches

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Modifying ETRs

• Too many / not enough resources
• Problems with quality
• Quality assesment also through peer evaluation
• Modifying the resources
• Closed form solutions are not popular
• To adapt the ETR to teachers style, age of
  students, cultural background ...

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Best resources

• Small
• they can be easily combined
• Simple
• Easily to understand
• Easily adaptable
• Proper licencing model
• Suitable and simple tools
• Equiped with teachers opinions
• Show us real ways of use
• Easily accessible
• Web

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Web 2

• Social software
• Blogs, wikis, RSS feeds
• Podcasting, videoblogs ...
• Sites Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia ...
• To develope Web content collaboratively

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Wiki

• In short a wiki is a website that allows
  visitors to add, remove, and edit content
• A wiki is a type of website that allows users to
  easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all
  content, very quickly and easily, sometimes
  without the need for registration. This ease of
  interaction and operation makes a wiki an
  effective tool for collaborative writing. The
  term wiki can also refer to the collaborative
  software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates
  the operation of such a website (see wiki
  software), or to certain specific wiki sites,
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

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Properties of wiki site

• Anyone can change anything
• Processes of reading and editing are combined
• Edit link instant revisions
• simplified hypertext markup
• Content is ego-less, time-less, and never
  finished
• Anonymity is not required but is common
• Multiple contributors to a page
• in a constant state of flux

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Wikis and ETR

• wikis offer a very convenient way for
  distribution and collection of such materials.
• wiki encourages participation of all users.
• it invites the teachers to become truly involved
  in the materials they use,
• they can modify and improve the course materials
  on their own.

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Some facts

• Teachers want simple ETMs than can be easily
  changed
• Using ETM bring new ideas, ways of modifications
  and adaptation of existing resources
• substantiality of material repositories -
  achieved through community
• We have a very good and simple collaborative tool
  wiki

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CAS / CDGS resources Wiki

• ... in early development phase

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ETR wiki

• Various free resources regarding teaching math
  with CAS / CDGS ...
• Search capabilities / indexes
• MediaWiki categories
• Easily maintained, easily changed, hierarhicaly
  sorted

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Categories

• Sort of resource
• Lab exercises, assesment, usage guides ...
• Topics
• Functions, graphs, equations ...
• Type of resource
• Worksheets, repetition tasks ...
• Type of school
• Primary, secondary, vocational, gymnasium, school
  year
• Programs
• Mathematica, Derive, Cabri Geometre ...

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Some design decisions

• Program idependency (if possible)
• With links to certain program instructions
• Easly added new programs
• Links to complete resources
• Subpages with good practise examples
• Completely open first time
• quality seal afterwards if necessary

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• I have been really surprised when I
  unintentionally discovered this wiki. I think it
  is a great idea. How often I notice a mistake in
  the worksheet I got. I would like to correct it
  to add a bit of additional value, but e-mailing
  the author (if it is known at all) Here I just
  click and correct the mistake. Great. I really
  hope more resources would be available this way!