Teacher Uses Apps to Make the Subject Fun

Noura Lahnoudi and Jillian Randels, both seventh-graders at Davenport School of the Arts, give the same answer when asked whether they like math.
They purse their lips, scrunch their noses and take a few seconds to decide whether they should answer honestly with their teacher standing just a few feet away.
Finally, they shake their heads.
"Not really."
But in Tracy Miller's class-room, math is different. Both girls agree their teacher makes the subject fun.
"We get to play games that involve math, but they're games," Jillian explained.
Noura said the technology-based games make learning math less boring for her.
On Friday morning, Miller's students prepared for a test on inverse operations and two-step equations by using an iPad application called Plickers. Divided into teams, the kids worked together to answer review questions and held cards high in the air, each card with a shape that represented an answer.
Miller then held an iPad in front of her and walked slowly across the front of the room. The app detected the shapes each team was holding up and recorded the answers, which were projected onto a screen in the form of a bar graph so students could compare responses.
Miller learned about Plickers, along with several other innovative learning programs, at the Siemens STEM Institute this summer, where she participated in a weeklong, all-expenses-paid fellowship outside Washington, D.C.
She was one of 50 educators chosen for the program, designed to promote hands on, real-world integration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the classroom.
Miller said working with educators from different subject areas and grade levels provided "a lot of insight into what other people are doing."
"It opens your eyes to all the different things that are available that you didn't know about," she said.
Another valuable takeaway from the fellowship was a program called Educreation, which allows teachers to create videos about working out equations by drawing on an iPad screen, just as they would on a whiteboard.
Miller makes short review videos for each lesson she teaches. She said they come in handy for students who are absent and parents who are trying to assist their children with homework.
A quick look around Miller's classroom showed that her teaching method is centered on technology. A board near the front of the classroom is decorated with paper birds resembling the Twitter logo. Under the heading "What's trending in learning?" are hashtag phrases such as #rational number, #additive inverse and #absolute value.
For the second half of the class period, each student takes to a laptop and logs on to Manga High, a program that uses games to teach math and allows students to compete against one another.
Miller's students have challenged classes in England and Australia.
For their lesson on adding and subtracting integers, Miller's students got creative. Some made videos, some recorded raps and some performed comedy skits.
Abigail Thomas used an app called Flipagram to create a video using photos and and audio clips.
By the end of class Friday, Miller's students had used a variety of apps, games, web sites, computer programs and originally created songs and videos to review the week's lesson. They should be weIl prepared for their test on integers.
But the games won't end when the test is turned in. This week's lesson is on solving inequalities.

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