Technology Trends in the Classroom

One cool thing that league schools do in my area is have a league-wide inservice where teachers can get together to share and collaborate on topics in their subject area.  This is great because, like myself, most other math teachers in the league are the only math teachers in the building.  We ARE the math department in each building.  So since we don't have people to talk with in our building, we get together once a year to discuss new trends and share ideas.  At the same time, my Baker class called for me to take inventory on technology in my school and classroom.  For an assignment, I created this Adobe Spark video highlighting some technology trends in today's classrooms.


At the league-inservice, my fellow math teachers and I discussed at length how we're using technology in our classroom and the common theme among our answers was that technology allows us to create both a more in-depth and personal learning experience for each student.  Take graphing for example.  We're able to use Desmos to have students explore, discover, and play with graphs at their own pace.  One teacher uses a lot of Marble Slides to teach transformations to her students.  Follow this link to check it out: https://teacher.desmos.com/marbleslides-parabolas.  Essentially, students have to transform parabolas in vertex form and alter their domain/range in order to create a track that a marble will run along.  Students win by having the marble collect all of the stars on the graph.  It was an addicting game as I practiced at the inservice, and I can't wait to use it with my class soon.  I feel like it perfectly embodies the technology trend of making learning more in-depth and personal.  Desmos allows students to explore the transformation properties at their own pace, while also providing opportunities for them to gain a more in-depth understanding through fun challenges students enjoy!