Mathematics with Technology

This podcast was on a very interesting and important subject that will be key to future teachers everywhere. Judy Chandler is a math teacher as well as technology junkie. She has been trying to integrate technology into the classroom for a while, and is now doing this by experimenting and giving Mac computers to teachers and students to heighten the experience of school everywhere. She has put her two favorite subjects, math and technology together to make for a very different informative classroom setting. She wants the students to actually get something out of a classroom right away and with the computers they can see what they are doing and how they need to correct it right away.

I believe that technology is a very important tool, especially since it has become such an important tool to our society over the past ten years. For one, technology and math come hand in hand. Many of the very intelligent people who have become innovators of different computer programs love and excel in math. I am not saying that computers wouldn’t be useful for something like history; I just believe that it is easy to relate and connect math and technology.

I believe what Judy Chandler has a great idea, it just needs to be followed through. I went to Hinsdale Central High School, a suburb of Chicago, and my junior year the school started a new program. Every teacher was given a Toshiba Notebook laptop and then there were some trial classes that got a classroom set of these laptops as well. These laptops work as regular computers but then you can turn it around and it acts like a Notepad where you can write on the screen. Many of the classes that I was in were the trial classrooms, and I loved them. At first the computers were annoying because there were many technical difficulties because they were so foreign to our tech support at school at the time, but as the weeks progressed, there was great improvement. The teachers would connect his or her computer to the screen in the class and the class would then do all of the work or take the notes on their notepad. Then we were able to email our notes to ourselves after. It seems like it is something you could do with a regular notebook, but it wasn’t the same. For example, in my math class, when taking notes you could change the color of your pen, and our teacher would do that a lot. The class would follow, so we could distinguish the steps a lot better and when we looked back we could tell what we did in the class previously. It was a very good tool and it even prepared me better for college.

I think that there need to be more advocates of Judy Chandler. Not only is she an intelligent woman, she is a great teacher with wonderful ideas. If people took her more seriously, classrooms could be more productive. I understand that many older teachers are afraid of the unknown, however, it’s never too late to learn. Technology is going to keep moving forward, even if we are not. Why not join the party now?