Diversity

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Resources

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (n.d). Multicultural education. Retrieved from web. 

Campitelli, S. (n.d). Language: The key to social justice. Retrieved from web.  

Chimamanda, A. (2009). The dangers of a single story.  Retrieved from web.  

Craig, R. (1993). Social justice and the moral imagination. Social Education 57(6), 333-336. Retrieved from web.   

Definition of diversity. (n.d.). Retrieved from web.  

Hampton, C., & Lee, K. (n.d.). Strategies and activities for reducing racial prejudice and racism. Retrieved from web.

Learn NC (n.d.). Reaching every learner: Differentiating instruction in theory and practice. Retrieved from web.

 

Radical Math (n.d). Social justice math. Retrieved from web. 

  

Understood.org. (n.d.). Assistive technology. Retrieved from web.  

Name of Assignment: Concept Mapping 

Classroom use: Teachers can draw a concept map and pre-fill parts of it. For example, they may prefill with key terms. Students will then be assigned to define the key terms and give examples. Students may also be prompted to classify, identify similarities, identify differences, and sort the key terms accordingly. Additionally, concept maps may be used in ways similar to infographics which I discussed in my previous blog.

Issues to consider: There are not many issues that I can foresee with using concept maps. Two important considerations regard the reasoning behind using a concept map which may be to condense information and make otherwise subtle relationships more visible. In that case, it is important not to overcrowd your concept map, and to make sure the concept map is not oversimplifying complex relationships. 

Copyright: I used Gliffy to create this map. The ideas are from the resources cited above.

Photo Editing

Uses in the Classroom: Photo editing can be a great resource for teaching mathematics topics including transformations. Teachers can edit photos to show reflections, rotations, translation and scaling. At introductory stages a discussion can simply center at how the images have changed including identifying mathematical and nonmathematical changes. For example, students can notice that  the face in the third photo is bigger or scaled by by a number bigger than 1. In higher grades, the pictures can be put on a grid paper and students can be prompted to find exact answers to questions on transformations. Tessellation of student faces can also be a fun and cognitively engaging activity.

Photo editing is also a great tool for culturally relevant pedagogy. Students can take photos of their cultural artifacts and teachers can put the photos together into themes that align with different math units. Additionally,  teachers can take up the opportunity to discuss social justice issues including the implications of the tendency to scale women's photos or make the skin color of African Americans lighter.
Using photo editing as described here can improve learning by making your classrooms to be about your present students and their lives, thereby making your classroom relevant to them.

GIF

Photoshop GIF

Classroom use: With this gif, I want students to focus on identifying patterns as they count groups of objects. The animation blocks students from singly counting the dots and answers in the pictures reminds students that the focus is not the answer but how to get there. Students will discuss how best to count or the patterns that they have identified.  Students will then extend the pattern and draw the next stage. Older students should be able to determine the number of dots at 100th stage. The following gif can be used as an example of a very useful pattern when working with bigger numbers and can be shown as the lesson concludes. This activity involves identifying patterns and making inferences both of which are high level cognitive skills.

Issues to Consider:  Photoshop is not very user friendly and may be expensive but there are a lot of options that teachers can use such as https://pixlr.com and gimp . To be able to upload photos from photoshop to Pixlr, I needed to reduce the quality to zero so it might be better to edit and make a collage using the same host.

Copyright:  These are photos of my daughter and I,  taken by me. I edited them in photoshop and the collage was made using https://pixlr.com. I used photoshop, microsoft word, and http://www.gifpal.com to create these animated images.

Infographic

Assignment:  Infographic

Uses in the Classroom: This is a useful tool when concluding a unit, working with students with reading difficulties, or preparing for tests. When concluding a unit, you can use it to define concepts, identify similarities between concepts, or summarize the different strategies that can be used. For example, when working on finding the Greatest Common Factor, students or teachers can make an infographic that define GCF, outline the steps for different strategies such as factor trees, intersection of sets, division by primes and show examples for each strategy. Such an infographic can be very useful for students who have difficulties writing good math notes, those who have problems reading and processing words. It can also be used to study for exams. A student created infographic is an excellent culminating activity at the end of a unit that can be used later during the year and beyond.

Issues to Consider:  It can be time consuming or frustrating if students are creating an infographic using a tool that does not have an equation editor because that will require them to make all their equations separately and upload them. Currently, when using the equation editor on most macs, it freezes the computer or shuts it unexpectedly and quite often.

Copyright:  I created this infographic using http://www.easel.ly/ . I have used pictures and a built in template from http://www.easel.ly/

Instructional Video

Assignment name: Instructional video

Uses in the Classroom:  Instructional videos can be used to differentiate your lessons or for flipped classrooms. For differentiation, students can watch the videos before and after class, and stop the videos whenever they need to. Thus, the lesson goes at the pace of students allowing them as much processing time as necessary to practice the skills and to ask questions that may be critical to their understanding. Instructional videos also provide opportunities to include visuals in their lessons and cater for different modalities of learning. In this video, I have used different colors to signify different steps, a practice that is more practical with videos than in actual classrooms. For flipped or blended classrooms, students can watch videos and practice the skills before class. Then class time is used for application of ideas, and defending the reasoning behind the skills in the videos. Students may later use videos for review, especially in math where most students do not take good notes.

Issues to Consider:  Finding a very quiet place to record the videos either at home or school is a big challenge. Because I needed a white board, my original lesson was created using educreations and can be watched here. But that could only be watched by students who have internet access, and I needed to put it in a format that can be watched without internet. So I captured the original video as a screen cast. As teachers, we must make sure our videos are accessible to as many students as possible. Creating these videos and changing the formats takes a lot of time.

Copyright:  As mentioned, I used educreations and later screencast for my video. The math problems were typed using Microsoft word. I created the videos.

Screencasting

Excel

Jessie's Intro

Assignment Title: Talking Photos
Uses in the Classroom: Have students take photos of artifacts that are culturally relevant to them, and use fotobabble to describe their artifacts. Post the fotobabbles on a class website and use them to plan lessons that are culturally relevant.
Issues to Consider: Availability of cameras, internet, issues of bullying and cultural sensitivity.
Copyright:  This photo was taken by the author.