On Thursday April 19th I had the opportunity to work with my students on a math activity involving technology. I chose to do a lesson that involved the use of virtual manipulatives. Often the students are exposed to practice worksheets and fake coins when learning about money. This lesson involved the students using virtual manipulatives to practice counting money. One benefit of the site was that it allowed students to check their sums. It also allowed students to use virtual coins that looked more realistic than many of the plastic and paper coin cutouts available in classrooms. Also, the students can use the virtual manipulatives on computers at home to continue to practice their mathematical skills outside of the classroom.
I initially taught a lesson during the end of March that focused on making a sum of money using different combinations of coins. During this lesson I demonstrated how to use a virtual manipulatives website to practice counting money. The students used plastic coin manipulatives and created booklets to show ways that they can combine coins to make fifty cents. This lesson involved me guiding the students through virtual manipulatives as a web review of the class’s coin combinations, and I knew that it was not enough to count toward my lesson with technology. Instead I talked with my cooperating teacher and set up a review of the concepts with my students. In this way I did not have to create a brand new lesson for technology and I was able to assess how much the students truly understood and remembered from my lesson. A copy of the initial technology incorporated plan for the lesson can be found at http://katho3.wikispaces.com.
The class was split into Math Centers on Thursday, so during the center time I had the students do a money review with me on the three classroom desktops. When the first group of students sat down at the computers they immediately put on headphones. Many of the games and activities that they do on the computers involve audio directions from the computer, but in this case I had to ask them to take the headphones off. I found it a bit strange that they were automatically conditioned to use headphones at the computer. Once they all had their headphones off, I asked the students to access the coin manipulatives at http://www.eduplace.com/kids/mw/manip/mn_k.html. This was a huge task for the first grade students because they were not used to having to type in web addresses. I helped them type in the address. In the future I might create a hyperlink for them to click on in a word document on the y drive at their school, rather than having them struggle to type in an address. Next I had them click the “go” button. Once they got to the site, I asked them to click on “coins and bills” link to the manipulatives. A couple of the students during this step became a bit frustrated because they did not know where they were supposed to click on the link. I noticed that sometimes the students that knew what they were doing would help the other students catch up. I found this reassuring because I knew that at least some of the first graders had previous experience with using the internet. A few of the students even told me that they send emails to their family and friends. Working with small groups of students during this activity worked well. It would have been a bigger challenge to keep 23 first graders focused on the task with laptops. Perhaps in a lesson next year I will try to expose the students to a laptop activity in which they can work in small groups of three. However, for this lesson I think that using the desktops available in the classroom provided smooth transitions through the center activities and allowed for more review time.
Once the students were finally on the site I had them play with some of the different tools and buttons available. Since I wasn’t sure how much the students remembered from a couple weeks ago, I asked them to click on different buttons as I named functions. Some of the students easily remembered the tools available while others required a bit of prompting. The questions I used included “How do I know if my combination is correct? Where should I click to check my answer?” The answer would be that a student could click on the “123″ button to check the sum of their coin combination. “How can I rotate my coins to look at the other side of the coin?” The answer in this case would be that the rounded arrow allows students to look at the tails side of the coin. “Where can I find the different coins and bills?” The students would click on the stamp available in the top of the tool menu and then choose the coin or bill that they wanted to use. “How can I move the coins?” The student would click on the hand tool and can move the coins around the screen. “How can I clear a coin?” The students click on the small pencil eraser and then click on the coin. “How can I clear the entire screen?” The students click on the broom and then verify that they want to wipe the screen clean. I was surprised that after playing with the tools for a couple of minutes most of the students could easily answer all of these questions. When I asked them to come up with a couple combintations of coins that total fifty cents, none of them struggled to use the manipulatives and many of them came up with three or more ways to combine their coins. The students seemed to really enjoy being able to use the computer to do math practice activities. Many of them mentioned wanting to practice on their computers at home. One way that I made this activity a bit more collaborative amongst the students was by asking the students to look at eachothers combinations. Rather than simply checking their own work with the “123″ button they were also given the opportunity to count their classmate’s answer and see how other students created sums of fifty cents.
One problem that I encountered with the activity involved the use of the internet windows. While working through the activity one of the students accidentally clicked out of the virtual manipulative site. Rather than going to the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and clicking on the application, she immediately relaunched the “coins and bills” program. By doing this she cleared all of her input and got a bit frustrated with the program. In order to show her that in the future she did not have to reopen the program when she inadvertently clicks out of the box, I had her click out of it again. Next I directed her to the taskbar and had her click on the “eManipulatives” tab. Although she lost her coin combinations the first time by reloading the manipulatives when the screen was covered by another screen, I helped her figure out how to recover the screen in the future. I think that the lesson may be more valuable for her in the end.
Another problem I encountered while doing this activity during centers was that the entire class was eager to do computer activities with me. All of them have opportunities to do various reading and math activities on the computer throughout the week, but they can not get enough of computer time. I loved that they were excited to work with me, but the computers also served as a distraction. A few of them left their activities to come and ask me when they would get their turn. Its hard sometimes to make the students wait, and this would be one instance where I can understand the rationale of wanting to use laptops with the entire class. Perhaps having some of the students do math games on the computer while others do concept checks with virtual manipulatives would allow an instructor to work with all of the students at once. It still remains a bit unclear to me of how exactly to use computers with an entire classroom at once. I have not really witnessed examples in my practicum setting. I know that my cooperating teacher mentioned using laptops for reading and writing activities, but she also mentioned that they do not do this a lot. Overall, I think that the use of virtual manipulatives in the classroom worked really well. The students easily and eagerly practiced skills on the website. They also were eager to help me keep track of their work. I took digital photos of some of their responses, and many of them wanted me to take a lot of photos of the activity. Although I was a bit apprehensive about using internet technology with first graders, I am definitely learning that they are more skilled on computers than I thought. It definitely shows that they are not digital immigrants and pushes me to incorporate more technological activities in my lessons in the future.
