Creating Innovative Uses of Technology:
An Individual Project
http://sharpstfcmu.pbwiki.com/Project-II
Personal technology devices that create student learning in math
By Fred Sharpsteen
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Rationale: This research is on an innovative technology made by Nintendo. It is called the DS Lite. With this device, we are going to be discussing a program that is used with the DS Lite called the Personal Math Trainer. The Nintendo DS Lite is one of the devices that comes to mind when I think about a personal technology device. This device is often already owned by most students, who use it as an electronic entertainment device. We will look at how we can take this device and turn it into a personal learning tool. Also, we will be looking at an educational software tool called the Personal Math Trainer. This software is a 10 x 10 math exercise practice program. The 10 x 10 math exercise has been done with paper and pencil for many years in education. The innovation is that with this method of practice the students get 1.5 to 2.8 more practice exercises in the same amount of time. The Personal Math Trainer has 22 levels of difficulty as the students progress with their skills. This way the students are continually challenged as they achieve higher levels of mastery of the subject content. Also, after the students have performed their daily practices and study, they can then compete with 2 to 15 other students wireless. The way that is accomplished is the Nintendo DS Lites have wireless conductivity built into them. The students can work on mastery of addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. As the levels of difficulty increase, the problems move from single digit to two digits and then three digits.
The study referred to in my research was conducted with 3,700 students. It also focused on some other factors that help student learning. One important factor was the amount of student sleep. The study found that students who received 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night had achievement gains as much as 20% over students receiving just more than or less sleep than this.
The original research was completed by Hideo Kageyama at Ritsumeikan University. This method of instruction showed that brain activity after using this method of math practice has dramatic changes in the brain pattern as indicated by monitoring the areas of electrical patterns in the learners’ brains. This study also shows the best gains with students that were close to 10 years old.
As you look through the two lesson plans, you will find them to be very simple exercises that promote cognitive retention with the use of practice exercises instead of pure rote memorization.
I am very impressed with the early results after I purchased a couple copies of the Personal Math Trainer and have been working with my ten-year old daughter. We have not had a chance to check her standardized test scores yet, but we have visually seen her math speed increase dramatically with the daily use of the device. Also, we have turned it into a family activity that has engaged her in further student learning. In addition, I have purchased four of these cartridges for a 3rd grade classroom in our school district to see how well the staff can implement them into the classroom, to see if there are any roadblocks we would need to overcome, and, if so, how to best deal with them. If this project is a success, we will look at ways to build in the purchase of more Nintendo DS Lites for starting out with next year’s 3rd and 4th grades. I could also see using these tools as a Response to Intervention (RTI) for the 20% of the students who may have missed a concept and are now behind. We need to find interventions to help them catch back up with their peer cohort group.
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Lesson One
Rationale: To have the students complete the daily reinforcement of basic math skills; to do the daily activities and compete against themselves, working towards achieving higher levels of math mastery from levels 1 to 22 in skills.
1. A brief description of the lesson plan: Daily practice activity performed by each student to reinforce student mastery of subject. Students will take their Nintendo DS Lite, complete their daily activity, and then have the DS record it in the attendance area of the program.
2. The technology and resources involved (e.g. facility, network, equipment, software, on-line program, website's URL): The technology used will be the Nintendo DS Lite and a program called Personal Math Trainer.
3. What skills, knowledge, and pedagogy are required of teachers?: Some basic understanding of the Nintendo DS Lite program, such as—
How to turn on the unit
How the touch screen works and how to input the numbers on the touch screen.
How to check daily attendance or student days practiced.
After talking with the 3rd - 4th grade split room teacher, she told me that after working on this project she found 50% of her students had a Nintendo DS Lite and that students who had the units helped the students that didn't on how to use the unit. This is a great learning tool by itself because it shows a high level of Blooms Taxonomy as students have to synthesize what they know to teach someone else the skills they have.
Also, the learning curve to implementation was extremely quick for students, even students who had no experience.
4. What prior skills and knowledge are required of students? There are only very basics skills needed of how the Nintendo DS Lite functions. Most students already know how to use these devices so the learning time is very quick.
5. What are students asked to do exactly (product or process)?: The (process) that the students are asked to complete is called a 10 X 10 math practice session. They do a flash card exercise and some basic math problem solving (5+4=x 7-3=x 4x5=x 20/5=x) and the problems get harder as the levels increase from level 1 to level 15.
6. What are the procedures of the project (steps to teach the technology skills)?: Some reinforcement of basic math skills would be helpful before students start to work on the 10 X 10 math problems.
The project procedures would include these items--
Students will bring Nintendo DS Lite with them to school if they have parental approval; if not, the school will provide a unit for the students to use.
School will provide the student with the Personal Trainer Math cartridges.
Students would work on their daily activity, trying to do the practice sessions every day, including Saturday and Sunday. This activity takes approximately 10 minutes a day.
If time allowed, students could challenge each other in group math exercises.
Students as they have extra time also can work on independent practice.
The instructors can monitor progress by the level achieved by the students as they move from level 1 to level 22.
Assessment would be done at the start of the coursework with pre-assessment in AIMS Web and a post-assessment at the end.
All students not achieving adequate progress would be placed in this program to help in a Response to Intervention (RTI) for them.
All other students will work on further mastery of subject content but will not be assessed on a weekly basis.
7. What are the advantages of the project?: It allows students to complete between 1.5 and 2.3 more work because the students get instant feedback without having to wait for the teachers to correct the solutions to the questions. The time saved allows students to complete more questions as in the automated correction of assessments.
8. What are the disadvantages of the project?: I don’t see any disadvantages unless it would be that not all students may have a Nintendo DS Lite but at a cost of $129.00 each, they are very affordable for schools and parents to purchase. This is always a concern when we decide to make assignments based on technology that there is equal access by all students.
9. What type of effective instructional strategies are included?: Math 10 x 10 is a very effective instructional strategy to student mastery of these types of many questions and solutions.
10. What are the possibilities that the innovation can be transferred to other teachers, subject content, and different school settings?: I think this has great potential for transferring to other teachers and different school settings. It most likely will not be as transferable to other content learning areas.
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Lessson Two
Rationale: To have the students complete the daily reinforcement of basic math skills; to do the daily activities and compete against themselves, working towards achieving higher levels of math mastery from levels 1 to 22 in skills.
1. A brief description of the lesson plan: Math reinforcement with 10 X 10 math challenge between 2 and 15 students. This lesson plan takes the built-in wireless capabilities of the Nintendo DS Lite to challenge students in speed math.
2. The technology and resources involved (e.g. facility, network, equipment, software, on-line program, website's URL): The Nintendo DS Lite and Personal Math Trainer.
3. What skills, knowledge, and pedagogy are required of teachers?: The teachers will need basic math skills to help with student learning as they compete with other students.
4. What prior skills and knowledge are required of students? None, as they should have learned the basic skills needed for this exercise with the first lesson plan on daily activities and attendance.
5. What are students asked to do exactly (product or process)?: Students are asked to complete a process with the math calculations in competing with other students. The (process) is the 10 x10 math grid and doing them as fast as the student can with very few errors.
6. What are the procedures of the project (steps to teach the technology skills)?: Basic steps and procedures will have been learned in the first lesson plan. You will go over how the completion would work as it relates to the speed versus error rate the students are expected to do.
7. What are the advantages of the project?: To help students to become more proficient in their math skills without just encouraging rote memorization of the math tables and facts.
8. What are the disadvantages of the project?: Not all students have these units. Students who do not have them would have to check the units out from the library or another location in the school.
9. What type of effective instructional strategies are included?: Instant feedback, healthy student competition with other peer students without everyone else knowing how individual students scored in the group of 2 to 15 students; reinforcement of math tables and math skills being taught at the different grade levels; and the ability of students to use this technique to complete 1.5 to 2.3 more math problems than using traditional math with paper and pencil 10 X 10 block assessments.
10. What are the possibilities that the innovation can be transferred to other teachers, subject content, and different school settings?: Some of the math stimulation may carry over to other content areas but, for the most part, this activity will only transfer to other teachers teaching math and different school settings as far as grade levels.
Standards covered in these lessons
Michigan Grade Level Content Expectations (GLEC)
1st Grade GLEC
Add and subtract whole numbers
N.ME.01.08 List number facts (partners inside of numbers) for 2 through 10, e.g., 8 = 7 + 1 = 6 + 2 = 5 + 3 = 4 + 4; 10 = 8 + 2 = 2 + 8.
N.MR.01.09 Compare two or more sets in terms of the difference in number of elements.
N.MR.01.10 Model addition and subtraction for numbers through 30 for a given contextual situation using objects or pictures; explain in words; record using numbers and symbols; solve.*
N.MR.01.11 Understand the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction, e.g., subtraction “undoes” addition: if 3 + 5 = 8, we know that 8 - 3 = 5 and 8 - 5 = 3; recognize that some problems involving combining, “taking away,” or comparing can be solved by either operation.
N.FL.01.12 Know all the addition facts up to 10 + 10, and solve the related subtraction problems fluently.
N.MR.01.13 Apply knowledge of fact families to solve simple open sentences for addition and subtraction, such as: ■ + 2 = 7 and 10 - ■ = 6.
N.FL.01.14 Add three one-digit numbers.
2nd Grade GLEC
Add and subtract whole numbers
N.FL.02.06 Decompose 100 into addition pairs, e.g., 99 + 1, 98 + 2…
N.MR.02.07 Find the distance between numbers on the number line, e.g., how far is 79 from 26?
N.MR.02.08 Find missing values in open sentences, e.g., 42 + ■ = 57; use relationship between addition and subtraction.
N.MR.02.09 Given a contextual situation that involves addition and subtraction using numbers through 99: model using objects or pictures; explain in words; record using numbers and symbols; solve.*
N.FL.02.10 Add fluently two numbers through 99, using strategies including formal algorithms; subtract fluently two numbers through 99.*
N.FL.02.11 Estimate the sum of two numbers with three digits.*
N.FL.02.12 Calculate mentally sums and differences involving: three-digit numbers and ones; three-digit numbers and tens; three-digit numbers and hundreds.
Understand meaning of multiplication and division
N.MR.02.13 Understand multiplication as the result of counting the total number of objects in a set of equal groups, e.g., 3 x 5 gives the number of objects in 3 groups of 5 objects, or 3 x 5 = 5 + 5 + 5 = 15.
N.MR.02.14 Represent multiplication using area and array models.
N.MR.02.15 Understand division (÷) as another way of expressing multiplication, using fact families within the 5 x 5 multiplication table; emphasize that division “undoes” multiplication, e.g., 2 x 3 = 6 can be rewritten as 6 ÷ 2 = 3 or 6 ÷ 3 = 2.
N.MR.02.16 Given a situation involving groups of equal size or of sharing equally, represent with objects, words, and symbols; solve.*
N.MR.02.17 Develop strategies for fluently multiplying numbers up to 5 x 5.*
3rd Grade GLEC
Add and subtract whole numbers
N.FL.03.06 Add and subtract fluently two numbers through 999 with regrouping and through 9,999 without regrouping.*
N.FL.03.08 Use mental strategies to fluently add and subtract two-digit numbers.
Multiply and divide whole numbers
N.MR.03.09 Use multiplication and division fact families to understand the inverse relationship of these two operations, e.g., because 3 x 8 = 24, we know that 24 ÷ 8 = 3 or 24 ÷ 3 = 8; express a multiplication statement as an equivalent division statement.
N.MR.03.10 Recognize situations that can be solved using multiplication and division including finding “How many groups?” and “How many in a group?” and write mathematical statements
to represent those situations.*
N.FL.03.11 Find products fluently up to 10 x 10; find related quotients using multiplication and division relationships.
N.MR.03.12 Find solutions to open sentences, such as 7 x ■ = 42 or 12 ÷ ■ = 4, using the inverse relationship between multiplication and division.
N.FL.03.13 Mentally calculate simple products and quotients up to a three-digit number by a one-digit number involving multiples of 10, e.g., 500 x 6, or 400 ÷ 8.
4th Grade GLCE
Add and subtract whole numbers
N.FL.04.08 Add and subtract whole numbers fluently.
Multiply and divide whole numbers
N.ME.04.09 Multiply two-digit numbers by 2, 3, 4, and 5 using the distributive property, e.g., 21 x 3 = (1 + 20) x 3 = (1 x 3) + (20 x 3) = 3 + 60 = 63.
N.FL.04.10 Multiply fluently any whole number by a one-digit number and a three-digit number by a two-digit number; for a two-digit by one-digit multiplication use distributive property to develop meaning for the algorithm.
N.FL.04.11 Divide numbers up to four-digits by one-digit numbers and by 10.
N.FL.04.12 Find the value of the unknowns in equations such as a ÷ 10 = 25; 125 ÷ b = 25.*
N.MR.04.13 Use the relationship between multiplication and division to simplify computations and check results.
N.MR.04.14 Solve contextual problems involving whole number multiplication and division.*
Resources
http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2007/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=39352646&selection_id=41896499&rownumber=1&max=1
http://kageyamahideo.com/method/KageyamaMethod.pdf
http://www.districtadministration.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=1164&p=8
http://www.districtadministration.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=1172
http://www.drtomorrow.com/lessons/lessons5/08.html
http://www.edutopia.org/start-pyramid?page=3
http://www.edutopia.org/measuring-what-counts-memorization-versus-understanding
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kafai/faculty/Book_CIP_Intro.html
http://www.papert.org/articles/SituatingConstructionism.html
http://www.technologyquestions.com/technology/tablet-pc-bloggers/126938-practicing-kanji-tablet-pc-umpc.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article3556410.ece
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