Technology

This section is for the documentation of technologies that may be useful in the teaching of Intermediate/Senior level mathematics.

Clickers
I like clickers. They seem like a simple and effective way of getting a student involved. This technology allows the participation of students who may feel uncomfortable or insecure. The anonymity (on the students end) would allow them to respond, while my knowledge of which student answered correctly or incorrectly would let me tailor any assistance I would offer the class or any of the students. In essence, clickers give instantaneous feedback to both the student and the teacher. The clickers also allow for student engagement with relatively little effort.

Unfortunately there are also some downsides to use of clickers. The first problem would be administrative. One would need to determine whether to lose class time each time there was to be a clicker portion of the lesson or to lend them out for the year. If the latter option was to be selected, one would need to come up with a policy for lost/stolen or forgotten clickers. A second and more relevant problem would be whether or not to show the graphical results for any of the questions. I suppose if you were to only show the results after the voting had been closed, it would be fine. If you were to show the graph before voting has stopped, a student may change their response if they see that they are in the minority. This could undermine knowledge and understanding if the student who was in the minority was also correct.

I suppose there are two key questions I have:
 * 1) Do students like to use them?
 * 2) Does it improve their learning?

**Pirate Pad** The pirate pad is a web-based notepad where multiple people can write and collaborate. It allows multiple students to get involved by posting all at once. Similar to clickers, the option for anonymity is available. I can see the benefits to having this real-time ability to collaborate without someone standing at the board as the "recorder".

I would guess that the drawbacks to this have to do with maturity and cost. Even in a university class where the students are adults, there has been a tendency to misbehave with the aid of the tool. The ability to erase or edit another's work anonymously could cause some concern. The ability to anonymously write inappropriate things is also a problem if the students aren't mature enough. The teacher would have to gauge this on a class by class basis. The other problem is cost. While both Pirate Pad and iEtherpad are free to use, there is a limit as to how many people can be on one free pad at a time. iEtherpad has a limit of 16. I am not sure of Pirate Pad's limit but I have witnessed it. I suppose that this limits it to pair or group work as I don't see the regular class size for intermediate/senior dropping to 15 any time soon.

Pirate Pad: [] iEtherpad (a similar web-based notepad): []

WBLTs
//Coming soon.... where soon is defined as eventually//

Wikispaces
A wiki can be looked at as an online filing system. It can file just about anything: thoughts, lists, links to other more interesting sites, files etc. It can also be used for its ability to allow communication and collaboration within the community of people with access to it, much like CURS 4140 is managed. I think that the resource has many benefits that are limited by only the creativity of the user. I think that it would be a good thing to keep as a teacher for all the students that have access to it.

Once again, the primary drawbacks to this tool seem to be financial. The privacy settings are very restrictive unless one were to pay the subscription fee to maintain it. As such the pages are public and can be viewed by anybody with internet access. A better alternative to creating a safe and secure website is Google Sites.

Blog
I suppose this could be educational. The purpose of this is to allow someone to post his/her thoughts online in a journal of sorts. In the case of teachers, it could be one place to reflect. Unfortunately, I think that a pen and paper would make just as good a journal as a digital one. I never see myself using this.

Jing
Jing videos allow a person to capture an image of what they are working on the screen while their voice is being recorded. In terms of instruction it has both positives and negatives. The benefits include a clear, concise description........