Learning with Technology

I finally had one of those moments in the classroom when I think, "This is what it's all about!" An adult student who has been taking math upgrading with us for three years to try to become an electrician is now taking Principles of Math 11. It's possible to do the course without a graphing calculator, so he was merrily chugging along without one. However, one unit is very graphing-intensive, and the student is very meticulous in his work, so it was taking him a long time to do all the graphs. I managed to talk him into trying out the graphing calculator. Within a few minutes, he was able to produce the graphs that he needed. Over the course of a few evening classes, he and I learned how to check for roots, find the intersection points of two curves and find points where the graph is interrupted.

However, the "Aha" moment came for me when, after producing several graphs, the student made and confirmed a discovery about assymptotes. He started to see a connection between the equation of the assymptote and the denominator of the rational expression. I'm not sure that he would have learned on his own by hand drawing the graphs. Because it takes so long to draw each graph, by the time he would get to the next graph, any patterns that he might see would be obscured.

In this case, the technology was used as a tool for discovery-based learning. Because of the connections that the student made on his own, I think that he will remember the concept much better than reading it in a textbook or having the teacher tell him. This, I think, is one of the best uses of technology in a math class, and one that I will now keep my eyes open for in order to encourage the same type of learning with other students.