Grant+Proposal

=Best Buy FCS Grant Proposal 2009= media type="file" key="peanuts_teacher.wav"
 * School Background:** FCS is a private school for grades K-12. As a parent-run school, the school is supported by parents who pay both their local school taxes as well as tuition for their child to attend our school. Our school receives no government-based funding, so our budget is composed of tuition and special gifts from the community. Although enrollement has been steady, there has been no new spending in the area of technology. Spending has only increased in the area of teacher salaries in the attempt to give teacher's the standard cost of living increase and attract qualified teachers, yet the average teacher salary is well below the starting salary of a public school teacher.
 * Description of Project:** For many students, math is just a series of homework assignments, about 20-30 questions each where they are practicing math problems. To me, math is so much more than using a formula or knowing a procedure to solve a specific type of problem. The patterns found in mathematics help describe and explain our world.

Imagine what it would be like to see a classroom of students, all abilities and learning styles, engaged in mathematics, interacting and discovering mathematical concepts. What would it be like to integrate simple, yet affordable technologies to create a collaborative environment and student products, such as PowerPoint presentations or movies that would explain abstract concepts in a concrete, real-world way? Through an inquiry-based approach, **"Making Math Meaningful"** is a series of hands-on activities that have been developed to help students become more active in the math classroom. In these "math labs," students are given an activity in which they discover patterns and properties in mathematics. Students work within a group to discover these relationships and talk about them, then make conjectures and test out their ideas.

By using this model, students are able to remember abstract definitions and theorems because they discover them themselves and students are then able to adapt and apply their learning to problems, both in the textbook and problems found in the real-world.

Currently, these labs are having an impact in student retention of information as well as student engagement and motivation. All students actively participate in class, working through the lab assignment and checking their results with their classmates. Currently, I have one computer in my classroom and we have been doing these explorations using pen and paper. Because we are doing it the long way, we only have time to discover one part of the process (for instance, I assign an exploration for "scalene triangles" we don't have enough time to do it by hand to see other relationships, for instance if I change to an obtuse triangle or equilateral triangle.) With the one computer in my classroom, I have been extending the investigation myself on screen or taking several days of classtime to complete the full investigation.

See how we are using "Making Math Meaningful"


 * Purpose of the Grant:** The purpose of this grant proposal is to obtain handheld technology (the TI-Nspire) for each of my students to extend these proven activities even further. If students had the handheld technology, they could more quickly get through the investigations and work longer on the conjectures and higher-level thinking.

We would like to take this approach further by giving students technology that they can hold in their hands daily and use: the Texas Instruments TI-nSpire Graphing Calculators. With these calculators, students will be able to personally interact with data and graph solutions, input answers for instant assessment by teacher and work together with their groups to complete even more dynamic, interactive projects. With our students being able to interact with these ideas using these calculators, inquiry-based learning experiences can be developed for each unit. During these activities, “labs” are created where students work in groups, observe patterns, make conjectures, and apply these conjectures to various problem-solving situations. Currently, we do many of these activities with pen and paper constructions or I lead the activity with one computer, projecting content on board. By allowing students to interact with the technology themselves, it becomes a much more active process. In groups, students ask better questions, compare ideas and grapple with abstract concepts, ultimately discovering the larger concept and process. Students work through “counterexamples” to test their ideas and become more self-sufficient learners. For enrichment and honors level students, students have been encouraged to create slide shows, podcasts and/or mathcasts (videos plus audio) to explain and explore various concepts. See a sample here: __** Student Podcast on Phi's the Limit **__
 * Why technology in math education:**
 * greater motivation and student engagement
 * social collaboration - creation of content together
 * increase understanding of abstract concepts for real-world problems
 * algebraic, visual, numerical modeling of real-world problems
 * connect visual, graphical representations to abstract
 * differentiated instruction, remedial and enrichment opportunities
 * engage students of various abilities, learning styles and intelligences (tactile, kinethetic, etc)
 * Find out more about the [|TI-Nspire Calculator]**