The Internet

In some ways, actually in almost every way, writing about this article is laughable. The reality is that when I begin teaching as a secondary educator the era of pre-internet children will have graduated some six or seven years earlier? This however is the nature of published work about technology which in this case, became quickly dated. The author, Enrique Galindo, of Mathematics Teaching and Learning Supported by the Internet identifies five categories for incorporating technology in the classroom - resources, access to data, collaborative projects, video, and authoring.

The first and most relevant category Galindo identifies is resources. This category is particularly useful to secondary teachers entering the classroom for the first time as well as current teachers looking to improve their classroom experience. He highlights three subcategories including professional information, interactive resources, and curriculum materials which he provides specific examples of. For me the take-away was that the internet provides easy access to information which was previously not readily available to the general public. Everything else is simply a result of the availability of this information. One interesting note are the applets mentioned under interactive resources. The advantage of these web-based interactive applets is free access and lack of need for locally installed software. These applets which seem dated now, I would guess have served as the predecessors for many iOS apps which are changing learning in the classroom today.

The next three categories - access to data, collaborative projects, and video all fall under newly available resources in my opinion.  The internet has allowed the general public access to these tools which are really resources. Access to data seems simple and obvious in my opinion. The ease of communicating and reaching a larger and broader audience is as simple as creating a survey on free site and sending it to multiple list-serves. This task previously would have required polling or mailing hundreds/thousands of letters can now be performed by someone with very minimal computer/programming knowledge. Collaborative projects can now utilize video chat, email, and various forms of multimedia communication only available as a result of the internet. Currently I'm participating in a letter writing project (LWP) with high school student in Ohio, providing tasks and eliciting feedback on task generation without ever having met the students or spoken with them outside of electronic communication. This is the electronic age we live in. Video in my opinion falls to the common knowledge, although in 2005 at the time this was published may have been cutting edge, wonder what he would have said if I told him in seven years we'd be watching the Olympics in London live on our cell phones?

Originally I had grouped authoring into the resources category above, but then decided to take it a step further and fill in the blanks since the article was published. Galindo touches on the ability to publish ones work and elicit criticism and feedback, as well as provide examples of lesson plans for specific topics which was great at the time. One thing Galindo was not able to discuss, because it wasn't possible at the time of publication, is the authoring, creation, and widespread distribution of applications for mobile devices including the iPad. The internet has completely changed since Galindo wrote this article seven years ago, there's no way he could have imagined the possibilities of iOS and applications like Educreations and The Khan Academy. The internet is in transition from being THE resource to simple being the parent of the new "internet" - applications and mobile content.

Finally, he identifies six principles to determine if technology is appropriate for a mathematics exercise.  I believe these six principles are still relevant, possibly the only part of this publication that doesn't seem so in the face obvious.

References:

Galindo, E. (2005). Mathematics teaching and learning supported by the internet. In W. J. Masalski (Ed.), Technology supported mathematics learning environments (67th ed., pp. 241-261). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.