PROJECT PLAN

INQUIRY MODULE
GRACIE STANSBERRY & 9/24/2019

DESCRIPTION
The subject area I plan on pursuing is Secondary Education with an
emphasis of Mathematics. With the growth of technology around the
world advancing so fast, soon classrooms with have great access. I
would have to say I am not all good with technology but when I
explored it at the Ignited Lab, the technology was so simple that it
could expand the way teachers teach. Using technology in
classrooms can help keep teaching fresh as well as the students
being eager to interact with activities. The Sphero Sprk+ was
something that sparked my interest with using it for math. Thinking
about how silly it can come across, it gives students another view of
constant rate of change in real life and not just an example from a
textbook.

SUBJECT AREA OF INTEREST

I am interested in Secondary Education with a focus on Mathematics
because people tend to make math so complex when all you need to
do is “dumb it down”. There is nothing wrong with it being simple,
people are just so afraid when in reality they have never given it a
good try with a good teacher. There is just something I am
passionate about, it is teaching and helping students to not be afraid
of anything that could come in their way.
IGNITED LABS TECHNOLOGY AREA (XR)
For XR I decided that I wanted to further explore virtual reality to be
used for math. At first, I thought there could be no way that you
could use something so silly for high school math until I thought
about using it for real world situation. Students are taught how to
read a book and pass test but how will they keep the useful
knowledge if they can connect it to why we could use it. When they
use the VR it could put them in an empty lot and was told to build
something given certain formulas.

For each prompt – provide 1 – 2 paragraphs on your research

experience using each technology.

1. How do you think this technology will (or will not) change the
way people learn within your subject area?

With math being so hard for students I have asked many people I
know, and they said that they never understood math is because
they could not relate it to the real world. Why am I learning this if
this doesn’t help me? When I further analyzed VR is a perfect
opportunity to show them when certain aspect of when and how you
would use it in the real world. It could put a student on a golf
course, and you could tell them find the distance between hole 3 and
hole 5.

I don’t think that this technology will be put into classrooms for
math in my future since it is a very expensive and has more cons
than pros. Math needs to be updated for students to want to come
and learn but I think there are other cheaper ideas that all students
can do in an activity together. The VR is only for one person so it
would be difficult for the whole class to be engaged at the same
time.

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 2. What are some of the shortfalls of this technology currently?
What advancements (technologic or otherwise) are needed for
this technology to reach its potential to transform the way we
learn?

There are many downfalls of VR when you put it in any school. The
cost to have one is outrages when they can not even provide books
for each student. Even though it would help kids really grasp the
understand of math I don’t believe that they will put these in
classrooms. Also, VR is like a phone and once they get outdated,
you’ll need to upgrade them, so they are easy to use and get the
idea across for the students. The schools want to make a good
investment for their students so in the long run this would not meet
the criteria.

Describe how this technology might be utilized (for good or bad)

outside of its original intended purpose? Do you foresee anything we
should be wary of?

The main concern I have for the VR is that many kids will get
distracted easily and how it is very similar to video games. If you are
going to take up class time you want to make sure it is used for
good not for it to be a waste of time. Also, that there are probably
only going to have a few so one some kids might be able to do it in
one day so now this will take up for than one day to do this project.
Even though it would help the students understand it will take away
form the other material they need to learn for that course.

Virtual Reality can really get students to understand math in a

different way so they are not intimidated when it can just be broken
down in its simplest form. Students wont just also be sitting the
whole time, this gets them up and talking with other classmates.

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IGNITED LABS TECHNOLOGY AREA (AI)
I decided to explore the google voice kit to understand how this
could be used in a classroom setting. One thing I found that it could
be used to help control the environment of the classroom by having
it be easily accessible to facts or maybe calm classical music. Even
though it may not be used for math it could help understand basic
terms when you ask what the definition is.

For each prompt – provide 1 – 2 paragraphs on your research

experience using each technology.

1. How do you think this technology will (or will not) change the
way people learn within your subject area?

The google voice kit could help classrooms by being its right-hand
man. So instead of looking on the internet for facts about a certain
topic you can speak to the google voice box and it will share ideas
and facts to the whole class. This will make it a smooth class to just
ask instead of stopping the flow of ideas from the students to look
something up. The google voice box have access to the whole
internet from a small box so it is defiantly hard to believe that it
could help with questions that are on anyone’s mind. This would also
benefit the classroom for the student so they don’t pull out their cell
phones they could just ask the google voice box. Another idea to
incorporate the voice box would be when the class is working very
hard on an assignment the teacher can ask it to play some soft
classical music.

2. What are some of the shortfalls of this technology currently?

What advancements (technologic or otherwise) are needed for
this technology to reach its potential to transform the way we
learn?

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Well some of the shortfalls could be if a teacher relies on this
technology so much then the teacher could become lazy. So instead
of being prepared she could just be making the google voice box
guide her through instead of coming to school to teach prepared.
Another shortfall is when you build the voice box yourself, it could go
wrong, and it would not work right when it listens. Many wires could
be blown and or not connected right so instead of it helping you
would be spending so much time trying to just make it work right.

3. Describe how this technology might be utilized (for good or

bad) outside of its original intended purpose? Do you foresee
anything we should be wary of?

I feel this could really benefit the classrooms a lot so they have the
voice box to guide them through any questions they have. The voice
box is something that also could be abused like asking questions that
could make the whole class get track. When ideas role down the
wrong path sometimes it could be hard to get back to the activity
when the teacher is being involved. The students could also ask
questions for other classes to get the answer to the homework. Then
you think what the purpose of homework is when the students could
just copying the idea of what is said online. This is supposed to help
the class but defiantly could hurt it just as much.

IGNITED LABS TECHNOLOGY AREA (IOT)

Sphero Spark+ was something that caught my eye when I was at
the ignited lab. This is a plastic ball that is controlled through an app
on a device like a smart phone or an iPad. When you got it set up
you could make it do what you wanted with just a swipe on any
device. This could help me bring math alive for students to see it in
person and up close.

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For each prompt – provide 1 – 2 paragraphs on your research
experience using each technology.

1. How do you think this technology will (or will not) change the
way people learn within your subject area?

Sphero Spark+ can help kids be able to see math not just in a text
book, but with their own eyes. This technology can open up may
opportunity’s to also improve the way they teach by being more
creative when using the device. With the Sphero Spark+ you can
determine the constant rate of change when you control the device.
Yes, it is simple to just teach what it means on paper but they will
never forget the experience they had when they used technology to
real grasp the understand. This will also make them relate it back
into real world problems like how fast a train goes form distance a
and distance b.

Even with me teaching high school this can make them excited to
want to actually wake up and come to school when activities are
done to get them out of their seats.

2. What are some of the shortfalls of this technology currently?

What advancements (technologic or otherwise) are needed for
this technology to reach its potential to transform the way we
learn?

With there being many advantages there does come some

downfalls like the obvious one that students can get very distracted
very easily. They could easily just play around with the sphero like a
video game and make it be a big waste of time to do in class.
Another downfall is how you need a device for the Sphero Spark+
and how I want to teach in a lower income school may people may

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not be able to afford a smart phone. I don’t believe the school could
get funding for a class set of a device like iPads for this activity. So I
could limit students in many ways but I believe that it does more
positive than negative.

There has been issues with many of the Sphero Sprk+ with the
battery dying so fast so many people could not get the full use how
it could help students. They need to find the problem and advance
the battery life so that it could be use for a long period of time with
out it is having any issues.

3. Describe how this technology might be utilized (for good or

bad) outside of its original intended purpose? Do you foresee
anything we should be wary of?

Well defiantly using this device with out controlling what they do can
give the students the freedom to follow the rules of the activity or do
what they want. The teacher has to be around to supervise that
every group is using it for the good and not just to play around to
waste class time to understand the material. This could also be used
to help the students see math in a different view point. Everyone
says that math is so boring and all you do is take note and they are
mostly true. Students are always sitting and falling asleep and the
Sphero Spark+ can make the kids more engaged with math. This
could also help them in many ways of math for example finding the
distance between two different areas and creating triangle problems
that could come to life.

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RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS
Well everyone knows that the way classrooms are set up today are a
little outdated with the way the world is. The technology that is
formed today could defiantly benefit classrooms and reform the way
teacher teaches. I believe that schools will be just as techy as the
homes we live in today. When you look at technology it is constantly
changing and advancing so in reality that these ideas could be
associated within any classroom setting.

For Secondary Education for Math it gives many teacher and future
teachers like me, the idea of how we can incorporate new
technology for students to get their hands on. This will open up their
eyes to see a new way of how they can learn that the student may
have never knew about. The Sphero Sprk+ will allow students to
see how problems in a book can come to life and make really
understand why we would actually use this in a classroom setting.

PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE

This was a very useful project to get my hard on some technology
that could help advance teaching. This has shown me a different
view on how teachers could put simple technology’s in their class to
make class more interesting for the students and enjoying how the
students are understanding. I learned a lot about technology when I
visited the ignited lab when someone educated explained the
advantages and disadvantages. The lady was very interesting and
was hopeful for all of us to get into how technology is advancing for
the good.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS (OPTIONAL)

I thought this project helped open my eyes and see how there are so
many possibilities to help change the classroom.