AOLE: Part 2 By Katie Hewett

Experienced Users

In today’s society, the education system contains both digital natives and immigrants (Jude, et al., 2014). Digital Native students are people born after 1980, growing up in the digital age and around technology, whereas Digital Immigrants commonly are learning how to use technology as adults (Prensky, 2001). He also argues that digital immigrants make themselves known in several ways, an example being printing out a document and filling it out with paper and pen rather than editing the document online and emailing it back (Prensky, 2001).

Here are some of the typical stereotypes that come with the Digital Immigrant or Digital Native titles:

Gaston (2006) argues that one of the biggest issues in today’s education is that students have grown up in this interactive and highly stimulating environment (digital natives) and are struggling to be taught and reached by the teachers who did not (digital immigrants). However, Guo (2008) argues that there is “limited information regarding the relationship between age and ICT competency”. Looking at this, it could suggest that so long as adequate training is given to teachers of all abilities, they will excel in the digital world. Speaking from a personal perspective, being a Digital Native, I have been expected to know how to use a new piece of technology, although never having seen or worked with it before. I did pick it up quite quickly, whereas someone who is a Digital Immigrant may have struggled.

Luan et al. (2005) conducted a studied which concluded that teachers who had longer exposure to technology and were therefore more experienced, had more control over the internet and how they used it in education. It’s like the old saying – practice make perfect. The more practice and experience teachers and students have with technology, then the more digital competent they are going to feel.

How can teachers use technology effectively?

So, taking everything into consideration, how can teachers use technology effectively in a classroom setting? In our seminars, we had experience with a multitude of different pieces of technology, including the green screen mentioned previously and this short stop motion animation that was created by myself and my team using a stop motion video maker app on the iPads

Creating this stop motion animation allowed us to play around with technology that we had never experienced before. By the end of the seminar, we were able to set up the iPads on a tripod and complete this task with little to no help given. Wishart (2017) argues that using stop motion animation in a classroom setting not only promotes digital learning but creates opportunities for discussion and collaboration between peers. It was also found that it allowed them to experience storyboarding, editing and even art when physically creating their characters (Wishart, 2017).

Another way that teachers can effectively use technology is through the world of Virtual Reality (VR). I recently visited Maerdy Community Primary School and was lucky enough to help set up and conduct lesson using the VR headset with a reception class. In this lesson, the students were able to fully immerse themselves into the land of the minibeasts. With the ClassVR headsets, we were able to scaffold their learning and engage them in exploring the topic at hand.

Introduction

Across education, one of the most harmful ideas is that having a ‘math brain’ is possible, as it allows students to believe that high achievement is only accessible to some (Boaler et al., 2018). This can cause what is known as Maths anxiety. Maths anxiety is a common issue in education as having this fear towards the subject directly links to a student’s performance (Maloney et al., 2015). Maths anxiety can form from many places, Whyte and Anthony (2012) argue that it can stem directly from parents who unintentionally transfer their stress and fear of numeracy from their school days on to their child. Here is a video which explains Math anxiety in more detail, and how it can harm students in their academic success:

In this blog we will be looking at just some of the ways in which improving mindsets and tackling anxiety can be achieved. We will be looking at what academic sources say regarding the benefits and barriers of improving students’ attitude towards Maths including the ‘growth mindset’ mentioned in the video above.

So what can be done?

The teaching of textbook Maths is widespread (Schoenfeld, 1985) and can be argued that current textbooks are, on occasion, irrelevant to real world mathematical problems (Le Roux, 2008). It is argued that teaching Maths in this regimental style can be ‘boring’ and ‘difficult’ for the students to participate in (Kislenko et al., 2007) and therefore, contributes towards a negative attitude towards Maths as a whole. I asked my friends and family what their thoughts and feelings were on Maths and what it was like for them at school, here is the results:

Their attitudes towards Maths and numeracy were very mixed. Personally, I enjoyed Maths throughout my whole time at school and looked forward to completing lessons and work related to the subject. I believe I enjoyed Maths as I loved to be challenged so every question I had correct felt like a little victory. During my placement and whilst working in different schools, the blanket opinion was that Maths is not liked, aside from a few instances where teachers had made Maths ‘fun’. In the Successful Futures Report, Donaldson (2015) states that:

“Children and young people need regular opportunities to deepen their understanding of number and, as with literacy, to reinforce and use their numeracy skills in different contexts.”

This indicates that numeracy should be taught as a cross-curriculum subject to enable students in Wales to use number in different contexts’ every day. The 2022 Curriculum for Wales agrees with this and highlights the importance of Maths and numeracy by stating, “The development of mathematics has always gone hand in hand with the development of civilisation itself.” (Welsh Government, 2022).

One of the ways in which maths can be taught cross-curricular is through the outdoors. Sargent (2015) suggests that the outdoor environment can offer unique opportunities for Maths that were inconceivable in the classroom setting. Whilst working at Blaengwawr Primary in Aberdare, we took Maths outdoors by asking the students to find as many bugs as they could and record what they found.

Being in a natural place of learning with all different resources allowed students to have different opportunities for activities such as collecting information, sorting, problem solving and exploration (Keith, 2017). Once the children had collected enough information, we continued the lesson by creating graphs from what the students had found. This was a fun and exciting way for the children to engage with the task at hand.

Another way to improve student’s attitudes towards Maths is to have them physically engage with the task. Riley et al. (2017) suggests that movement-based activities in a Maths lesson allow for peer-assisted learning and class discussions to be promoted. Recently in our seminar we did just this with a place-value activity. We all had a card with a place-value and had to work together to arrange ourselves in the correct order. We then went onto create an animal themed place-value activity with the help of Michael the Mathematical Monkey.

Description of the Experience

For my placement, I chose to attend Ysgol Nantgywn in Tonypandy. This setting is a 3 to 16 ‘All-through School’ that has many students of all abilities including an Additional Learning Needs (ALN) department. There is also a Flying Start Nursery on site, which gave me the opportunity to gain a small insight of what it would be like to work with those aged 18 months to 3 years old.

Throughout my 24 hours, I assisted in many classes, including the nursery, Year 5 Maya lesson, Year 8 Science, Year 11 Sports Lesson, and an ALN Speech and Language session. During these different sessions, I was able to aid the teacher in any way they needed, including preparing the activities, helping to design a Maya mask and even being in goals for the girl’s football team (I was not very good).