I just found this presentation from more than a year ago on some interesting ways to use Google Apps in a mathematics classroom. I noticed that it had been edited slightly, so I did some more edits and thought I would share it here.
You can help edit and curate it here. I could imagine that Google+ would be useful, and that some of the file sharing options through Google Drive have improved, neither of which has made it into this presentation yet.
Tatum Tirado says:
It says that students can show their work and take notes. How? wouldn’t it be time consuming to type that stuff out?
February 16, 2016 — 3:38 pm
David Wees says:
I think it depends on how much detail you want students to represent. Photos can capture much of the mathematical notation, and then typing out reflections, follow-up explanations, and ideas about the mathematics can be relatively quick.
February 16, 2016 — 3:44 pm
Trevor Green says:
I like the idea of students learning to use digital tools to write out math equations but because of the potential friction created by that process I think they should do it as an exercise but not as a rule. The learning portion is better done on rails like with Khan academy, where the interface allows you to quickly answers questions of different types, keeping your head in the math instead of in manipulating a semi-complicated interface that isn’t going to be able to give you instance feedback on the validity of your answer. Once students have a basic and/or advanced understanding of various math concepts I think having them apply the knowledge in a more expressive authoring tool is great. Doing it before they have confronted the concepts would create too much friction and be discouraging. We all need to walk before we can run.
April 28, 2016 — 5:13 pm
David Wees says:
I have no disagreement with this, but one thing I find frustrating about interfaces like the Khan Academy is that I can only see a binary representation of what students understand about any given topic, they either got the question right or they got it wrong and I have no information at all about what they were thinking.
So when I want evidence of thinking, which is most of the time for me, I don’t want to use tools like the Khan Academy. If I want students to be focused on mathematics and not the publishing of mathematics, I probably don’t want to use technology at all, since none of it is fluent for kids (yet?).
April 29, 2016 — 1:24 pm