Times are changing but when should I stop bending?
I have recently allowed the students to take exams with head phones on. I like to listen to music while I study and do math work, I think if students feel more comfortable while listening thats fine with me. I feel that one should be left off incase they need hear emergency information or direction changes.
There is a linger of the topic cheating within the classroom while listening to "equations." If you're going to make a song that contains an equation and listen to it on repeat, I am sure you'll know it by the end of the exam anyway.
My goal for music in the classroom is to promote a better learning environment. Students tend to be more focused on the work and quite while listening to head phones. I do agree that it is hard to multi-task. That you are stealing a sensory when listening to one thing and writing another. however, I feel the ease in my classroom for an exam when the students are listening to music. Mathematics comes with a very rough stigma and music in the classroom might be a great way to relieve some students enough to learn.
Cellphones as a calculator is where I draw the line. This maybe my lack of understanding for technology within the classroom but this promotes cellphone use in the classroom. I do not like , "what about airplane more" either. I feel that using a calculator is a learned skill that students need to experience and be exposed to. Why should they need one if there is one on their phone?
I am not sure why I am so diligent about not using a cell phone to calculate but I am so understanding about music to study/learn/work better.
I wonder if the older generation thinks my music yields a lack of rigor or discipline? I do agree that phones have given students this false sense of instant satisfaction.
The cheerleading team keeps getting better and my semester is finally ending. Phew what a relief no longer will you get to hear about the 16 boys all in one course. What a trip they were. My Seniors ended with music videos that were a riot to watch. I think that was far better than any "final." Alternative assessments are more interesting for the students and demands group effort to fix a project which is a very important life skill, plus they're way easier to grade. My foundations course is moving into my vamped algebra course. I'm hoping to flip the classroom and use this blog to write about my success and failures. I'm still new so I'm sure I'll provide plenty of failures.
Things seem to have ended nicely and I survived feeling accomplished. Something has gone well.
sometimes i hate wordpress...i have entered a comment 4 times now and because i wasn't signed in the right way they sent me away and erased what i wrote. i agree on music but keep it so that the kids know it's a privilege and can be revoked--simple stuff, like being able to hear instructions as needed and not hearing their music. calculators are harder--i expect my kids to be able to compute without any aides other than paper and pencil. not all copmutations, but up to say 3 digit by 3 digit multiplication...i depends on the class. they do need to be able to live without a calculator, after all. i also expect them to do their best with fractions and know not all kids will ever master fractions. when possible, i keep a classroom set of calculators that they will encounter on standardized testing...a set of scientific and a set of graphing. their cell apps don't always align well with the technology they'll be expected to know, and more kids seem to have smart phones, and expect to use them, than have calculators these days. and, when appropriate, i do let them use cell apps, but i generally try to know the ones that i like that don't work too differently than the calculators they'll need.
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