A touch of tech enhances math class

SUNNYSIDE, Wash. -- Jennifer Garcia and Jalisa Lopez need help with math. So, the fifth-grade girls get out their iPods and start texting.

OMG!

Teacher Jessica Schenck does not take the gadgets away or send the girls to the principal's office. In fact, nearly every kid in Schenck's Chief Kamiakin Elementary School class punches diligently on the screens.

"I need 2 read the question twice and check my work twice," Garcia types into the virtual keypad of the iPod Touch.

Schenck issues the students iPod Touches a couple times a week for math class.

Blogging in class is becoming more common in schools but usually among older kids.

In Central Washington, between 10 and 15 percent of high school teachers use blogging or online discussions, estimates Forrest Fisher, educational technology support center coordinator for Educational Service District 105, a Yakima-based training and support consortium of school districts.

It's less common for fifth-grade teachers and less common still for math.

However, students in Washington today are expected to not only get the right answers in math but also explain their work in written form. It's one of the more dreaded features of the WASL exam.

Blogging marries kids' technological tendencies with peer communication and forces the students to put their thoughts into words. That helps cement lessons into their minds.

"There's an old adage that you don't really know something until you can teach it," Fisher says. Blogging lets all the students in the class try to do that at once.

It also extends the learning environment outside the walls of the classroom. For example, a Naches Valley Intermediate School teacher has been using blog sites to compare lessons about rivers with students in
Missouri, Fisher said.

Schenck and other fifth-grade teachers at Chief Kamiakin have been blogging for more than a year, taking their students to a computer lab once or twice a week.

However, this fall, the project got easier in the classroom. Schenck applied for a $10,000 technology grant from Qwest and used the money to purchase 21 Internet-capable iPod Touches. The students use them essentially as small laptops.

The iPod sessions are popular in Schenck's room.

The class bustles with noise and activity as students look over each others' shoulders while they use their thumbs to write messages about certain math problems, goals on upcoming tests or general resolutions about their work.

Spelling mistakes, grammatical inconsistencies and the jargon of text talk often creep into the posts. Here are a few examples, exactly as the kids posted:

"I can add and subtrac fractions for example 7/8 + 1/8 = 1 whole.or 4/5 - 3/5 = 1/5 and I Am learning more how to reduce."

"What do u mean u don't get the fq question"

"I should have done that because I did check it twice but I said that 47 was prime and it was but I forgot to reduce it."

The kids work with partners primarily, but students also are allowed to comment with the class at large.

The children say they like the freedom to share their thoughts without fear of being wrong and the chance to receive help from their peers.

"They either tell me in the blog or they come tell me (how to figure out a problem)," says Jaime Tellez, one of the fifth-graders.

Schenck does not screen comments before they are posted but has deleted messages that have nothing to do with math -- "Wassup?" is one she bounced.

She also uses the blogs to gauge how well the students digest the material. For example, she has found mistakes from kids she would have guessed understood.

"It gives me kind of an insight to what they're thinking about things," Schenck says.

And it always helps when kids consider it play.

"They're totally willing to do the work because it's fun," she says.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.