Desk Crit- Ali Burrous

Hi Ali,

I hope you don’t mind that I went ahead and offered a desk crit without asking first! It seems that you are progressing nicely with your project. You already have a lot of information for your documentation completed. The abstract and learner profile sections are good because of their thoroughness. As I kept reading, I did end up wondering what domain of mathematics the students would be learning about within problem solving. Will the students already have mastered the mathematical calculations/algorithms necessary to apply to the problem solving situations? If so, I think that you should include this as a prerequisite skill in your task analysis. I only mention this because usually math instruction focuses on some sort of specific topic. You could elaborate on that more to help paint a picture for the outsiders reading your documents.

If you already know what video you will be using to introduce good techniques in problem solving, I would go ahead and name it in your ‘rationale for technology’ section. I am going to suggest that students focus on the problem solving aspect of their thinking. One thing that you might want to make clear in your own mind is how much of this is on students understanding technology, how much of it is about math, and how much is about problem solving. Of course there are elements of all 3 intermingled but I think it would behoove you to define which is the main goal and which are contexts and supports for that main goal! I think your good work will unfold more naturally from there.

I am also concerned about your objectives. While the ones that you have listed are indeed important, they do not seem to be objectives for your project. For example, students aren’t using technology to solve math problems. They are using problem solving to solve math problems, with technology as a means to demonstrate their understanding. I also did not notice anywhere that students would have to translate among representations. You might have a plan for all of this, but I’m just including it here so that you know what the inquiring minds in instructional technology still want to know about. There are a few others but you get the idea…

Overall, your documentation is great. Keep working with the objectives, lesson summary, and their alignment to each other! I can’t wait to see your implementation results. I’m sure this sort of thing will really appeal to students and teachers alike! Great job so far!

If you’d like better clarification or to chat more about any of this, please feel free to ask me! :)