1. New literacy: Numeracy Literacy
I am learning so much about literacy, and to be more specific, numeracy literacy. Before I came to Michigan State University, I thought that literacy was about being literate by having the ability to read and write. I had no idea that there are so many different types of literacy and what those entail. I wanted to learn about numeracy literacy because it seemed interesting and new to me and math is used on a daily basis in the real world and in school. In order to learn about numeracy literacy, I started by looking up the definition. I went to Google and searched "Numeracy literacy." There was so many sites that at first it seemed overwhelming, but I was able to pick out a couple of good ones easily by looking at the words in the URL (like math, curriculum, students, teachers, etc.). I found many definitions for numeracy literacy and my understanding is that numeracy literacy is important because it is not just numbers (the way I used to think in school that literacy was just books, reading, and writing), but it is using mathematical concepts to help solve problems in your life. When we first talked about literacy in class I thought that numeracy would only be about numbers and using numbers to solve problems like I did in school.
After working with my partners (Allison and Hannah) on this new literacy project, I have already learned a lot about numeracy literacy, but still have more to learn about all the different literacies to help me become a better teacher. I learned that students, teachers, and parents can all play a role in helping a person become more numeracy literate. After reading about the five steps students do in order to solve written math problems and watching a short video as an example, I can see how these steps are helpful for a student to think of when working. The steps include: 1. Reading the problem, 2. Comprehending the question, 3. Transforming the word problem into a strategy to solve the problem, 4. Process skills- apply the strategy to the problem, and 5. Encoding- having a written answer to the problem. I never thought about solving a problem in steps, but watching a video about these five steps showed how a teacher or parent can help a student through a problem by going through each step and asking questions for each step. For example, after the student has read the problem aloud to a teacher or parent, then the student should be asked, "So what do you want to find?" The student has to read the question, but then has to find in the problem what they are being asked to solve. A teacher or parent can question the student's strategy to see where they go wrong or how the student applies strategies to written problems.
Another thing I learned about numeracy literacy is that a person needs certain things in order to be numerate. A person needs to know and be able to understand mathematical ideas of a math problem (mathematical know-how), understand the situation of the problem (Contextual know-how), and the person needs to have availability to problem-solving strategies in order to solve a math problem (Strategic know-how). The five steps that a person uses to solve written math problems would really show all of these numerate needs because the person has to understand what the problem is asking, have mathematical strategies to solve the problem, and apply those strategies to the problem.
A big idea I learned about numeracy is that there are two types of numeracy. I was surprised to learn that there was more than one type or numeracy because there are so many types of literacies that I am already learning about, so I thought of numeracy as a part of literacy overall and the types of numeracy as part of numeracy (like subunits or a big circle with many smaller circles inside of the big circle). The two types of numeracy are colloquial (primary) and literate (secondary). Colloquial numeracy is everyday math that you develop almost naturally, or without much instruction and can only be used in certain situations. Literate numeracy is classroom math, in which a student will have a teacher guide them through strategies that can be used for many situations. Colloquial, or primary, numeracy can be forgotten if not used often in your every day life, for example: I often have to add up what my grocery bill will be before I go to the check out, but if I did not do this so often I may forget how to easily add numbers (or subtraction, multiplication, or division).
2. New Technology: Prezi
At first I was somewhat nervous to do this assignment because some times it is difficult for me to learn how to use new technology. I am still finding things that confuse me, but overall Prezi is fun to learn about. It was hard for me to navigate at first because I was expecting it to be like PowerPoint where you make slides for a presentation. In Prezi, we did make something like slides, but it is so much more interesting than a regular PowerPoint because you move around the page to new information, but it is still in an organized manner. Also, on Prezi you share what you are creating with other people, so all of our group could be working on it at the same time. To me, this is a really cool way to work together without actually sitting right next to each other. There are little avatars on the screen of your Prezi that shows who is also working on it at the same time as you. This also allowed us to edit each others' work and communicate with each other easily.
Prezi would be good to use in any aged classroom because it is fun and engaging to use since you can add text, videos, pictures, and add other things like links to websites. This will allow a teacher to have a lesson that is not just text as information, but the information/videos/pictures/etc. is in different spots on the page that you move around to. Students need a different setting sometimes, in which the teacher is not in front of the whole class talking. This is how the videos come in handy, by conveying what the teacher wants the students to know through a video with this technology.
I learned how easy it was to add a video onto your Prezi. All that is needed is to copy and paste a YouTube link or upload an already saved video from your computer. I was surprised to see how easy it was to add a video, which helped me see how a teacher could use this even more. Prezi gives a teacher, or any person, an easy way to make a fun presentation and the person creating the Prezi chooses the "path" that the viewer goes on to find information. Not only is it easy for a teacher to create one, but it is easy for a student to navigate one. If a teacher had students go through the Prezi individually, then the student can go at their own pace, move forward or backward if they missed something, and is easy for them to move around the page in order to learn new information.
It was confusing for me to figure out what you can do with your Prezi. I saw examples of other Prezis and got some ideas of how to format our Prezi, but could not figure out how to use that formatting with out messing up what we already had completed. I wonder if it is because we are using a free demo version that had a quick sign up option, rather than using the fuller version? Once I figured out the path chosen for the viewers and how to add different types of text (change size, color, and font) it became a little easier to use Prezi. There is still more I could learn about both Prezi and numeracy, but I am taking one step at a time to work on both individually and together to create a Prezi about numeracy that I hope the class will enjoy!
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