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Math Learning Issues
"How can I ..." | | |
 Discourse
What is it?
Discourse is designed to facilitate
classroom discussion, where everyone's
voice is heard. Students respond to their
teacher’s questions on a small desktop
terminal, a laptop, or a personal
computer. The teacher uses a desktop
computer to monitor student responses in
real time…giving the teacher unparalleled
insight into how well the students are
understanding a lesson. In addition, the
teacher can provide private feedback to
students or post selected answers to a
TV screen — with or without a student’s
name — for class discussion. This
allows every student's ideas -- even shy
students -- to be presented (unlike the
"raising hands and choosing" method).
An Example of Use:
One teacher used Discourse to discuss
different approaches to solving a math
problem. Students were presented with a
problem and told to just think about
solving it. For example, a teacher might
ask students to solve 200 / 25 and think
about how they solved it. After sufficient
time to think, the teacher asks to
students to type an explanation of how
they would go about solving this problem.
The teacher receives all the answers
through Discourse at her monitor. She
picks a few and displays them (with or
without students' names) on the TV
screen so all students can see. In our
example, such methods might be (1)
knowing that 25 goes into 100 4 times,
and there are 2 100's in 200 so the
answer is 2*4=8, (2) recognizing that 200
could be $2, and 25 is like a quarter, and
8 quarters go into $2, (3) doing the long
division on paper, (4) trial and error, etc.
The teacher can then launch a discussion
about different methods, when and why
they work, ones that are better in certain
ways than others, etc.
Where do I find it?
http://www.discourse.org
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