Grade 6 and 7 students at Lake Cowichan Secondary School (LCSS) spent 10 weeks this fall learning math skills on iPads.
Recently, the Cowichan Valley School District acquired a selection of iPad kits, with 15 iPads or iPods in each kit. These kits are being made available to any school in the district for 10-week booking periods following an application from a teacher for a project that would suitably use them as a learning tool.
Reactions from the young learners seemed to be unanimous: learning math on an iPad is way easier and more fun than the traditional method.
For LCSS teachers Karen Neuffer and Lindy Thompson, it seemed like a good opportunity to try something new with their students. The two teachers collaborated on a project to find out if the use of technology (iPads/digital games) would improve the students’ attitude toward mathematics, improve learning and engage the learners, and reinforce basic skills and concepts.
For their inaugural attempt at using this format of teaching mathematics, together the two teachers selected iPad applications, downloaded them into folders for the students, and let the students choose the ones they wanted to use. Mostly, the applications took the form of games which would get the user to practise skills such as multiplication and division, addition and subtraction.
“We were focusing on a couple of things,” Neuffer explained. “We were focusing on math facts and fractions.”
Judging from a few of the students’ comments, it was a successful endeavour all around.
“It helped people who were visual learners and not really mental learners,” said Grade 7 student Daegan Mercer. “It’s easier to work the math out.”
His classmate, Jason Haney, says he was enthusiastic about learning math on an iPad from the word go.
“It’s easier, because with the iPad they use games,” Haney said. “I like this one game called “Math Evolved.” It’s just a little creature, you can just manoeuvre it around, and it helped with addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.”
The fact that it was a touch pad and that there was no need to write on the white board played a big part in the “like” factor, as well, as Grade 7 student Eric Magnison testified.
“It’s a lot easier learning math on an iPad and a lot more fun,” said Magnison. “Your hands get really sore when you’re writing on the white board. With the iPad, you just use your finger, it’s just touch.”
While the three students interviewed said they weren’t looking forward to going back to learning math the traditional way, they each agreed that using the iPad had helped them with their math skills, so they will be able to work more quickly when working by hand.
As for the teachers, both women seemed to feel that it had been a successful venture.
“It keeps them engaged, it keeps their attention,” Neuffer confirmed. “The touch screen keeps them involved. And the working together in partners, they enjoyed that part of it.”
And since they’ve been using them in school, for learning purposes, now the students have shown an interest in using them as a learning tool for other subjects. Neuffer and Thompson also hoped that the negative attitudes toward mathematics would improve with this experiment of using iPads, as well as keeping students, especially the vulnerable learners, engaged.
“It was a great opportunity to be able to use the new technology,” Thompson agreed. “(The students) were very excited to get to use the iPads, and try the different apps on there, and some of them are saying they want to put those (math) apps on their phones. So when they’re waiting at a soccer practice or something, they’ll be doing math games on their phones.”
