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Getting Started Using Digital Tools, Part 2: Student Tools

by Jean Oviatt-Rothman

This is Part 2 of a two-part blog series on digital literacy. Read Part 1 here.

Digital math teaching tools are an exciting addition to your instructional toolkit. Whether you are teaching remotely and must rely almost exclusively on digital tools, or teaching in person and wanting to incorporate more digital skills for your students, getting started can be the biggest hurdle. There are so many tools available. It can be easy to fall into the “Ooh, shiny!” trap, trying to incorporate everything, or to become overwhelmed and want to give up. I’d like to offer some helpful tips from my experience teaching adults math fully remotely.

Identify Your Goals

Think about why you want students to use digital tools in your math class. Are you seeking a replacement for physical materials that students don’t have access to? Hoping to provide a different type of multi-modal learning experience for them? Trying to build digital literacy and career skills while also teaching math? These are just some of the possibilities. Start by planning your instructional goals and reasons for using digital tools. My goals in selecting tools for students in my virtual classes were visual communication and accessibility for all students.

Exploring Tools

Once you have identified your goals, it’s time to play! It’s important to play and experiment with any digital tool so that you are familiar with it before introducing it to students. You don’t have to become an expert—modeling your own lifelong learning is so valuable for students—but you do need enough familiarity with the tools to be comfortable and confident supporting students as they use them. A great place to begin can be watching a “getting started” video or an interactive tutorial, available in most high-quality digital tools, such as this tutorial from Polypad. As you explore a particular digital tool, ask yourself whether it aligns with your instructional goals. If it does not, look for a different one.

For me, virtual manipulatives were one way to meet my goal of accessibility. I started my career in elementary education, and I have always believed in the importance of manipulatives for making mathematical ideas concrete and multi-modal. As I used the virtual manipulatives on Polypad with my adult students, I got to witness their power, especially for adult learners who were never given the opportunity to use manipulatives for math learning when they were in the K-12 education system. The first time one of my students used virtual fraction bars, he became really excited. “Thank you!” he said, “Now I can SEE what you’re talking about! All these years, I never got this stuff.” Other students asked if they could continue using the Polypad resources for assignments at home or with their own children. Many of them said how fun the tools were to use.

There are, of course, both benefits and challenges to using digital versions of math manipulatives. One benefit is that the only equipment you need is a computer with an internet connection. For example, if your students are using smartphones or tablets, be sure to test any tool on those types of devices. Some tools may not work as well or at all on certain devices. It can be disappointing to discover this, but you don’t want to introduce a tool that your students won’t be able to use.

There truly is a wide array of quality free tools available, which can provide different visualization options for different learners. Some digital tools, such as the number and fraction resources on Polypad, even include a musical option (click on a fraction circle and then the triangular “play” icon). This provides another way of representing fractions that is unique from physical manipulatives. On the other hand, digital manipulatives can’t replicate the tactile and kinesthetic experience that physical manipulatives provide. Students working in pairs or groups remotely can share their screens, but it’s not the same experience as being able to touch the same materials together. If virtual manipulatives are something you would like to use, you can find a collection of excellent resources and tutorials on the Adult Numeracy Network’s Resources: Virtual Manipulatives page.

Curate Your Tools

Next, it’s time to narrow down your digital tools. As you evaluate different tools, be critical. Wear both a teacher and a learner hat. Some tools might be fun for students, but not provide much instructional value. Others might be exactly what you are looking for in terms of specific content, but they might be glitchy or difficult to navigate, which can lead to frustration for everyone. Ideally, you will be able to identify a few high-quality tools that will both meet your goals and fit well in many different lessons.

Keep things simple and consistent. You and your students will become more confident by focusing on using a few tools effectively, rather than using a lot of different tools randomly. When I was selecting digital tools for my remote classes, I had two go-to resources that I relied upon consistently: Polypad and Amplify Classroom, both of which are free and high-quality.

Introducing Your Students to Digital Tools

I found that even though I was excited about the digital tools I selected, students were not always as thrilled as I was. Some students were intimidated by technology in general and faced a steep learning curve. Remember, some students may not be familiar with basic digital literacy skills like click-hold, drag-drop, and copy-paste. Other students had difficulty with the additional cognitive load of learning a new tool on top of navigating their remote classroom (Zoom) environment, the learning management system, and new academic material. Students are at all different levels in their digital literacy skills and in their academic skills. For all of these reasons, it is important to go slowly as you introduce digital tools to students.

Introduce only a bit at a time: one aspect of one digital tool in a single lesson. You may see the potential of all of the different things you can do with a particular tool, but students don’t need to do everything at once. Go slow at first to go fast later. Choose one key activity that will enable students to see the value of the tool. For me, Amplify Classroom was a tool that I selected because it offered so many resources on a wide variety of content, from tools like interactive visuals and manipulatives and a graphing calculator, to ready-made lessons complete with teacher notes. It also offered me the flexibility to edit ready-made lessons or design my own lessons. For remote teaching, it was especially helpful to be able to see and comment on students’ work as they were completing it. Once students learned the way the the basic features and how activities were structured, they could navigate all sorts of lessons successfully.

When introducing a new tool, let students play and experiment a bit before with it before using the tool for a higher-stakes assignment. For Polypad, I selected one manipulative, such as number cubes (also known as place value blocks). First, I demonstrated the basics of how to access the number cubes in Polypad and how to click/hold/drag the pieces. Then I encouraged students to explore on their own and figure out something interesting to report back. Some students found aspects of the tools themselves interesting (such as the ability to break apart larger pieces into smaller ones and join smaller ones into larger), while others got more into the math concepts (ten tens make one hundred, and ten hundreds make one thousand). I allowed time for everyone to share out so they could benefit of each others’ discoveries.

For introducing Amplify Classroom, I selected a short lesson that was reinforcing a skill we had worked on previously (in my case, area of a rectangle), so students could focus more on learning the tool instead of new content. Once they became familiar with the features and navigation, I then used it more frequently to introduce and practice new content. Whenever I used a new feature, I would spend a bit of time demonstrating and making sure students understood how to find and use it.

While the capabilities and options of digital tools are endless, each new feature can present a learning curve for both you and your students. By being selective in the tools you use and deliberate in how you introduce them, you are setting everyone up for success as both math learners and digitally-literate individuals.

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If you are a Massachusetts adult education teacher interested in free professional development coaching on this topic, contact us using the SABES Coaching Request Form.

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