My name's Jono Adams.
And I'm a mathematics teacher and I teach Years 11 and 12.
I've got quite a broad range of classes
and different abilities of kids in my classes,
working with different ability levels,
and I really have to think about
how I can present concepts in different ways
and get kids to engage on different levels.
A lot of mathematics teaching can be very textbook and very routine,
so something I really try to do with all my classes
is get them to develop a deeper understanding
about why do certain processes.
So, for example, I like to use a lot of technology in my classes.
The great advantage of technology
is they can do lots and lots of examples very, very quickly.
So I guess technology comes into its own
where it makes life easier in terms of calculations
and frees our brains up to think about why,
not just be thinking about doing the process.
There's a free software program, GeoGebra,
that we were using yesterday,
which you can download and it can basically construct
any diagram, any picture that you could draw on a board.
Anything that I would normally in the old days have done
with chalk and a ruler on the whiteboard,
or on the blackboard, rather,
I can do on that software program.
I can have it up in an instant and I can change it immediately,
and everything will change.
Let's have a look - if I make it negative...
OK, it's happened pretty quick there,
but you can sort of see it's going the opposite direction.
And that's a really powerful tool
because often the concepts that I'm trying to communicate from my diagram
like, "Imagine if this point moved here in my diagram,"
the kids don't have to imagine it anymore
because I can click on that point and I can move it
and they can see how that changes the diagram.
That's the equation of a straight line, OK?
So you can sort of see that there.
If I drop the x squared term down to zero,
then I'm left with just a linear function.
To be able to show what's happening visually
and get them to get an idea of, "OK, what should the result of this be?
"Let's see if we can show that with the algebra,"
and trying to develop the two in parallel
is something that the technology makes a lot easier
than it has been in the past.
I think they're definitely more engaged,
and they ask a lot more "What if?" questions.
(STUDENT SPEAKS INAUDIBLY)
..y-intercept is? Negative six.
And obviously my axes are a bit out...
BOY: Y in both of them have to equal zero.
Excellent. OK?
Two factors here multiplied together, the answer's zero.
There's a couple of different cases we can have with parabolas.
This is the first case where we have two unique solutions.
OK? This is case number two where we have a single solution.
What's the third case?
(STUDENT SPEAKS INAUDIBLY)
(JONATHAN MUMBLES)
-BOY: No x-intercepts. -No x-intercepts at all. OK?
I guess there's sort of an excitement
when people see what you're doing in the classroom and they go,
"Oh! I'd like to learn how to do that as well."
And pretty quickly I was helping other people to use it as well.
And here in this environment where we're very technology rich,
everyone wants to be using it.
And we've got open classrooms
so everyone can sort of see what you're doing and asks.
I've taught them some basics and even just in the last couple of weeks,
I've seen other teachers using it
and then doing things that I didn't know you could do with the software
that I haven't happened to discover.
So I'm actually learning from them and they're learning from me.
I don't ever want to be a teacher that doesn't stop learning
and doesn't stop adapting and doesn't stop developing
and changing the way that I'm doing things.
And I think technology really forces you to be thinking outside the box.
I mean, it starts with small steps.
And originally, I wasn't doing much more than using it to draw a diagram
and save me some time drawing in the classroom,
but then as I've become more familiar with the technology
and more comfortable with its use,
I guess I'm confident in expanding more and more and more with its use.
And, yeah, I'm really excited at
seeing how that might change in the future, and what might be possible.