The Paperless Maths iPad Project – Part 1

I have been wanting to turn one of my classes into a paperless experiment for a while. This is partly inspired by the great work of @mathletepearce and his Tap Into Teen Minds iPad 1:1 project, partly by the news that we have hugely overspent our department reprographics budget. Again.

The Setup

The sometimes willing but not particularly able participants – my Year 9 class. As part of our current iPad trial, their classroom happens to contain a set of 16 iPads, a Mac and charging unit. Having chosen my selected apps – which unfortunately all had to be free – Apple Configurator was used on the Mac to sync the apps to the 16 devices.

In order to become paperless, it was essential to find a PDF annotation app that I felt the students would be comfortable with (it also had to export to Dropbox and be free). After a little searching I settled on pdf-notes, which provides most of the functionality of the £6.99 full version, except for a few annoyingly placed adverts.

In order for the students to be able to access the PDF files for annotation, I set up a class Gmail and Dropbox account and shared a folder with my personal Dropbox account. This handy feature means I can put work in the class account by just placing it in the shared folder on my personal account.

For those interested, the slides I used to explain the workflow process to the students are included below. I wasn’t brave enough to rely solely on AirServer to demonstrate the workflow.

#1 Opening work

#2 Using ‘pdf-notes’

#3 Sending work back

The Lessons

The paperless mission began badly. Having failed to properly sync all of the devices, I confidently handed out a set of ‘appless’ (adj. - to have no apps other than those the iPad comes with) devices. Disaster.

On the second attempt, things went so smoothly I left the classroom suffering from mild shock. After considerable instruction, all of my students accessed the class Dropbox account, completed considerably more work than usual using pdf-notes and successfully placed their work back in the shared Dropbox folder for me to assess. Beyond this, their behaviour was unthinkably good and they sensibly completed a Socrative quiz before leaving. One student had their iPad taken off them for taking a photo of someone else, but given the fact that they appeared close to tears I shall not be expecting a similar mistake next time…

Early Conclusions

In terms of the SAMR model of technology evaluation, using the iPad instead of an exercise book provides no functional change; it is substitution plain and simple. However, the learning has clearly been enhanced, as demonstrated by the level of engagement, motivation and achievement. Of course, the iPad offers far greater opportunities for creativity than an overpriced exercise book. Augmentation, modification and redefinition have to be the ultimate aims.

A Maths lesson using only Google Docs…

I am a huge fan of Google Docs. I expend a lot of energy trying to convince other members of staff to utilise its collaborative power in their lessons. The hypocrisy has never been lost on me. I have never used it in a lesson myself. Until today.

As a Maths teacher, I have always been able to convince myself that Google Docs has greater applications in other subjects. Trying to incorporate Google Docs into a relatively inspiring non-spreadsheet-based Maths lesson has always struck me as a little bit of a challenge. You can only imagine my delight then, when I realised that I was scheduled to be teaching ‘Designing an effective questionnaire’ to my Year 7 class. Of all of the topics Maths teachers are forced to teach, this one is pretty much a nailed-on-certainty to provide at least a few calls of ‘what’s this got to do with Maths?’. Ideal.

After a little planning, I decided to give it a go.

Connect

My students had signed up for a Google account prior to the lesson, so I placed a link to a Google Spreadsheet on the class wiki. They were charged with answering the 6 questions next to their names (blanked on the video for obvious reasons). Unsurprisingly, one of them realised that whatever they typed in appears on everybody’s screen and I was promptly faced with a short barrage of hi, hey xx, lol and <3 cells. After the initial excitement subsided, some semi-useful data was collected ready for analysis later, all in only 1 minute. Look out for the confused soul who wrote ‘i dont know’ in the formula bar and other ‘anomalies’. The video was made using Screenr.com to record my laptop screen.

Activate

Students were presented with the timeless ‘Mr Riley’s Questionnaire‘ worksheet. After a short discussion and a couple of examples, the students were given the task of filling in one of the simplest Google Forms ever created, on which they were to explain the problems with each of the questions on the sheet. Of course the results were beamed back to my computer in a handy Google spreadsheet. Google Forms really are a superb tool.

Demonstrate

Now for the creative bit. The students were given ten topics to design questions for using their own Google Forms – which I had to briefly show them how to use. They were under strict instructions to make sure that their resultant spreadsheet was shared with me before starting so I could access their work, which we just about managed. Given the simplicity of Google Forms it wasn’t a surprise to see how quickly they picked it up. To make sure they stayed on task, they were told that their questionnaires would be shared with the whole class at the end. It all worked fairly well, but we were never likely to have enough time to share them at the end.

Consolidate

And so it proved. There was nowhere near enough time left for this part. Ofsted would not have been happy. I was more than content. There were plenty of ideas left in the tank for the consolidate activity, even for another lesson or two. It would have been really nice to have the students test their questionnaires with each other, but that may have to wait. Lots of data had been collected, I had lots of evidence all in one place and the students had encountered something new. I was left contemplating what to do with all the information.

Conclusion

There is a lot of potential for the use of Google Docs within Maths, especially within the topic of data collection, processing and presenting. We didn’t have chance to utilise the data collected at the beginning of the lesson, but a similar data collection session could be used to introduce any data presentation method - frequency tables, bar charts or scatter graphs for example. It undoubtedly requires careful planning in advance but certainly helps introduce a real life element into students’ Maths lessons. Now for completing our Google Apps deployment…