This document discusses strategies for engaging iGeneration students in the mathematics classroom. It addresses creating a safe environment for students to take risks and make mistakes. It also discusses approaches like active learning, collaborative learning, and problem-solving to engage these digital native students. The document suggests focusing less on direct instruction and more on challenging, authentic, student-driven activities that incorporate technology as a tool rather than the focus.

1. Week 3 Task
• Students often feel bad about making mistakes. How can we help
students feel safe to take risks and make mistakes in the mathematics
classroom?
• What is the iGeneration? What has changed in our classrooms in the
past 100 years?
• Should our classrooms focus on ‘just in time’ or ‘just in case’ learning?
What are examples of these? [contribute to class forum to answer
this question]

2. What do employers want?
• Persistence? Or spoon fed
• Communicator? Or isolated member
• Problem Solver? Or rules based
• Just in time, just in case or a combination approach?
• Thinking differently, not afraid to make mistakes?

3. The iGeneration
• They have never known a life without the internet, let
alone computers, and many don’t know a world without
mobile phones. - Sarah Cornish, Total Girl magazine

4. • Net Generation, Generation Y, Generation Z, the Gen Nexters,
the Look-at-Me Generation, the Millennial Generation, the Echo
Generation, the ADHD Generation, or the iGeneration.
• iGeners - born after the early 1990s
• Parents may use the Internet to gather information, they use it to
gather together.

5. Intellectually bereft?
•Minds of iGeners work fast,
but do they think deeply or
accurately?
•‘The dumbest generation’
•‘infosnackers’

6. 21st Century Skills
•Creativity and innovation
•Critical thinking and
problem solving
•Communication and
collaboration

7. • iGeners are almost universally plugged in
• See technology as a tool for participating
• Turn to the Internet first
• Willing to experiment. Emotionally open. Like working in teams
• Gamers. Social Networking.
• US Teenagers spend almost 325 minutes behind a screen

8. Academic Performance
• Lag behind competing countries (Australia, US)
• 15-24 year olds spend under 9 minutes a day reading for any reason (Hess,
2008)
• Whatever their virtues, these minds know far too little, and they read and
write and calculate and reflect way too poorly. However many hours they
pass at the screen from age 11 to 25, however many blog comments they
compose, intricate games they play, videos they create, personal profiles they
craft, and gadgets they master, the transfer doesn’t happen. The Web grows,
and the young adult mind stalls. (Bauerlein, 2008, Kindle location 1683-1685

9. 21st Century Learners
• Should we be teaching today’s students differently to in the past?
• What worked/didn’t work for me should work for them?
• Do as I say, not as I do?

10. Active learning
• Completely engaged in challenging and authentic learning activities
• Self motivated, and self regulated learning
• Technology can help to create this environment. But the focus is
not on technology, but on engagement.
• These tools foster and facilitate active learning, and most of them
support and encourage collaborative learning.

11. • “Everything else has become so engaging. N-geners who go online
regularly to play video games or interact on MySpace expect better
experiences in the classroom. Look at today’s curriculum, though,
and you won’t find much interactivity. We’re still learning through
reading and regurgitating.” (Tapscott & Williams, 2006, p. 51)

12. Collaborative Learning
• Mirrors students’ innate desire for connection (interesting relevant
content & with other students)
• Collaborative learning can create an emotional connection.
Memories are much more likely to be recalled, and accuracy goes
up.
• Can increase participation and interest
• Goes hand in hand with differentiation of instruction

13. • Maths. Geometry. Grades 4 & 5.
• Work on a team, as architects and builders, to
design a futuristic house that is aesthetically
appealing because of its geometrical design.
• Formative/summative assessments
• Lessons on design and home building
• Architect, foreman as invited guests

14. Problem Solving
• How often do student-driven, problem centred
learning experiences happen in your classroom?
• We have a world full of problems (global warming,
poverty, depression, greed)
• How can we teach problem solving effectively in our
classrooms?

15. Types of Problems
• Jacob Getzels:
• Type 1 problems - easiest to solve. Problem is clear
to both presenter & solver 5 x 4 =
• Type 2 problems - method & answer are not
immediately apparent.“If Johnny has eight slices of
pizza and he sells each for $2, how much money will
he raise?”

16. • Type 3 - No clear correct answers. Presenters and
solvers might not know the method or the
outcomes.
• Real world problems usually require a team effort to
solve. Not individual experts.
• Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?
• In the course of the show, studio audiences picked
the right answer 91% of the time

17. • Which workplaces rely on collective wisdom to
solve type 3 problems?
• According to Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds),
groups must be cognitively diverse, independent, and
decentralised in order to solve problems effectively.

18. Example: Best Buy
• Most companies rely on senior management teams
to establish vision, make decisions, give directions.
• Best Buy: 155,000 employees across fifty states and
five countries. How did they harness collective
wisdom to improve their company?
https://vimeo.com/2084915
• Wikipedia is another example (285 languages, 25
million articles, 100,000 active contributors)