Western Dubuque empowers teachers by encouraging them to utilize the technology they already have and letting their students get involved. This new approach for using interactive white boards, laptop’s and video conferencing is raising both attention and test scores in Western Dubuque. Math teachers are finding their students to be more engaged in lessons and scoring higher on assessments. Students are also working more with each other to learn the lessons being taught in the classroom.
In Ms. Wagner’s seventh grade math class at Drexler Middle School in Farley, students worked Tuesday afternoon on algebra. It’s not everybody’s favorite subject, but technology made it come alive.
12-year-old Regann Pfeiler stood with a group of girls at an interactive white board at the front of the class, using a marker-like tool to drag shapes around the board while solving an algebra problem.
“You want to use this more than you want to write down on paper,” she said.
That response is exactly what her teacher is going for.
“Once I started involving the technology and a little bit of the workshop model as kind of a background, I really saw the students be 100 percent more engaged and really take learning into their own hands,” teacher Renee Wagner said.
The workshop model has students group up and help teach each other. That, plus technology, means results.
“Taking the learning into their own hands, their scores are so much higher than what they’ve been in the past, so I’ve been able to see a growth in a lot of my students, so the ownership is a big part there,” Wagner said.
Western Dubuque School District’s two technology experts are excited about the progress.
Continue Reading more on how technology boosts student engagement in math lessons.
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