Until last year, Doug Cox taught math at Petaluma High School in Petaluma, California. He is now a vice principal at the same school, where his responsibilities include staff development, technology administration, and as he puts it, “handling the seniors.” Doug is also an Intel® Teach Program master teacher.

A Technology-Rich School
Petaluma High became a California Digital High School in 1999. Through a state technology grant, every classroom has been connected to the Internet, and technology is integrated into the curriculum to enhance teaching and learning. Other grants have allowed the school to buy mobile labs—laptop computers that travel on carts from class to class. One-third of Petaluma’s teachers have participated in the Intel® Teach Program training, and the school received computers and software as part of the training package. Doug says, “It’s neat to see the transition that’s taken place in the last two years—all the courses, from foreign language to special education, from literature to science, are using technology in different ways.”

Sharing Resources
Demand for computers still exceeds supply at Petaluma. Teachers take a short training before requesting hardware and materials in brief proposals that are reviewed by Doug and the building technology coordinator. These two help teachers determine their technology needs, field requests for resources, and devise a schedule for sharing technology across the entire school.

Track the Trends: Predict the Future?
Having stepped out of his teacher role for now, Doug won’t be using his Track The Trends, Predict The Future? unit portfolio anytime soon. He would like to help another teacher use it, after he does a little fine-tuning. Doug would change the unit plan so more consideration was put into selecting the data set used for linear regression analysis. Regression analysis presents a very different view depending on when the data series begins, and the size of the intervals. For instance, looking at the population of California in twenty-year intervals starting at 1890 yields a very different picture than does data from 1950 with five-year intervals. In using the former set, as in Doug’s example, the prediction for the population of California in the year 2000 census was 47 million. It turns out the actual population is closer to 35 million—a difference greater than the combined populations of Los Angeles and Orange Counties! Not only do students need to analyze the likelihood of their predictions playing out in real life, they need to consider the validity of the analysis itself.

Technology supports learning
Doug believes learning becomes deeper and more immediate with technology. He recalls a stock market simulation he used to use at middle school that employed conventional tools. It changed profoundly when it was enhanced with technology. Students studied the newspaper and used pencil and paper to keep track of a virtual stock portfolio. With the introduction of computers, the investigation was raised to another level—instead of having to write to companies and wait long periods before receiving annual reports, now students could go on-line for immediate information about prospective companies. Students could suddenly track their fortunes every moment, and use spreadsheets to draw up graphs showing stock performance. At the end of the term students wrote full-blown reports about their companies. These reports were richer and showed a greater depth of understanding than those following past investigations.

Project learning
Doug enjoys the enthusiastic response when students get in the driver’s seat of their own learning. He “gets a better buy-in” when technology-supported projects are the order of the day. Teaching is different, too—the development of project-based curriculum is a likely result of having rich technology resources at hand.

While Doug supports project-based learning in math, he admits it’s hard to develop projects that include skill sets large and specific enough to satisfy the state math standards. He says the math skill sets are so detailed that “drill and kill” math book lessons become the most efficient delivery system, yet for problem solving concepts at higher levels, a project framework is better.


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