Making Maths Meaningful with iPads

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Head of Learning Area, Daisy Coma is changing the way senior school students learn in Mathematics.

As an Apple Distinguished School, Miss Coma has embraced integrating digital technology in Mathematics, finding ways to enhance a student’s learning experience and helping them to make meaning of the world around them.

Miss Coma’s recent integration of using the Keynote App in the classroom has proven an effective way of teaching Year 11 and 12 students mathematical concepts such as Similarity and Sequences.

Miss Coma asked students to use the Camera to take photographs of relevant real-world objects in and around the College. Afterwards, students added annotations and drawings on the photographs to help visualise and explain abstract mathematical problems. Some students added audio to explain their annotations and articulate their understanding at length. This creative method of learning has tipped the traditional Maths lesson on its head as students are challenged to work collaboratively and engage with their environment outside the confines of the classroom.

Students collaborate to discover connections between their learning and the real world - linking to our pedagogical principles.
- Daisy Coma

Known as ‘dual-coding’, Miss Coma purposefully wanted her students to learn through a combination of words and visuals, to give them two ways of consolidating learning and remembering information later on. By challenging students to capture and create learning visuals, Miss Coma was easily able to assess students’ understanding and quickly identify misconceptions.

If you’d like to see more Digital Creativity and how our teachers integrate technology in the Classroom, check out the hashtag, on Twitter for snap-shots of the course in action. 

Jamie Clark
DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL INTEGRATION