Overview
IXL Practice is an interactive website that offers a multitude of math skills practice at varying age levels. Math skills are organized by grade level, content and skill. Students are able to complete practice problems, monitor their time, and earn a score based on efficiency.
Curator: Erica Skrip
Brief Description of Tech Tool:
This technological tool offers students practice converting between representations of data; between tables, mappings, graphings, and lists of ordered pairs. Once students have made their responses to the question asked, the program will tell students if they're correct. Correct answers earn points. Incorrect response can be explained further in order to help students understand. This technological tool also offers links to review skills or material that students may need to re-visit if they are having difficulties with the task at hand.
Technical & Cost considerations: IXL is an internet based site. If you have access to free wi-fi or a direct connection, you're in business! However, IXL will only allow you to complete so many practice problems for free. After a certain number of problems and/or time, the ability to do practice is restricted.
Evaluation
1. What mathematics is being learned?
This technological tool is intended to allow students to represent relations in various contexts such as tables, mappings, graphings and ordered pairs. It does not appear to apply to a particular Common Core state standard. The different representations of relations is not a skill specificaly addressed in the CCSS (8th - HS). However, when looking at the PSSM, one of our goals is to understand patterns, relations, and functions. While using this tool, it is thought that students will learn to "understand relations and functions and select, convert flexibly among, and use various representations for them (PSSM p. 296). This tool can help develop the conceptual understanding of students' ideas of the various ways in which a relation can be represented. I also believe that this tool serves to help increase procedural fluency. It allows for quick and repetitive practice helping to build fluency.
Standards
PSSM
Understand patterns, relations, and functions
- Understand relations and functions and select, cover flexibly among, and use various representations for them.
- Interpret representations of functions of two variables.
CCSS
N/A
Proficiency Strands
- conceptual understanding - Students are able to develop a more conceptual understanding as they are exposed to continuous visual examples of different representations of relations. The feedback offered by the tool, especially for incorrect responses, also helps develop conceptual understanding.
- procedural fluency - The technology of this tool allows for an increase in the number of practice problems offered, thus promoting fluency.
If a student is selecting incorrect responses, at the bottom of the screen, there is a link to a previous math skill that would help make sure that they're ready for the skill being worked on. Essentially, the 'what should have been learned first,' skill. I found this to be a great element of the tool.
2. How is the mathematics represented?
Representations of relations is a very visual concept. As such, the IXL practice is a very visual tool. Students are shown different representations and they must match them accordingly. These various pictures give two-dimensional representations of these relations which is entirely adequate for mappings of two variables. The tool also allows for students to interact with the visual representations; plot points, fill in ordered pairs, etc.
3. What role does technology play?
Advantages
- Repetitive practice
- Visual representations that students may interact with
- A 'Smart Score' is kept monitoring student success
- A timer can be used
- When a student answers incorrectly, there is feedback
- There are links to skills that should have been learned previously
Disadvantages
- No 'fun' element
- Visuals are not creative
Affordances of Technology for Supporting Learning
- Representing Ideas & Thinking - The focus of this technological tool is to understand the different representations of relations. The tool allows students to represent different mappings of relations that are all equatable to one another. In doing so, students may develop a preference in terms of their preferred way to represent or think of sets of data.
4. How does the technology fit or interact with the social context of learning?
IXL is designed for independent practice. The site does not offer 'game-like' practice, rather, repetitive questions with feedback. However, this does not mean that the teacher is limited to this design. In the classroom, students could be assigned to work with one another, requiring that each complete a certain number of problems. Students could be directed to work in groups. There is a score kept so this can be used to face groups against one another. Although the tool itself is not particularly socially-enabling, it can be made to be.
5. Additional Comments
One of the most positive attriibutes of this tool is in the offering of feedback to students.