Teaching Geometry at Mountain View High School*: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching Geometry at Mountain View High School*: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching Geometry at Mountain View High School*: Technology Integration

 It is 8:00 AM and a few 9th grade students slowly enter the classroom. Music is playing, ballads and songs from an earlier decade—I recognized “Hotel California.” Brendan Dilloughery , working on his laptop at his desk, welcomes each student by name and they sit in their pod of desks, some slowly unpacking their notebook and laptop or tablet (this is a Bring-Your- Own-Device district**) from their backpacks. Other students put in earbuds to listen to their favorite music or program, and a few   just stare into space.

A veteran teacher of nearly a decade in international schools in Ecuador, Switzerland, and other places, Dilloughery is in his second year at Mountain View. He teaches geometry and computer science. Tall, energetic—constantly on the move even before the buzzer sounds for the geometry 1 class to begin—the teacher has the agenda for the lesson on the white board. Trimmed beard, mustache, and goatee, the teacher is wearing a maroon long sleeved shirt and dark slacks. He gazes around the room seeing pods of 3-4 desks scattered across the medium sized classroom slowly filling with students.

The buzzer sounds at 8:10 (the period will end at 8:55) and Dilloughery gets the 19 students’ attention. He asks them to take out their homework—three students sitting near me tear out a written page from their notebook —and tells the class that he will come around and stamp their homework (the stamp is a large checkmark). Dilloughery walks around as students place their homework next to their laptop or tablet which they open and go to Google Classroom where they access the homework assignments and geometry proofs for the day (all students have a textbook at home from which the teacher assigns homework).

The “agenda” for the day is on the whiteboard:

–Warm-up

–Blue Angels tomorrow at lunch

–Review homework

–Proofs -big picture

–IXL-C 8

After stamping homework, the teacher asks students to close their lids at a 45 degree angle (after all, it is geometry, I think to myself). Students do. At the front whiteboard, Dilloughery then proceeds to go over step-by-step a problem that Teaching Geometry at Mountain View High School*: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: