Smart Pens & Smart Kids :)

So, I recently introduced a new technology into my classroom which I will be using with my students in order to conduct research for a couple of Hope College professors. I volunteered for the project because I love technology and this seemed like a really innovative tool. As a participant, I was given three pens along with notebooks and am required to use them with three students in math. I am incorporating my pens into one math lesson per week and my three students were randomly selected. During the guided practice portion of my lesson, my students use the smart pens and the smart notebooks to complete the same problems that the other students are completing in their math workbooks. Now, about these smart pens...

 

 Using these pens and the special notebook that comes with them, the user can write while speaking into the pen and the pen will record both what the user has written and what he/she has said. The pen can then be plugged into the computer where it will upload the writing and the voice. It can then play back the writing and the voice at the same time, displaying the words one letter at a time, therefore displaying it just as if someone were actually writing and talking right then on the computer screen. Talk about technology!

 Now, the purpose of using this technology as far as our research goes, is to determine if the use of the pen increases a student's meta-cognition in mathematics. It should also (hopefully) increase the student's mathematical fluency.

Today was our first day actually using the pens during a lesson and my two students who used the pen (my third student was absent) did a spectacular job. They completed the guided practice problems just like everyone else, but they worked in their own notebooks to record the answers. First, they had to press the record button at the bottom of the page, and then they had to solve the story problem, talking through the steps as they worked through them. I was then able to plug each pen into the computer and bring up the work that the student had completed. The whole class would then watch and listen to the student work through the problem as displayed through the computer and onto the projection screen. This helped my students who worked with the pens because we could talk through which steps were correct and which were incorrect. We could also see exactly where mistakes were made and correct them on the spot. Additionally, my other students could hear someone else talk through the problem, which is another method of representation of the information. Having the information come from a peer makes it that much more valuable. In all, the lesson went very well, the students loved it (even the ones who did not get to directly use the pen), and I'm hoping that this will continue to be a positive tool in our classroom.

For more information regarding the Livescribe Smartpen, visit this website: http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ 

I will be posting more updates on the success of the pens as we go along! :)