Privileged, buzzing and fantastic is how Paraparaumu maths teacher Paula Spence describes how she feels after attending the Texas Instruments T3 conference in Denver, Colorado in late February.
“It was a very positive professional development experience for me,” says Paula.
Paula was awarded a scholarship by Texas Instruments to attend the three-day conference, which is considered a leading development learning forum for science and maths educators.
All inspired and eager, Paula says the conference has boosted her confidence in using HHT, and she is busily transferring what she learned into practical and engaging lessons for her students.
With hundreds of displays to view and speakers to choose from, it was full-on for Paula and her fellow attendees, MOTIS participant, Wainuiomata High School’s Andrew Tideswell, and Texas Instruments' New Zealand education manager, Yvonne Blanch.
“You’re trying to learn and see as much as you can. There was so much useful stuff.”
A useful thing Paula picked up was how to turn off and reactivate applications on students’ calculators. Applications are cleared off calculators during exams and tests, however, Paula had only ever been able to delete and reinstall applications, which was a time consuming and fiddly process.
New technology was also on display including Navigator, which is a system where the teacher can communicate with individual student calculators.
Paula says she now “dreams” of what she can have in her classroom, and Navigator is one of those things. It is coming to New Zealand but cost will be deciding factor in whether her school has it installed.
It was the first time New Zealand had representation at the conference, and Paula would love to go again. But as one of the competition winners this year, under the rules she is excluded from entering for the next two years. Nonetheless, Paula is continuing to wrack her brain for winning ways to use the HHT, and is contemplating saving up to attend the conference next year.
