My sharing moment will be in the form of presenting a couple quick sessions on introducing binary. Of course, in an attempt to mix things up and give some life to the session I will be presenting within the framework of explaining a joke — the binary joke. I know, I know…the approach could be good or bad. By the way, that’s binary. The fact is we are presented with many binary decisions, answers, problems to solve in each of our days. I’m quite biased being a Computer Science-based educator, but I do believe that we have a role in exposing students to binary early in school. Why? Well, I’ve eluded to this briefly in my Haiku Deck that was created for my session, but we must admit to the fact that it is the basis of the technology that we use every day. “We” as in all of the stakeholders in the education system. This is yet another realization of how much we use and consume technology.
Bringing numeracy to the forefront in this presentation will be easily seen as we are directly speaking to numeric symbols, but I think it should be relayed throughout the time in the classroom that numeracy isn’t necessarily about numbers, it’s the attitude towards understanding, analyzing, and then applying the numbers into our problem-solving processes. A somewhat overused cliche is that “it’s all about the journey, not the destination” and in fact, by seeing the attitude of growth regarding numeracy we bring out words like “yet” and “soon” which can motivate and build perseverance in our students. It is our role as educators to show the process being adhered to and conveyed so that the learning becomes visible to the student themselves and helps give feedback of next steps to the educator.
Here is the link to the classroom manipulative (feel free to share) I gave out to the attendees of the sessions. Below is the Haiku Deck slideshow:
The Binary Joke - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires;
The Binary Joke — Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires