Realizing students’ ability to use technology with silent video tasks

Abstract

Teachers who encounter difficulties when implementing technology in their classes often hesitate to give it another try. They expect too many technical problems to emerge, reducing time spent on learning mathematics. Still, if a task requires only short class-time they might try. Four mathematics teachers in different upper sec-ondary schools in Iceland assigned a silent video task in their classes in fall 2017. Such tasks consist of asking students to record their commentary to a short silent mathematics film. Teachers were positively surprised by their students’ technologi-cal abilities. Nevertheless, because the task was not directly related to final test preparation, they expressed that they would unlikely use it again. In this paper, a review of technology and silent video activities and related research will be outlined.