S.O.A.R.

The inclusion of drones in instructional activities will yield an increase in student motivation and engagement.  The use of robotics in general allows for students to have concrete examples of how mathematical concepts are applied and utilized in the real world.  Often times a short exposure to robotics can have a lasting impact on students to pursue complex careers that they may have never considered.  It is projected that the nation will have up to 8 million STEM jobs by 2018, with at least 248,000 jobs in STEM in New Jersey alone.

 

The use of drones is growing in momentum in the work place.  Applications are no longer limited to military or police operations.  Scientists, construction workers, realtors, first responders, sports teams, band directors and many more professionals are finding the utility of these quad copters fueling a demand that this technology will quickly become a staple for college and career readiness. 

 

Drones present a possibility of a broad range of mathematical applications.  Just to take simple flight or plan a route, students need to consider weight, height, angles, and speed.  The key to the learning experience is to reinforce content knowledge with these drones.  The drones grab the students’ attention and engage them in an activity while they are applying and mastering the skills that they learned during instruction.  

 

S.O.A.R. is a conceptual model developed by Dr. Chris Carnahan and Dr. Laura Zieger to provide teachers with the technical and conceptual knowledge that they need to include drone and robotic technology into their classrooms to engage young learners.  

 

In 2015, students began taking the New Jersey state test in Algebra I, aligned to the Common Core standards. Passing that test will become a high school graduation requirement. Startling recent results bring cause for alarm. In a recent report to the New York Board of Regents, three-quarters of New York’s high-school students flunked the Common Core algebra standards last year. New Jersey schools did not fare much better; less than half of the students scored as proficient at every level on the math tests and only 23 percent of high school students who took the Algebra II test scored as proficient. As a result, students in middle school are being introduced to algebraic equations and concepts earlier in order to prepare them for the more complex Common Core standards-based Algebra I. The standards integrate algebraic concepts in earlier grades, making the standard middle school math curriculum more challenging.

 

The New Jersey Department of Education is motivating middle schools to offer Algebra I as one of its College and Career Readiness benchmarks. The target is for 20 percent of all students in school to take Algebra I in eighth grade. As far back as 1997, the Department of Education found that students who take Algebra in high school attend college at a much higher rate with low income students three times more likely to go to college (ETS, 2009). Studies further indicate the converse; students who “successfully complete Algebra I often continue to pursue the study of high school mathematics that prepares them for college, while students who are unsuccessful in Algebra I find their path to success blocked” (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, n.d., p. 1).  According to RAND (2003), “Without proficiency in algebra, students cannot access a full range of educational and career options, and they have limited chances of success” (p. 47).

 

The concern is that these middle school students will not be able to comprehend the subject at an earlier age. While there is research showing that students who take Algebra I in eighth grade are more likely to successfully attend college, there is also research that shows pushing students to take it before they are ready often leads to failure. Historically, Middle School math was overhauled in the 1990’s when the concern was that the United States was lagging behind other developed countries. Then, Algebra became a national goal. Eventually, concerns began to surface regarding teacher’ ability to teach the subject and students being under-prepared. The Brown Center at Brookings National report, “The Misplaced Math Student: Lost in Eighth Grade Algebra” illustrated that having more students take Algebra did not necessarily mean they were learning. High income students were getting private tutoring to help them along while lower income students with less means for private instruction were failing.

 

Mathematics achievement is a ladder toward promoting equity for all ethnic groups and socioeconomic statuses by providing access to academic and career success. Further, it has become a gatekeeper for those less advantaged toward high-status and income producing occupations. Thousands of students each year in New Jersey and hundreds of thousands across the country are ending their education without having the mathematical skills they will need to be educated citizens and consumers.

 

Algebra is an essential subject to develop students’ ability to learn how to reason with facts. It is the building block for higher level mathematics. Many of the concepts presented in Algebra I are progressions of the concepts that were started in grades 6 through 8. According to the draft proposed for the New Jersey Algebra I Core Content, the mission is for “Students to use mathematics to make sense of the world around them. They use mathematical reasoning to pose and solve problems, communicating their solutions and solution strategies through a variety of representations” (2010). The proposal further states, “Students studying Algebra I should use appropriate tools (e.g., algebra tiles to explore operations with polynomials, including factoring) and technology, such as regular opportunities to use graphing calculators and spreadsheets. Technological tools assist in illustrating the connections between algebra and other areas of mathematics, and demonstrate the power of algebra.”

 

The Common Core emphasizes conceptual understanding at every phase of math instruction, including algebraic concepts. How can these abstract ideas and concepts be taught to students at the middle school level? Students in middle school should be drawing bar graphs based on experiences, conducting experiments discovering and generating patterns, and following and writing directions for carrying out tasks. These students can then build their understanding of statistics, probability, and discrete mathematics based on these previous activities.

Technology such as unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) can help students understand the significance of a quadratic equation, for example. By using UAVs, abstract math can be brought to life through the power of visual and hands-on learning. The more abstract math becomes, the less students are interested. This is particularly pertinent during the middle school years when teachers often have fewer options with manipulatives to explain abstract concepts.

 

The Association for Unmanned Vehicles and Systems International estimates there will be 30,000 drones in use in the by 2020, with agriculture as the largest growth industry. Drones are currently utilized in filmmaking, conservation, search and rescue, military operations and energy infrastructure. A key element of the S.O.A.R. model is to provide a curriculum-based program that excites students in STEM pathways. Unmanned Air Vehicles offer an ideal tool for engaging student interest and encouraging them to develop invaluable math and science skills. Curriculum content specialists will work with teachers to take what they learn about UAVs and translate it into lesson plans that middle school mathematics teachers anywhere can use in their classrooms. The idea is to improve learning algebraic concepts by utilizing hands-on activities with current technology to engage students.

 

Essential conceptual questions that will be addressed utilizing Unmanned Air Vehicles in the mathematics curriculum:

• What are some ways to represent, describe, and analyze patterns (that occur in our world)?

• When is one representation of a function more useful than another?

• How can we use algebraic representation to analyze patterns?

• Why is it useful to represent real-life situations algebraically?

• How can change be best represented mathematically?

• How can we use mathematical language to describe change?

• How can we use mathematical models to describe change or change over time?

• How can patterns, relations, and functions be used as tools to best describe and help explain real-life situations?

• How can the collection, organization, interpretation, and display of data be used to answer questions?

• How can the representation of data influence decisions?

• When does order matter?

• How can experimental and theoretical probabilities be used to make predictions or draw conclusions?