About the Author and Her Research

What if we could spark innovation using technology ?

Having spent two decades in middle and high school classrooms teaching 7th-grade math and Algebra 2, Rose Girguis is excited to see her students every day, and enjoys watching them make progress.  She currently teaches at aBYOD (Bring Your Own Device)  technology middle school, and loves using technology to increase student learning. 
 
Over the past ten years, technology has become a major force in the field of education. As it continued to grow and become more available, Rose wanted to be a part of that movement - particularly since the CA CCSS (California Common Core State Standards) has also set many new technology standards for students. Her main focus is on math-specific standards and presentation tools. 

Mrs. Girguis' students are representative of diverse school demographics. The ethnic breakdown is currently 30% Asian, 37% Hispanic, 10% Black, 15% White, and 8% Other. Students who are eligible for free or reduced lunches make up 33% of the school population.

CAASP data from 2015 reports that 64% of seventh-grade students do not meet grade-level standards. Rose has spent years trying to decrease the achievement gap in all of her students by using a variety of strategies and technology, in order to provide them with the skills to achieve real success in the 21st Century.  

Mrs. Girguis is located in a district that is implementing the Inquiry/Project-based learning model. She provides her students with inquiry labs, in which she utilizes small groups for collaboration and peer instruction.. The closest approach to this model is blended learning, but that method makes little connection to Inquiry, PBL, or creativity in a middle school mathematics classroom.
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Rose gives her students a voice and choice in their projects and encourages them to express their own creativity and interests, thereby allowing them to develop their own motivations. She provides personalized learning experiences via differentiated instruction and innovative teaching strategies, which are made possible with the growing educational technology that is available.

Mrs. Girguis has also enrolled her students in the Learn Storm Competition by Khan Academy.  This site allows her to design instruction that is visually stimulating, and to incorporate games such as xpmath.com in her classroom, which makes learning more fun. Her students demonstrate their learning of the material with a variety of modalities.

​Rose is using the flip-class model (once called the inverted model) and takes advantage of the class time freed up by this model for Inquiry/Discovery work, and projects which provide her students with opportunities for deeper learning and problem-solving. 

Deeper Learning

PBL in Mathematics

Inquiry in Math

Mrs. Girguis' school is part of the New Tech Network (NTN), and further inspiration for her research came from this Teaching Channel Video on the building blocks of project-based learning (PBL). Follow the video link to learn more about NTN and PBL.