Workshop Description
Making Numeracy Visible explores how teachers can use technology to surface and examine student mathematical thinking in meaningful ways. In this session, participants will experience instructional strategies that help make students’ reasoning, representations, and problem-solving approaches visible so they can be shared, compared, and discussed. Through interactive tasks and examples from classroom practice, teachers will explore how digital tools can support the collection and display of student thinking in real time, allowing educators to highlight multiple strategies, identify key mathematical ideas, and deepen classroom discussions. Participants will leave with practical ideas for integrating technology into numeracy instruction in ways that strengthen conceptual understanding and make student thinking an essential part of the learning process.
Strand Outcomes
As a result of this workshop, school librarians will:
Workshop Leaders
Jennifer Fronczak | Professional Learning Specialist – RiSE Center | University of Maine
Orono, ME
Email: jennifer.fronczak@maine.edu
Jennifer Fronczak provides professional learning offerings across the STEM disciplines. She works with partnering school districts to provide direct, specialized mathematics professional learning that includes conducting analysis of student data to support teacher’s iterative reflective teaching practices. Jenn supports several grants including the iTEST grant which is a model program to engage students in authentic, technology-infused coastal research and monitoring. Jenn also contributes to the RiSE Teaching Fellowship program as a mentor teacher.
Prior to working for the RiSE Center, Jenn spent 30+ years working in public education at every grade K – Adult Education. She is a former National Board Certified Teacher in the area of Early Adolescent Mathematics. She is a national speaker contributing mathematics, technology, and place-based workshops to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) as well as various state’s conferences.
Justin Dimmel | Interim Director, Maine RiSE Center
Associate Dean for Academics and Student Engagement
College of Education and Human Development
| University of Maine, Orono
Email: justin.dimmel@maine.edu
Justin Dimmel is associate dean for academics and student engagement in the University of Maine College of Education and Human Development, where he also serves as an associate professor of mathematics education and instructional technology in the School of Learning and Teaching. Dr. Dimmel has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education. He is the founder and director of the Immersive Mathematics in Rendered Environments (IMRE) Lab, which designs virtual and augmented reality math and science learning environments, and investigates how VR and AR technologies can transform STEM education. In addition, he led a team that developed the SunRule, an interactive sculpture that harnesses the rays of the sun to help users explore multiplication and division. The project was chosen for UMaine’s MIRTA accelerator, a program designed to advance research along the path to commercialization, turning lab innovations into real-world products and services with public benefit. In 2022, Dimmel received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the organization’s most prestigious award for early career faculty.
