Hmmm...we are given an interesting question this week. "What small change might I make to my project to increase creativity/innovation? Is hat an important enough goal to attend to in this lesson or is it best saved for another opportunity?"
Funny that we are asked that because that was something that I tried to incorporate in my project from the get go. First of all, I think seeing math in the real world is fun and most time people have to be creative to find upper level math that can relate! Second, I am asking our students to investigate, explore, and discovery different conclusions and situations from the ONE they are given. Lastly, I think giving my students the openness to present their projects however they see fit...is allowing from a broad margin of creativity and innovation. SO, normally, I would say this is something I struggle with. BUT, this project definitely lends itself to that from the get go...so that is very excited.
On that note, I do think different subjects and different things involved in those subjects lend them to more or less creativity. Therefore, when we can find these things and incorporate them into mathematics/science...it is a great achievement. I hope that as a mathematics educator this is something that I am constantly striving for!
Friday, September 30, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Assessing Our Students
Assessing our students seems to be such a loaded statement. Today when administration doesn't stand as firmly behind the teacher, you want to make sure that EVERY point is accounted for and all i's dotted and all t's crossed!
Since I am not in the classroom anymore, obviously assessing my students is a little easier! HOWEVER, since I am in the business of creating good assessments as well as good assessing tools! One challenge that we have with online learning is creating good alternative assessments aside from the test. It is good in one way because it allows us to be creative as well as create environments where our students truly can shine. On the other hand, we also need to create detailed, thorough, well-thought-out rubrics that can assess our student's artifacts.
To be honest, I think rubrics are hard to create because they are hard to create fair. The reality is...if a teacher is given a word document or an amazing power point presentation...it is hard to not account for all the hard wok that went into that ppt. SO, how to grade content for content. Well, because we are human...I am going to go with...it's hard...needs to be done...but hard!
Therefore, my goal this year as I am working with my SMEs on their projects is to really look in depth at what they present as projects as well as what they present to assess those projects. When I get to that point...I will let you know how that goes! :)
Since I am not in the classroom anymore, obviously assessing my students is a little easier! HOWEVER, since I am in the business of creating good assessments as well as good assessing tools! One challenge that we have with online learning is creating good alternative assessments aside from the test. It is good in one way because it allows us to be creative as well as create environments where our students truly can shine. On the other hand, we also need to create detailed, thorough, well-thought-out rubrics that can assess our student's artifacts.
To be honest, I think rubrics are hard to create because they are hard to create fair. The reality is...if a teacher is given a word document or an amazing power point presentation...it is hard to not account for all the hard wok that went into that ppt. SO, how to grade content for content. Well, because we are human...I am going to go with...it's hard...needs to be done...but hard!
Therefore, my goal this year as I am working with my SMEs on their projects is to really look in depth at what they present as projects as well as what they present to assess those projects. When I get to that point...I will let you know how that goes! :)
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Hold On To Your Hats Kids...Project Based Learning
O.K...I must admit that when I have heard project based learning in the past I wasn't really excited about it. Nor did I believe it in, want to be a part of it, OR want to incorporate it into my traditional teaching style!
HOWEVER, people change right? I have LOVED watching these videos and reading these articles...especially the article Launching a PBL Project and Geometry in the Real World: Students as Architects. O.K...actually let me back up. My three littles (my kids...I call them littles) are in a program at their school called the Creative School of Inquiry. This year they are learning through many different modes BUT one HUGE part is through projects. My oldest little did a project on Greece...how to get there, foods, religions, culture, a daily budget, and so much more. It was the first time I really saw a GREAT project that encompassed so many different subject areas. It was amazing and SHE LOVED IT!
O.K..now back to this class..so with just experiencing that...then I read these PBL articles and BAM...a light went off. I loved how you they talked about YOU really have to put in a lot of time and effort to create a GOOD PBL project...it needs to have driving question, a doable artifact, collaborative learning, and other elements. BUT these geometry students (as well as the little boy doing a project on mucus I believe) were learning and excited about it. While I believe that this can be very challenging, I think it is doable. AND while I think this goes away from our traditional thinking, I believe it will get our students excited about learning because they can use their smart phones, iPads, mp3 players, and more stuff that I don't even know about.
So, as I learn more about this AND engage my OWN LITTLES in learning this way...I hope to become more passionate and excited about this. Finally, we are incorporating it in our courses this year so I am glad I am learning more and more about this in hopes that I can help make our courses amazing for our students. I am loving this adventure!!!
HOWEVER, people change right? I have LOVED watching these videos and reading these articles...especially the article Launching a PBL Project and Geometry in the Real World: Students as Architects. O.K...actually let me back up. My three littles (my kids...I call them littles) are in a program at their school called the Creative School of Inquiry. This year they are learning through many different modes BUT one HUGE part is through projects. My oldest little did a project on Greece...how to get there, foods, religions, culture, a daily budget, and so much more. It was the first time I really saw a GREAT project that encompassed so many different subject areas. It was amazing and SHE LOVED IT!
O.K..now back to this class..so with just experiencing that...then I read these PBL articles and BAM...a light went off. I loved how you they talked about YOU really have to put in a lot of time and effort to create a GOOD PBL project...it needs to have driving question, a doable artifact, collaborative learning, and other elements. BUT these geometry students (as well as the little boy doing a project on mucus I believe) were learning and excited about it. While I believe that this can be very challenging, I think it is doable. AND while I think this goes away from our traditional thinking, I believe it will get our students excited about learning because they can use their smart phones, iPads, mp3 players, and more stuff that I don't even know about.
So, as I learn more about this AND engage my OWN LITTLES in learning this way...I hope to become more passionate and excited about this. Finally, we are incorporating it in our courses this year so I am glad I am learning more and more about this in hopes that I can help make our courses amazing for our students. I am loving this adventure!!!
Friday, September 9, 2011
LoTI Levels and other stuff!
So I really enjoyed class tonight! I loved the cool tools demos...I had heard of some and hadn't heard of others! It was great to see some new Web 2.0 tools.
I also loved the breakout sessions. I know I had a great group but it was the first time...EVER...that I think a break out session in a class has been useful. I loved the fact that Jenny, Nick, and I come from very different situations on technology integration in the classroom. Jenny is trying her hardest to integrate as much as she can BUT with constraints on her from school (parents, meetings, grading, paperwork, attendance sheets, staff development, etc.) she is just trying to get it in there. Nick's classroom pretty much is set up to use all types of technology, his curriculum is problem based learning, and most days are self-directed learning...so sometimes you may ask "what does he do?"...totally kidding! You can see from ALL of the rewards his students get that he is doing it right. I think he comes with different challenges...of always having to find the next NEW thing. I am sure sometimes it would be nice for things to be easy and not everyone watching to see what his kids come up with next. Then, obviously, I develop online so we are trying to incorporate new technologies, different assessments, web 2.0 tools, etc. However, I don't have to figure out if it really will work...our students don't have any options BUT to do it that way. Furthermore, I think they like it. BUT, I do think we could incorporate collaboration better!
SO...with all that said, it brings me to LoTi! I think that Jenny, Nick, and I had some great discussions about the examples that we had gathered. Also, we referred to the flowchart at the end of the article which I think really helped us determine where things go. For example, Nick was thinking that most of his were a 5 (which I still believe they are!) BUT when we referred to the flow chart, he said "Welllll...I don't know if there is two way communication?" then we said "But you don't know if there is?" and so on. Therefore, the back and forth communication between us was great for us to think through things. I have found my examples BUT will have to go back and re-evaluate my LoTi scores for sure! ALSO, it was so encouraging to see my teams webpage examples. To hear their struggles as well as to see some really really great examples.
Now, I must admit...I am ready to conquer this challenge and get started on my lesson. I think as we go I have decided what I want to do although it does change and tweak as we continue to learn more about this! And, I can't wait to see others projects. This might be my favorite "theory" class thus far and I am excited about applying what I know to this class, our studio class, and my job! O.K...here I go!
I also loved the breakout sessions. I know I had a great group but it was the first time...EVER...that I think a break out session in a class has been useful. I loved the fact that Jenny, Nick, and I come from very different situations on technology integration in the classroom. Jenny is trying her hardest to integrate as much as she can BUT with constraints on her from school (parents, meetings, grading, paperwork, attendance sheets, staff development, etc.) she is just trying to get it in there. Nick's classroom pretty much is set up to use all types of technology, his curriculum is problem based learning, and most days are self-directed learning...so sometimes you may ask "what does he do?"...totally kidding! You can see from ALL of the rewards his students get that he is doing it right. I think he comes with different challenges...of always having to find the next NEW thing. I am sure sometimes it would be nice for things to be easy and not everyone watching to see what his kids come up with next. Then, obviously, I develop online so we are trying to incorporate new technologies, different assessments, web 2.0 tools, etc. However, I don't have to figure out if it really will work...our students don't have any options BUT to do it that way. Furthermore, I think they like it. BUT, I do think we could incorporate collaboration better!
SO...with all that said, it brings me to LoTi! I think that Jenny, Nick, and I had some great discussions about the examples that we had gathered. Also, we referred to the flowchart at the end of the article which I think really helped us determine where things go. For example, Nick was thinking that most of his were a 5 (which I still believe they are!) BUT when we referred to the flow chart, he said "Welllll...I don't know if there is two way communication?" then we said "But you don't know if there is?" and so on. Therefore, the back and forth communication between us was great for us to think through things. I have found my examples BUT will have to go back and re-evaluate my LoTi scores for sure! ALSO, it was so encouraging to see my teams webpage examples. To hear their struggles as well as to see some really really great examples.
Now, I must admit...I am ready to conquer this challenge and get started on my lesson. I think as we go I have decided what I want to do although it does change and tweak as we continue to learn more about this! And, I can't wait to see others projects. This might be my favorite "theory" class thus far and I am excited about applying what I know to this class, our studio class, and my job! O.K...here I go!
Monday, September 5, 2011
Some web based lessons...I think!
This week I have spent forever...or at least it has seemed that way...looking for examples of lessons that deal with graphs of trig functions. I have an idea of a lesson that I would like to incorporate into a Math 4 lesson. I received some training from some of our Math teachers who got training at a state wide Math 4 training. I can't remember the exact problem but I am hoping to come up with something along the lines of the one I was introduced too. We will see if I can find it! I am looking for lessons that meet the level 3 of LoTi integration. It has been a little difficult for me to find good, detailed lessons that also incorporate real world application, interactivity, and practice! With that said...I think I have a found a few good lessons as well as a few lessons that "will do"! I also found some examples that have to do with my project but just aspects...not complete. So here you go and let me know what you think!
1. Graphs of Trigonmetric Functions on Interactive Mathematics
http://www.intmath.com/trigonometric-graphs/trigo-graph-intro.php
To be quite honest...I can't believe I have never noticed this website. It actually is a great website that uses video, plus online simulations to illustrate different aspects of trigonometric functions!
2. Graphs of Sine and Cosine Functions on Brightstorm
http://brightstorm.com/math/trigonometry/trigonometric-functions/graphs-of-the-sine-and-cosine-functions/
I love brightstorm!!! If you start on the above page it will go through instruction as well as let you click on other videos to work out problems!!! LOVE IT!
1. Graphs of Trigonmetric Functions on Interactive Mathematics
http://www.intmath.com/trigonometric-graphs/trigo-graph-intro.php
To be quite honest...I can't believe I have never noticed this website. It actually is a great website that uses video, plus online simulations to illustrate different aspects of trigonometric functions!
2. Graphs of Sine and Cosine Functions on Brightstorm
http://brightstorm.com/math/trigonometry/trigonometric-functions/graphs-of-the-sine-and-cosine-functions/
I love brightstorm!!! If you start on the above page it will go through instruction as well as let you click on other videos to work out problems!!! LOVE IT!
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