I love checking my blog stats. Above are just some of the many search terms which cause people to end up here on the blog. You search, I listen. Armed with Camtasia (provided by my friend and barbecue savant Jason Valade from TechSmith) here is a tutorial I hope you find helpful as you start your school year. Resolve to make Desmos part of your classroom culture this year, then check out the Desmos File Cabinet of graphs to get you started. Also, check out classroom strategies for using Desmos to explore function inequalities in the second video below.
“Math needs better marketing” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
Today is the last day of summer. Tomorrow, a week of district PD begins in my district, followed by the first day of school just after labor day. It’s a great time to reflect upon a summer of learning and how I will use what I have learned to improve my instructional practice. Upon reflection, I have reached one scary conclusion.
I am the problem with math education.
It’s true.
It’s not that I am a bad teacher (I hope not anyway….). My students do well, I work to improve myself professionally, and I try my best to share what I know with colleagues. But what happens inside the classroom walls just isn’t enough anymore.
Recently, I was driving with my sister, and the conversation turned towards school and how my niece and nephew were doing. The topic of math was certain to come up, in particular how math “looks” differently now in some ways than how we were taught. It was then that my sister summarized her observations of today’s math homework:
“It’s retard math”
I could have responded with an explanation of what I knew about the common core. About the need to have students experience math differently, through partial products, through thinking in groups, by drawing arrays, and the certain value all of these alternative approaches would hold in building understanding as her children head towards Algebra, where thinking abstractly now will be a huge benefit. I could have given her a synopsis of my thoughts on the off-base and overly-simpistic Facebook posts regarding standard algorithms vs “new” methods, or how the Standards of Mathematical Practice are changing how math teachers consider instruction. I could have told her how Frank Noschese and Chris Robinson are super-heroes, for standing up to all of us in their twitter discussions with sound-bite artists.
But I didn’t do any of that.
I let the subject drop.
It was just easier that way.
Rather than entertaining a real debate, I gave up. And that’s a problem.
This clip featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson summarizes why we need math, and why we need to promote the pursuit of higher-level math now more than ever.
At this year’s Siemens STEM Institute, Cindy Moss challenged us all to think about what we would do in the next 6 hours, 6 days, 6 weeks, and 6 months relative to what we had learned at the Institute. I never did make that list. So with one last night before the start of another school year…here goes:
6 hours: write this post and share out Cindy’s great thoughts and ideas by sharing the Livestream below.
6 days: share some great new tools, and work with my colleagues to develop effective practices around them
6 weeks: start a new part of the blog of my daily math class openers. I use many videos, resources, and stories to open my class, even if they are not connected with the current content. These are often the highlights of our learning day.
6 months: have a serious conversation with my sister about why drawing arrays or counting rainbows isn’t “retarded”.
This year’s school resolution – be more aggressive in highlighting new and innovative practices, and work to be a more effective instructional leader.
If you have an hour, enjoy Cindy’s talk below. You’ll pick up some great ideas, and feel energized about your ability to make STEM work at your school.
Another great week with Discovery Education is over, and I was happy to share some fun math resources to the Fellows at the Siemens STEM Institute. But being a team lead doesn’t mean that I’m not learning as well – here are 4 great online resources I had a chance to try out this week, and look forward to using in my classes to increase engagement.
Kahoot – create fun quizzes for your class with this tool. You broadcast the questions one at a time, and students earn points based on their speed on correct answers. Keeps class-wide leaderboards.
ThingLink – annote pictures with information, and share your works digitally. Provide information about key aspects, or external links to share additional information. Here is my first attempt, using a sampling distribution example as the context. Click the link to try it out!
Plickers – load the applet, print out the pre-made response cards, and prepare for a quick, engaging formative multiple-choice assessment. By scanning the room with the app, you pick up student responses, which can then be linked to students if you choose.
Answer Garden – billing itself as a “minimalistic feedback tool”, Answer Garden allows students to share briefs thoughts on a topic you choose, then gathers the results in a word wall. Here is how I used this as a potential class bell-ringer in a talk I gave earlier this week:
Students can them respond on a laptop or smart phone, with multiple responses allowed. How could these responses then allow us to start a class discussion?
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