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Our school created a NIng for our faculty last spring. We invited our faculty to join by emailing several invitations announcing the Ning and it purpose. We tried to garner enthusiasm by listing the ways it could help us communicate among our faculty. Although the entire faculty have not yet joined we have a good percentage as well as many groups and conversations begun. We had staff development classes this summer; each one began a group on the Ning to continue the conversations begun in class. We have begun tagging delicious resources to share with our faculty. We have groups to explore solutions to education challenges. We have postings to share new tools that teacher find. We have links to all our teacher-shared wikis. We have kept our network private, only open to our faculty, so we can feel safe about being honest and open. We have seen departments opening groups to discuss curriculum and plans, groups of those with the same interests such as creative commons or swapping furniture, postings about summer reading (for fun) and groups about technology tools such as Moodle or ActivBoards. The ideas are limitless.
I haven’t year determined how to use this in my classroom, but I know tht some of our high school teachers are discussing ways to use it with their students.
July 24th, 2008
RSS helps to keep me up to date with what’s happening in educational technology. Sometimes it seems overwhelming, but that’s only when I neglect to check my feeds for weeks at a time. Getting into a routine again will help I’m sure. So what have I found?
After reading Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody, I was especially interested in Will Richardson’s interview with Clay. Chris Lehman, after reading Clay’s book, wrote an article on “Why is educational change so hard?”. This was interesting in light of the changes we are trying to make in bringing Web 2.0 tools into our classrooms.
On Educational Origami, I found an excellent article about 21st century assessment, another area where change is difficult.
These feeds track education topics, but I’ve also found several math feeds to follow especially some podcasts with math puzzles and interesting information — Math Factor and MathGrad.
July 18th, 2008
Pageflakes is a cool tool that can be used for any theme for your classroom. For the math classroom, your pageflakes page could be made to reflect the topic the class is studying. Geometry basics would be a good topic with Flickr pictures of geometry objects, podcasts about math and geometry, problem of the week, etc. displayed on your pageflakes page. Students could easily create their own page with resources from different subjects on their page.
July 17th, 2008
Google docs is a powerful tool. Being able to collaborate on one document rather than someone having to manage changes from several people is a great time saver. I can think of many ways to use this in collaboration with other teachers. For instance, if we both teach the same class, we can work on the same document for a class resource or project rules or . . . This allows input from both of us without some one person being “in charge”.
How, though, can I use this in my math classroom? Project collaboration would be one way – a presentation with input from all team members. Using a spreadsheet for each student to input their data would work. A couple of years ago I had students keep track of how they spent their time. Then I input their data into a spreadsheet. With Google docs, I only need to set up the spreadsheet and each student could input their own data. I periodically have students take a partner quiz. Students work together to answer questions and explain how and why they worked the problem. Google docs may be a way for one paper to be turned in with both students input. I would love to hear other ideas for the math classroom.
July 17th, 2008
It was fun to search YouTube and TeacherTube for videos I could use in my classroom.
Here’s a fun matth video, That’s Mathematics!, a song.
As motivation, inspiration or instruction, videos appeal to students. As a project, creating a video is exciting to students. Here is an example of a student-produced video on how to remember linear equations. Another student video taught me how to make hot ice. Videos are a great resource; unfortunately YouTube is blocked at our school, but TeacherTube can be used.
July 15th, 2008
Evoca is an extremely easy way to create a podcast and free! My podcast discusses different ways podcasts could be used in the math classroom.
July 15th, 2008
“Design Matters” was a 2007 Classroom 2.0 presentation on design of our schools, design of our curriculum and design of our projects. Dean Shareski presented all three types of designs as well as three other speakers about design. He believes that we should teach our students good design techniques as they create projects for us. Good photography, video editing, slide design (less is more) and creative use of photographs should all be part of project planning in our classrooms. I wonder how we have the time to do this. First thing we can do is model good design in our presentations. Secondly we insist that our students plan before they begin. I can do at least that much.
July 15th, 2008
I’ve heard about podcasts for years, especially at tech conferences. I’ve heard several podcasts by educators about technology integration. I’ve also listened to student podcasts, such as descriptions of different gemstones studied in science classes. The resources certainly give opportunities to learn about a myriad of topics. Using my students to add to these hasn’t been on by agenda yet. Several resources, Math Factor and Math Mutation, are examples of interesting problems and fun (weird) mathematical thoughts. These could be motivating. Students could podcast instructions which would show their understanding of math concepts. In other subjects, I could imagine book reviews, historical biographies, news reports of historical events, descriptions of scientific objects, evaluations and reflections. How do I incorporate this into my pre-algebra or algebra 1 classroom? Ideas are appreciated.
July 12th, 2008
As I reviewed articles in my aggregator, I found an interesting article about epistemic games in misterteacher.com. The use of games to teach students to think and problem solve is a plus in math class. The video shared some good ideas. Using google reader can keep teachers up to date on areas of interest. This is much easier than spending an afternoon to search through sites and blogs.
June 30th, 2008
LibraryThing is like an online book club. You can find titles, reviews, other suggestions, search by topics. You can also join groups– one group had a goal to read and review 50 books this year.
How can we use this as teachers? We have a book group in the junior high for summer reading. Students choose their books and teachers read the book as well. My group chose the book, Behind the Curtain. When school begins, we will get together in small groups to discuss the chosen book. The LibraryThing can be used for interested students to create reviews, get ideas for other books to read and get interested students enthusiastic about reading.
June 30th, 2008
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