Watching Kids Struggle

Uphill Struggle

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianturk/355291794/

Problem solving is one of those tricky things in math. Many students give up and do not appreciate the amount of effort that is needed to get to the bottom of a puzzle or problem. Today provided a great example of student struggles.

I asked the students to do a quick back to school project for me. I assigned them numbers during the class 1-34 and asked them to take a picture of them and send them to our flickr account. Pretty straight forward until I realized that I had sent the wrong email address to the kids during the class.

I changed the address in the post and then started to monitor the chatbox on the class blog. The kids were struggling and wanting answers. They were not interpreting my small answers in the chat box but finally one student got through and completed the assignment. He then took it upon himself to stick around in the chat box and help other students be successful. Other students stuck around in the chat box following his lead and helped their classmates too.

Darren always uses the word community to describe what he does with the high school math students he teaches. I am seeing after the first day of class that community is strong in this group of students. If they are willing to take risks and use each other to find answers to problems that are hard to solve hmmm...... we will have a good year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/folkbird/148035562/

Perhaps their teacher will write down the correct email address next time or maybe he won't!!

Hey at least students are using the blog again. It is going to be a great next few months.

Starting out Differently

My school year is about to begin.  As usual it is a mix of handing out notes, collecting money and trying to remember 140+ names of students.  We will be blogging this year and the students google accounts will be created quickly.

I have decided to take a dive into flickr and have created an assignment to get the students thinking about digital photos.  All students have a camera or a cellphone.  I am going to assign a number in class to each student.  They will then find a representation of that number outside of the school and take a picture of it.  The student will then email the photo to flickr using our special email account. 

 

Flickr Link http://www.flickr.com/photos/herby_fr/94422385/

Each day we will tag the photos with a date tag.  I will get the school to buy a pro account so that we can start to create sets and not have limits to uploads.

It is a different way to start the year.  I think it will be a good way to introduce the power of the web to them.  Hey they all do this at facebook why not in math class.

Lets get ready to ruuummmbbllle... bring on the year.  Yeah tomorrow I tell them about the Nintendo DS's that are living in the room this year.