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.

Numbers Numbers Numbers

I was going though youtube and found this.



I do not know how I will use it but.... there have to be possibilities.

Enjoy

Meeting Ewan

A short 6.5ish hour drive down the highway brought me to Moosejaw SK. earlier this week. Dean Shareski had arranged for Ewan Mcintosh to talk to his division and others on Monday Aug. 25. I along with my fellow blogger from Manitoba John Evans joined the day long presentation.

Before the presentation my wife and I went for a run around Moosejaw. It was the first day of school and we passed by this sign.

Its cryptic message made me take a picture. It was an enjoyable run and a good energizer before the days work with Ewan.

Most of my notes for the day were taken in twitter. For the key ideas and quotes of the day you will need this link or you can just search the tag mjaw08. More importantly you can check out the vast amount of links he provided us during the day at his delicious page. Warning there are so many excellent links here you could be busy for many hours..... or days!!

This is what Ewan presented. For those in my network that were unable to attend please watch this slidecast.

Unleashing The Tribe: small passionate communities

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: tipperary institute learning)

The afternoon was spent on the premise of gaming in schools. For many teens much of their life revolves around the video game. How is it possible to use these games in a pedagogical way Ewan showed many examples. The one that stood out for me was the use of the Nintendo DS in the classroom.

I guess I am intrigued due to my 3 boys love of their DS machines. If we could harness this love and make it an activity that promoted learning wow that would be the ticket. Ewan mentioned some games that have increased math skills in Scottish students. One of them is Brain Age. This game is full of puzzles and you get to unlock higher levels the further you go.

I do not think that I will ask my principal to buy DS's for the classroom since most students have them at home. I will however ask for money to buy a variety of games to stimulate brains during class or when students are done work. Think of students motivated to work in class so that they can play their DS which also is teaching them math. WIN WIN I think. Stay tuned for updates on this experiment.

This evening I purchased 3 games for my classroom Professor Layton and the Curious Village

and two of the Brain Age Games. I will allow the students to play them when time allows in class. If this is a popular choice I will purchase more games and see what happens. Kids learn best when the motivation is intrinsic. We cannot force them to learn they have to want to learn. I am sure that these games will start to give students reason to work hard in class and for some simple enjoyment and learning without them knowing all the math behind the game.

It was a great trip and I am ready to start the school year!

UPDATE John found this video. It helps explain the role of games in the class.

The Crisis of Significance

The Crisis of Significance is a quote from Dr. Michael Wesch's talk to the University of Manitoba on June 17th. Man he was so close yet I wasn't there. Maybe next time.



The "Crisis of Significance" is introduced at the 7:50 minute mark of the talk. Dr. Wesch is talking about questions students ask in class.


Now he is talking about University students but man the same questions are asked in Grade 8 math.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/emagic/56206868/

1. How many points is this worth?
2. How long does this paper need to be?
3. What do we need to know for this test?

These questions all go back to the learning process. Earlier in his presentation he asked his students how many were enjoying the school experience and only a few raised their hands. But when this was rephrased as how many enjoy learning all hands were raised.

All of this (I have only watched the first 8 minutes) is hitting home during this preseason before school starts. My students ask similar questions and feel the same way about school.

What can we do as educators to make the learning experience more pleasing and intrinsically motivating for students. I have been blogging and using wikis for 3 years and this will be my 4th. Still most students do not feel the intrinsic need to learn for the sake of learning. They are there to get a number on a test and a report card.

What is needed to get the majority of students to learn for the sake of learning?

My next few days will be all about trying to create a course where students ask questions when they do not understand a concept instead of just sitting there like a goldfish.

I have by chance thank you Alec and Dean been watching Dr. Wesch over the past 2 days. Perhaps you should too.

The talk that got me searching

Smartboards...

Wes Fryer


recently wrote a post about Smartboards. It has gathered quite a few comments and I am deciding to create a post instead of leaving a comment behind.

Wes in his post starts off talking about how Smartboard is requiring a license key to use the latest version of Smartboard Notebook Software. I will admit that having access to the smartboard software for free. It is a cornerstone application that I have used in my classroom.

Wes also points out that some divisions are using IWB's to "showcase" their use of technology. This is a disturbing trend.

I work in a school of 1000+ students. We have to large Smartboards and have just recently purchased 2 mini versions. Cost is a factor on what we as a school will purchase. It was deemed prudent to purchase the two smaller boards. This is all good news to me. I had one of the larger smartboards in my room for the first 100 days of the school year. It is to be shared so I had to give it up for the rest of the year. This was very difficult. I had just gotten used to using it and had found many different uses for it in my classroom.

Video conferencing I collaborated with a school in Alabama and used Eluminate to do some creative problem solving.

| View | Upload your own

The two classes were able to connect and work simultaneously and the Smartboard provided the link so that the entire class could participate.




Class Math Congresses The students used voicethreads to showcase their work. They then used features in voicethread (zooming in on details) to further elaborate on the math content that they had created. The smartboard allowed for an image to be larger than the standard chartboard sized paper we were using in class.



Finally I used the Smartboard to place my lessons up onto slideshare and Ustream. I was just getting comfortable with this when my 100 days were up and I had to give it to another teacher.

Technology needs to be in the hands of teachers who are willing to use it creatively and with purpose. For schools that do not have a huge budget (mine included) place the smartboard in a classroom where it will be used on a daily basis. Arrange a schedule so that other teachers can Everyone wins in this situation. The teacher that uses the board on a regular basis and the school that gets more teachers on board using technology through seeing technology in use.

Wes also mentions that often technology is being used as an extension of 19th C teaching in the 21st century.

"I know, but I am quite tired of seeing so many teachers continue to persist in 19th century styles of teaching using 21st century tools."

Wes also quotes the (The Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation (AALF)

"Only when we put the technologies in the HANDS OF THE STUDENTS and intentionally seek to facilitate student creation, communication, and collaboration with those tools ON A REGULAR BASIS will we be appropriately utilizing taxpayer dollars for educational technologies in our schools."

I heartily agree with this statement. I hope that students will start to create more using technology. I hope to have mathtv up and running this year. It will take what my class blogs have been doing and make it more media fresh for today's student.

My morning time is up. Ben Hazzard of the Smartboard Podcast also responded to Wes's post. It is an excellent reflection on the technology as he sees it. I recommend reading his comment.

Technology needs to be in schools. Too many teachers are afraid of technology. We need to bridge the gap. Kids want technology, teachers need to use it. Baby steps people.

Now for some House Cleaning

It is the summer and I am the daytime caregiver for my wonderful 3 boys. This means that computer time is between the time before they get up and breakfast. After that it is go go go with the list of items we need to fix around the house and finding activities that are interesting to them.

I have a few loose ends to tie up before the next year starts.

• The first is to wrap up the CIU20 Math Conference I keynoted in June.
• The second is to reflect on my year and all that happened.
• The third is to go about setting up 8 blogs for the grade 7's and 8's this upcoming year.

This post will be about the experience I had in Pennsylvania in June.

I was asked to keynote and provide 4 sessions to math teachers in Pennsylvania in December last year. Enthusiastically I said yes to this en devour. I would provide these teachers with a Keynote. (Warning the slides and the audio do not match. I have 100 slides and am unable to sync them all to the audio. I have chosen to evenly split the audio and slides so that you are at least able to follow along. Sorry for the shoddy job.)

What message does the "way" you teach convey to your students?

view presentation (tags: 21stcmathciu20 charbeck chris harbeck presentation)

and also go about preparing 4 sessions based on the work I do in my classroom . I thought this would be easy. I was to do this presentation during the last week of school for my school division. This meant that all of my year end duties had to be done well in advance. This part of the story went off with out a hitch.

Arriving in PA I set to work finalizing the keynote and making sure that the other presentations were worthy of a performance. Much to my dismay the wifi in the hotel was weak and working on presentations online was difficult. I overcame this obstacle with some pain (working early in the morning) and was able to create a wiki for all participants.

http://21stcmath.pbwiki.com/

All of the material I created for the participants is here. Some of the comments I received in the evaluations of this conference need to be shared because it shows the weakness of my presentations.

A common comment was that participants wanted more hands on time to create and work on blogs. I would have loved to provide this but in just an hour per presentation this would have been difficult. Another problem was that only 1/3 of participants had computers with them. What would the other 2/3's have done. I hope that my style of showing how to quickly for the 1/3 and explaining for the other 2/3's was not too stale.

If I was to do this again I would ask for an entire half day to explain and provide hands on techniques to participants. In 3 hrs one could accomplish quite a bit and give the needed first steps to participants.

Another common comment was that "My district does not allow..." for all the tools demonstrated during the conference. My recommendation for all of the participants who mentioned this is to talk to their tech people. They will listen and show you what you can use and cannot use. Show them the possibilities of 2.o applications and set your students on a course for learning.

My hosts were gracious and nice and I hope that I provided valuable information to the participants in my presentations. I am glad it is over and am ready to do it again if anyone wants to hire me...