Help. If you have some time...

My students have finally finished their first versions of their 2 Minutes to Make a Difference movies for this year.  A change from last years movies is that we are encouraging them to solicit feedback from classmates and around the world.  It would be great if your spring included having students watch the videos and adding comments and ways in which they would make the video better.  I will include the playlist from the spmath channel on youtube.  I have also included 2 screencaptures of the rubrics we will be using to make give the final marks.

What is important is that there is a global audience for these videos.  Please when commenting leave where you are from geographically so the kids see the power of audience.

Thank you in advance

Here are all the videos up to Tuesday. These are first versions of the movies. Please use the following criteria if you are interested in leaving feedback behind:


Use the arrow on the right hand side to switch videos. Thank you for your time


Here are 2 screencaptures of the rubrics

Interviewing an expert

Part of the changes we made to the 2 Minutes to make a Difference movie project this year was an expectation that the students find an "expert" to talk to.  What was impressive was the amount of students scouring the internet to find people that might talk to them or correspond with emails.

Out of 75 marks the interview is only worth 5 but many students are having long conversations with people from around the world.  They are learning how to ask questions and how to collect information from these experts.  It is ironic how many of the "experts" do not have a great grasp on technology.  Many use email but when asked to skype or use a different online tool they had little knowledge on how to connect with my students. 

Welcome back the phone.  Here the students and the experts were comfortable and the information interchange was excellent. 

Part of the reflection at the end of the project will be to explain how the students found their expert and how the "expert's" information helped their movie project.  I am impressed with my students.  They constantly rise to the level of the challenge provided to them.  I need to remember this.  Set the bar high and they will achieve more than if they had the bar set lower.

Google Docs takes Steroids

I have loved Google Docs since I first started using it 3 or 4 years ago.  Now I like it even better.  Up to a gazillion people can edit and work on 1 document at one time!!! This is a change from the past. Long live etherpad. 

Combine that with the power of google and.... voila:) More importantly you can create images like in Microsoft Paint.  This has been a feature missing from most of the Macs in my room.  Now kids can enhance their posts using google docs instead of trying to find other programs on their computer. 

Oh yeah and it is saved with the rest of their work, you can pubish it and link it to documents and.... to your posts:)

Google Docs I <3 you

Movie Project Update

With the days rapidly dwindling before the Movie Project is done crunch time is upon us.  It is evident that this years students are different than last years students.... go figure.  Some reinventing of the Movie Project has evolved over the year. 

More work needed to be done during school time.  This is fine.  Problem is that most of that time came out of my math classes.  The "team" did not figure out that they too had to donate some time to the cause.  Oh well.  Perhaps next year the "team" will recognize the importance of the project and jump on board earlier... here is hoping!!

We have given the students  a rubric for them to use.

They should have a first draft of their movies done by the end of the week.  Next week we will use the rubric and student responses to edit and critique the finished movies.  My goal is to have the students leave comments behind at youtube.   The groups will then have a chance to redo their movie and resubmit it.  Peer feedback will be important to a better finished product.  The top groups will benefit from this editing time.  Last year we found many groups with grammar and topic errors. A good peer edit will eliminate many of these small errors.

A problem will occur when the other groups do not finish on time and hand in inferior work.  It is a fine balance with due dates and students.  Some make the due dates others do not.  With the movie being 20% of the third term I hope this motivates them to complete it on time.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by randomcuriosity

Pi Day Festivities

I know it is late. Pi day was at 1:59 on Sunday but we have had no school since then. Today was our first Pi day at school. Imagine an "Amazing Race" but with math clues. Nine teams of Grade 8 students, 2 teams of Grade 9 students and 5 teams of Grade 7 students raced around the school looking for clues based on our favorite irrational number!! Pi!!

What I took away from this experience was that kids love competing and some kids love to compete using math. So here was our format if you want to use it at your school:

Each Grade had 5 questions to answer. Here are mine..
Question 1
A) Count the lockers outside the gym and before Room 2. 
B) Use that number as the diameter of a circle. 
What is the area of a circle that has B as a diameter?
What room is closest to where you have arrived.  You will find your second clue there.
Question 2
Use the room where you area now and call it a radius. 
Find the are of a circle that has it as a radius. 
Your next clue awaits you there. Question 3
Find the median of the provincial basketball banners by the west gym doors. 
Divide that year by 100 and round to the nearest whole number. 
Use that number as the circumference of a circle.  You will find your next clue at the room that is one whole number larger.
Question 4
Use the Room from Question 3 as a diameter.  Find the surface area of a cylinder whose length is also the answer from Question 3. 
Round the area up to the nearest unit and you will arrive at your next destination.Question 5
Find the Radius of a circle whose circumference is 98432.72 units.  When you find the radius you need to find that number in the gym hallway.  Good luck!!
Final Clue
Find the digital root of this radius.  The treasure awaits you there.

I placed the clues in envelopes at the locations found in the envelopes, (locker numbers, room numbers etc).  After each clue was solved the students would race around to the next clue location and have to find in in close proximity to where the previous clue had sent them.

If I was to do this again I would stagger the groups out and have them start with different questions all returning to the final clue and the prize.  The way I did it this year all students started at question 1 and went to question 2 etc.  It was a bit of a follow the leader instead of solve it on your own.  Oh well.

What Have I learned? I have learned that kids love this activity and as a school we will do it again in a month or so. We will do it outside and set it up like score orienteering.  Perhaps more kids will try out and have fun.  If not the ones who do sign up will have as much fun as the winners from today's Pi event. I guess I forgot to tell you.  All kids received a prize (pizza tickets) due to their large smiles and enthusiasm. 

I love my job:)

2010/365 the second month

I have successfully created a second month of 365 photos. For some reason I missed one day... I took the picture but I cannot find it anywhere. Do not know if this disqualifies me but I am loving this project.

Here is February


Created with flickr slideshow.

Darren Kuropatwa Wolves, Russians and Other Stories

Here is the wonderful keynote given by Darren yesterday at BYTE2010.



Here is his slidedeck

Teaching Interdependence v2

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