Looking over the list of blogs for education, the supportblogging link, I found two that were particularly interesting.
Higgy's Blog was set up by a high school math teacher. He has some great ideas for using videos in class (at least as a way of getting the student's attention). I also like the idea of having a class scribe post notes for the day - hum, maybe this is a way to use the camera feature of the intelligent classroom - designate a notetaker, have them photo their notes and upload. (On the other hand, how do you handle a kid with disgraphia in this setting?) But I hadn't thought about using videos in precal.
"So You Want to Be A Teacher" is a blog on teaching by a Texas middle-school band teacher (who is having classroom management problems with his percussion class - who would have thought?) I particularly like his compilation of 50 reasons to teach, compiled from his readers. It's good to know that reasons like "I get to mess with their heads" and "I'm not in a cubical" are not unique to me. I do see this type of blog as a way of getting around the isolation of teaching. We are all so busy, there is little time for interactions with adults - particularly adults who understand the challenges we face. The blogs seem to serve the same purpose that the old time discussion lists (before the spammers discovered them) served - a place where people with similar interests can discuss things.
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3 comments:
Janet,
I like your insight and you pose some great questions. I started doing some research for you and found a few pre-calculus blogs:
http://mathcuer.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/125-precalculus-the-area-problem-and/
and
http://pc40sw07.blogspot.com/ - this one uses slideshare - a great way to post powerpoints and such on the web and to embed them into your web presence.
Robin
Robin,
Thanks for the links. The slide share arrangement looks interesting - I'll have to check on that.
I'm particularly interested in ways to get students working on the blog. My statistics class will do a fair number of "go online and find x number of articles and answer ...... questions about them. I've seen the qiua material and I can see how to use that, but there might be away to let them answer there questions in the form of a blog (much as we did in class). If the assignment were posted on a class site (ok, a blog would be a good one for that), then they could cut and paste the questions and type in their answers. I'm hoping the novely to using a computer would give them an incentive to actually work (seniors who don't need a class to graduate can be, um, unresponsive, at times). So, perhaps an assignment would go something like - 1st have - "find 5 articles - paste in links, answer questions" with the 2nd half being something like "take a look at another pairs articles - via their post- and comment on why (underline, capatilize, exclamation point) you agree or disagree with them.
Something to consider.
janet
Janet,
Some good thoughts about blogging and math. We have a math teacher at Ridgeview that has had her TAG students posting about math.
Geometry Blog
http://geometry8th.blogspot.com/
Algebra Blog
http://algebra7th.blogspot.com/
6th Grade TAG Math Blog
http://tagmath6th.blogspot.com/
She does find that 6th graders are much more open to this than the 8th graders, but does require everyone to post at least twice each six weeks for a grade.
Technology is a hook for some students and I think the more social it appears and the idea of publishing for the world to see is a fresher take on technology for our students today than powerpoint assignments.
Week 3 we are covering wikis and I think that tool has a huge role it could play in math classes and having students collaborate online and making online guides and tutorials. This next week will be subscribing to blogs so we have some more time to find other examples of math and blogging to hopefully give more ideas.
Robin
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