Tuesday Tech Tip

You may have noticed some pretty significant changes to Google Drive lately, but if you haven't, no doubt you will as you begin the 2014-15 school year. Here's a great overview from Alice Keeler's blog, a Cheat Sheet from Shake-up Learning and a video from Fried Technology.  Hope these help you get started on the right foot! Let me know if you need any help with these changes. 
Image source: http://www.droid-life.com/2014/03/13/google-cuts-the-price-of-drive-cloud-storage-starting-at-15gb-for-free/

Reflections from CAMT 2014

Another great 3 days of learning at the Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching. WAIT -- don’t stop reading because you don’t teach math, because guess what I don’t either. Good teaching is good teaching, best strategies are best strategies regardless of the content area. I’m sure you will find at least one thing you can apply to your classroom.

Check out this great resource for financial lessons plans for Math, ELA, History and Economics.

Our own Elementary Math Facilitator Wendy Smith presented two fact filled sessions on Flipping the Classroom for Parents.  Did you know that programs and intervention that engage families in supporting their children’s learning at home are linked to higher student achievement? Many participants said it was the best session of the conference. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/FlippedCAMT2014

image source: http://inservice.ascd.org/whole-child/digital-divide-2-0-engaging-hispanic-youth/

Roger Fuller from Tyler ISD presented an entertaining session on Integrating STEM/PBL with Rigorous Mathematics. He demonstrated easy ways to distribute papers and turn over the learning to the class. During the presentation, we did 3 micro PBL projects, including which one of your blinker bulbs burns out first the left or the right? He suggested that we should not be as interested in the answer as we are in the process.  Some of my favorite quotes; “Students can’t all run at the same speed, so why do we think they should all learn at the same speed” and “a teachers job is not to give the answers but to give the students the tools to solve a problem.”

image source: http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/part-5-14-amazing-project-sites-a-stem-pbl-common-core-series-a-goldmine-of-resources/

Cindy Schimek & Libby Chaskin presented Resources That Make You Think. There is research that “rich” tasks are more important than more multiple choice type questions. Formative assessment should be about looking at student work and not about giving a grade, they refer to this as OMG’s – Obstacles, Misconceptions and Gaps in Learning. Here are 3 websites that have “rich” tasks. Website 1 - MARS Tasks and Tools for Teachers, make sure you check out all grade levels. Website 2 - Illustrative Mathematics can be sorted by grade level or subject area. Website 3 - Mathematics Assessment Project has everything; complete lessons from pre-assessment to post-assessment. According to the presenters is is critical to do the lesson they way it is written. This site even has some professional development with how-to videos.

One of the best sessions was Dan Meyer, he is an amazing presenter, check him out on Twitter @ddmeyer. His presentation covered what is and what is not modeling. Modeling is Identifying Variables, Formulating Models, Performing Operations, Interpreting results and Validating Conclusion. It is deeply satisfying for students to see the whole cycle. Most of what is labeled in textbooks as modeling is not modelling at all. Instead of making math into real world, we want to take the world and turn it into math.  An example of this is the Super Stairs. Capture your curiosity!!!

As a non-math teacher this  session on alternatives to algorithms really stretched my thinking. Leslie Koske suggested giving students fewer problems to solve  but have them solve it in multiple ways and then defend their answers. Another suggestion was not to give “naked” problems, in other words make stores to go with them.  I’ll upload her presentation as soon as I get it.  

image source: http://www.quickmeme.com/p/3vo66k

What did you learn this summer that you can share with the rest of us?

Contact me if you need help sharing.