Dan Meyer has posted more pictures on his blog regarding "math needs a makeover". The first post is about measuring the level of a cylindrical gas tank with a dip stick. It is quite fun and easy. Read his post here.
His second post is about comparing items in the grocery store. He provides many photos which will create great opportunities for your kids to do higher order thinking in your math class.
If you are new to his ideas, you can read more on my posts about math and/or Dan's work. Basically, his idea is that in math problem solving we pave the road to the answer and don't allow deep, divergent thinking about the process of problem solving. From my experience, even when teachers try to provide more open ended questions, students ask them for more information and the teacher can't resist and begins to pave the road again by giving hints or teaching convergent techniques.
As Conrad Wolfram says, let them struggle, hear about their process and give them a little technique (not too much). I would highly encourage you to look into the work of Dan Meyer, Conrad Wolfram, Alfie Kohn and Paul Lockhart. I have blog posts on all of them and links to their work.
Enjoy continuing the math-makeover!
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Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Data management can be amazing!
From time to time, I hear that the university community isn't embracing 21st century tools and skills. This video certainly doesn't support that idea. I love it when he says it is not enough to just present the numbers, he wanted to engage his audience and present some ideas through data. I've definitely got this video on my delicious account for when my class is looking at data management.
Not sure you caught that? As I wrote the last sentence I realized that great math is not isolated topics and isolated lessons. I will plan to use this video to encourage my students to report their data in a creative way for their critical thinking projects. (In case you are wondering, our current class critical question can be found on our water wiki. The critical question can be found at the bottom of the page.)
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Urli.st Tutorial
Check out this video posted by Dan Meyer on urli.st. If ever you need to have a list of links from a presentation available for participants, this is your tool!
Urli.st Tutorial from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.
Why We Need Pi by Wesley Fryer
Check out this video by Wesley Fryer (someone I follow on twitter). He shows how he used google earth in his math class to teach circumference. As is often the case when someone shares, I think I have a better way to do this for my class.
I plan on having my kids find sports stadia/arenas on google earth and then describing how big they are. I will tell them they have to describe their size in three diferent ways. I may teach them how to use the ruler tool on google earth.
I may follow through with further study of how the building was constructed or to compare it to other sports arenas. I would use higher order thinking questions such as "which building ws the hardest to build?" or "which building has the most impact on it's community?"
It's going to be a blast!
I plan on having my kids find sports stadia/arenas on google earth and then describing how big they are. I will tell them they have to describe their size in three diferent ways. I may teach them how to use the ruler tool on google earth.
I may follow through with further study of how the building was constructed or to compare it to other sports arenas. I would use higher order thinking questions such as "which building ws the hardest to build?" or "which building has the most impact on it's community?"
It's going to be a blast!
Alan November "meets" Kim Cofino
Kim Cofino took notes from an Alan November keynote presentation in Japan. I saw Alan November present in Saskatoon at the IT Summit three years ago and am using much of what he presented often. He was an integral part of how my class presently operates and my goals for where I would like to be as an educator.
One of the beautiful ideas of 21st century learning is the idea of sharing. How cool is it that Kim attneds a conference in Japan, takes notes and makes them available to me (and everyone!). I plan to use many of the links from her google doc.
This reminds me of a class activity we did the other day. We are developing a list of research and critical questions on the topic of water with our partners in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Six pods of students took a half an hour of class time to create a google doc. It was imperfect, a bit disjointed and unformatted. After we were done a student stayed back from recess to format the document and to add more questions to guide our research. I did not ask her to do this, for her it was fun. Felt a lot like wikipedia to me, for that matter, we could have used a wiki.
Thanks a million Kim, I'll do the same for you when I am lucky enough to be at a conference!
One of the beautiful ideas of 21st century learning is the idea of sharing. How cool is it that Kim attneds a conference in Japan, takes notes and makes them available to me (and everyone!). I plan to use many of the links from her google doc.
This reminds me of a class activity we did the other day. We are developing a list of research and critical questions on the topic of water with our partners in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Six pods of students took a half an hour of class time to create a google doc. It was imperfect, a bit disjointed and unformatted. After we were done a student stayed back from recess to format the document and to add more questions to guide our research. I did not ask her to do this, for her it was fun. Felt a lot like wikipedia to me, for that matter, we could have used a wiki.
Thanks a million Kim, I'll do the same for you when I am lucky enough to be at a conference!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Mathalicious is delicious! So are Open Educational Resources (OER)
"If you haven’t heard, there is a new movement in education and it’s called OER which stands for Open Educational Resources". This is a statement taken from the Innovative Educator blog which lists many sites rich in resources. One of the great ideas of 21st century learning is sharing and non-proprietary, collaborative resources. I'm not sure why we would ever crack another textbook!
One of the sites on the OER list is mathalicious. Wow! I can't believe this stuff is out there. If you are a classroom teacher this is just too juicy. As Alan November once said to us, "This stuff is low hanging fruit!" These resources "can" fit so well with what Dan Meyer, Paul Lockhart, Conrad Wolfram, Alfie Kohn and many others are saying about learning math. These multi-media activities are truly impressive, engaging, creative and are aimed at middle years to high school students.
Notice I said can fit so well. If you take a look at the activities they are very engaging and well put together. An example is the tunnel digging activity for ratio and proportion. If you take a close look it is really just traditional problem solving questions put in an engaging way. All the information is given, as Dan Meyer says, the way is paved for them to find the answer, no deep thinking is needed about the processes involved. For my taste, the questions give too much information for them to be process oriented, creative problem solving opportunities. For example, the simple question I would ask is "How much dirt would have to be removed to dig the tunnel?" I would not mention volume, I would not give numbers. As Paul Lockhart says, "let them struggle, then give them some technique, but not too much".
They also give links to favorites of mine like HippoCampus and the Khan Academy.
One of the sites on the OER list is mathalicious. Wow! I can't believe this stuff is out there. If you are a classroom teacher this is just too juicy. As Alan November once said to us, "This stuff is low hanging fruit!" These resources "can" fit so well with what Dan Meyer, Paul Lockhart, Conrad Wolfram, Alfie Kohn and many others are saying about learning math. These multi-media activities are truly impressive, engaging, creative and are aimed at middle years to high school students.
Notice I said can fit so well. If you take a look at the activities they are very engaging and well put together. An example is the tunnel digging activity for ratio and proportion. If you take a close look it is really just traditional problem solving questions put in an engaging way. All the information is given, as Dan Meyer says, the way is paved for them to find the answer, no deep thinking is needed about the processes involved. For my taste, the questions give too much information for them to be process oriented, creative problem solving opportunities. For example, the simple question I would ask is "How much dirt would have to be removed to dig the tunnel?" I would not mention volume, I would not give numbers. As Paul Lockhart says, "let them struggle, then give them some technique, but not too much".
They also give links to favorites of mine like HippoCampus and the Khan Academy.
Among the other OER resources listed are:
Carnegie Mellon University (OLI)
· Curriki·
Digital Library for Earth Science Ed·
http://www.ideas.wisconsin.edu/·
National Science Digital Library·
Blooms Taxonomy and Technology
Way back in my university days I remember Bloom's Taxonomy and I also remember it had no meaning to me. Perhaps it was the uninspiring professors or my inability to comprehend it's significance. Today, for my classroom, Bloom's is big.
Our school's main PD focus is to have our students understand and perform better in math. Everything I read these days is about higher level thinking and creating as integral processes in learning mathematics. My "community of interest" group's goal is for students to understand and use higher order thinking as learners (and to be knowledge producers).
For a long time, I had described this as teaching thinking rather than researching or following directions. Turns out that in 1956, Bloom had this cased for us. This year has been a very rewarding year for my students and I because for the first time ever, it is a clearly stated goal in my classroom to learn how to think in every single thing we do!
I was sent these links by a good friend Judy Byers. She is a very important part of my PLC. Check them out!
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom
http://www.learnerslink.com/bloom
Our school's main PD focus is to have our students understand and perform better in math. Everything I read these days is about higher level thinking and creating as integral processes in learning mathematics. My "community of interest" group's goal is for students to understand and use higher order thinking as learners (and to be knowledge producers).
For a long time, I had described this as teaching thinking rather than researching or following directions. Turns out that in 1956, Bloom had this cased for us. This year has been a very rewarding year for my students and I because for the first time ever, it is a clearly stated goal in my classroom to learn how to think in every single thing we do!
I was sent these links by a good friend Judy Byers. She is a very important part of my PLC. Check them out!
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom
http://www.learnerslink.com/bloom
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