All right, we're about two weeks in.  I'm teaching 7th grade math via Common Core/TN State Standards through a weird concept for a company.  It's all online.

I believe that if we could find a way to effectively educate young people via "the internet" we could make effective gains in the re democratization of our country.  I am disgusted with the affairs of elected legislators.  To the point, that I believe, more strongly than ever before, that the consent of an informed republic is much more important to the impact on our national security than we are actually taught to believe.

but I digress.

7th grade math has to improve.  I believe I can do that.  Because I know something that 7th grade math students already know.  Math sucks.  End of story.

So, pick up where the story leaves off.  Make it not suck.  make it suck less.  Try to make it great.  Behave as though learning math is an experience akin to reading and understanding Shakespeare.  Allow them to know that all the great achievements of science wouldn't be possible without math.  Period. (drops mike: walks off)

So.  My long term goal with math education this year.  make it worth doing; make it fun; create an experience of learning that is self directed.

Podcasting

I recently completed Blogging and Podcasting for Beginners, an online class, in order to get some CEU's and hone my blogging skills. Unexpectedly, I have been caught up with podcasting.  I downloaded, Podcast Addict, to my phone and have been listening to a bunch of them. (Addictively, I might add.)  Since I've hit something of a dry run with blogging (haven't had much motivation to sit and blog) I thought I would begin reviewing various podcasts that I find interesting and link to them here.  To stay true to the theme of my blog I'd like to state that I think podcasting could be a powerful learning tool, and I've been imagining what different kinds of things they might be good for. So before I start reviewing, I'll begin by putting two of those ideas out there.

One idea is to simply jump start the brain.  Let's face it.  There will be times when we sit down to write there is a blank slate, or even worse, a fuzzy haze that takes unproductive minutes and turns them into unproductive hours.  Recently, I have been taking some computer classes that I think will dramatically improve my marketability, but are difficult and sometimes dull and boring.  Taking a break and listening to something that I find very interesting and engaging gets my brain going.  When it's over I find I can focus more clearly on things that I find less interesting.  I think these would work particularly well as a set or prompt for a lesson plan, or just as a means of adding structure to a classroom.  

The second idea is that having students create their own podcast would be a wonderful long term project that would engage students in ways writing doesn't.  It would be an involved process that would require lots of planning and editing; it would force students to organize their thinking; it would be a way to sneak some powerful repetition in a way that was engaging and fun.  In short, it would serve as another digital artifact that students could come back to and review later in the year.

That's it for now.  Thanks for checking out my blog; good luck in the classroom.

Here is an interesting resource for creating online flashcards.  Studyblue is a free online crowd sourcing platform that allows users to create and study flashcards that they create.  For a fee, users can use flashcards created by other users.  This would be a fun way to present mathematics terminology as outlined in state and Common Core Standards.

Next week I will create a brief tutorial on how to use this resource for students.

Blogging for Good Writing

Two arguments for blogging in the classroom:  First it creates an artifact that can be reviewed indefinitely.  Second, it causes young writers to think more critically about their writing.

Assignments given at the beginning of the year can be compared against assignments given towards the end of the year.  Students will be able to view their progress, and more specifically, where and when they mastered certain essential concepts.  Editing their own work for grammar errors would be a powerful means of reinforcing good writing practices.

I believe students are much more interested in what their peers think about them than a teacher or even a parent.  Creating a safe and structured environment where they could work collaboratively on writing assignments would be a powerful means of instruction.  It might also be fun.  Here is a link to a writing assignment lesson plan I would use in a language arts classroom.

Privacy for young learners

So, how do we keep middle school age children safe and utilize the power of blogger at the same time?  There are privacy settings in Blogger that allow the student to restrict access to his or her blog to a select group of people.  All of the work that they do will be saved indefinitely and all of the options to create unique and powerful digital artifacts will remain available, however no one will be able to view his or her work unless expressly invited through email.  Invitations can be rescinded as well.

Creating a more professional look.

I'm trying to create a more professional look for my blog. I switched to this template, but it's thrown some of my pictures out of wack.  I'll come back and try to straighten that out later. I like the look because I want to showcase certain Web 2.0 tools that students will use to demonstrate learning and this template seems to do that.   Also, I beginning to think that it might be in my best interest to create a series of blogs dedicated to addressing the various state standards individually.  One thing I noticed about other educational blogs is that there is so much information, it's easy to be distracted or discouraged.  Since my audience is primarily thirteen year old math students, I think that it might be beneficial to target something specific, like scientific notation, individually.  Different pages could address different aspects of scientific notation from reviewing exponents to division.  I could also create a page targeting administration and parents in which I outline lessons and expectations that students would not necessarily have to look at.  Any suggestions?

Snipping Tool Tutorial

This is a tutorial for using the Snipping Tool found on Windows 7.  I tried to be brief and to the point.