Week 7 - Judging the Quality of Wikis and Non-Vetted Sites

When I think back to my high school years and writing research papers, I remember the huge set of encyclopedias that my parent’s had in their basement and the hours spent in the library trying to find books related to a specific person or concept. Locating professional journals through the card catalog, and then trying to hunt them down in the library was a task in and of itself. When those research papers were completed, one really felt that they truly “researched” and documented a topic.  The idea of researching now, has a whole new look about it. Whether the research is done in the comfort of one’s own home, at school, in the car, or waiting in line at the grocery store, there is continuously information available at one’s fingertips. The internet provides information on almost everything imaginable. Wikipedia and YouTube are just two resources for such information. I understand that both of these sources can contain misleading information, and are not necessarily always reliable sources of information. However, I do believe that the beneficial information that they can provide, outweighs the misleading information, so I do use both Wikipedia and YouTube at times in my own classroom. When trying to locate a quick formula, or how to video, Wikipedia and YouTube are usually the first to come up during an internet search. However, when researching a topic for a paper, I believe that credible, professional resources need to be used. I have educated my students on the pros and cons of the sources like Wikipedia and YouTube. I think that they realize when it is acceptable to use them as a source of information.

Week 7 - Building and Refining your PLN

Feedly

Upon searching for blog posts related to mathematics education, I was able to find quite a few interesting blog sites to follow. I decided to add the following to my Feedly account:

http://math4teaching.com/ : I chose to follow this blog because it contained a lot of great math resources for classroom. These resources included math videos, Geogebra lessons, math games, printable worksheets, and math problems of various levels to be investigated.

http://realteachingmeansreallearning.blogspot.ca/ : This blog incorporates numerous open-ended upper level math projects and lessons that would be great for the math classes that I teach.

http://blog.hoodamath.com/ : The Hooda Math Blog discusses how to use math games to help  students from 1st grade to high school, learn math curriculum related to the Common Core State Standards.

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/ : Dan Meyer’s blog contains a lot of useful information on how to incorporate technology into education. He has been blogging since 2006, and has numerous blogs that relate real-world math examples.

Twitter

When searching through Twitter to find math related educational accounts, I was amazed with how many resources were available. I have not used Twitter at all prior to this class, because I was under the misunderstanding that Twitter was simply used for people to follow celebrities, or brag/whine  about things that they are doing on a minute to minute basis. On Twitter, I quickly found many accounts that support mathematics education, and would be very useful in my classroom. I starting following a lot of new people/organizations, the following is a list of some of the accounts that I thought looked like the best resources for math, education, or technology use in the classroom:

https://twitter.com/GoogleForEdu - Google for Education - Supports technology use in an educational setting.

https://twitter.com/khanacademy - Khan Academy - Contains supplemental resources that include video presentations of math topics.

https://twitter.com/themathforum - Math Forum - This site has numerous math activities to help engage students.

https://twitter.com/mathletics_usa - MathleticsUSA - An organization that discusses math topics and how to engage students.

https://twitter.com/danielle6849 - Danielle Hartman - An educator who wishes to help instructors Integrate technology into the classroom.

Reflection

So far this semester, I really have not had a lot of time to try to use these resources in my own classroom. However, I would like to begin to incorporate some of the wonderful lessons and strategies that I have recently found on Twitter and blog posts into my curriculum. I plan on sharing these resources with my colleagues at our upcoming PLC meeting. In order to help improve my information gathering skills, I would simply like to have the time to devote to explore what is available on the the Twitter and blogger accounts that I have found. I also think that I will need to come up with a way to organize the information that I find.

Week 4 - SAMR Model

I teach Algebra II, Geometry, and Analysis/Trigonometry to high school students in the Math/Science/Technology program. My district has provided the students and teachers with various forms of technology that can be used within our classrooms, and I am continuously looking for the most effective ways to integrate it into my curriculum.

Substitution: I currently use “Kutasoftware” for my math classes. The website provides very useful worksheets that can be printed and used to help students get extra practice working out various math problems. The website breaks its lessons down by math class, and then by specific curriculum topics within the class.

Augmentation: In my classes I have used a testing program called “Examview,” which is a great test generator for various math textbooks. Teachers can create their own tests and the students can take tests on the computer. I also use an online program called “InQsit” for testing my students. The teacher creates the test for the students, provides a link to the test, and then students take the test online. One other resource that I use in my classroom for practice tests is the online assessment program for the actual textbook that is used for the Analysis/Trigonometry class that I teach. Students are all given a username and password for their textbook, and they have access to the practice tests after every lesson and at the end of every chapter. These programs are all great to use in the classroom because the students can get immediate feedback on their assessments.

Modification: In all of my math classes, we are able to incorporate the use of the graphing calculators in order to enhance lessons. Calculators are available to all students within my class, but some students do not have access to this resource when they go home. Therefore, we have started to use online graphing calculators in the classroom, along with an online program called “Geogebra.”  These programs allow students to dig a lot deeper into various math problems.

Redefinition: I would like to begin using shared Google documents for notetaking within my classroom. I think that this could be very beneficial to use with my students as a review before an assessments, or as a unit summary.