Evaluating 21st Century Skills--Blog Assignment(Week 4)

I spent some time exploring the website of the Partnership for 21st century skills in order to learn more about what they have to offer. This is the first time I’ve heard of the organization and I was impressed with the collaboration of education, businesses, community and government leaders to provide information and resources to teachers and students about 21st century skills. I looked at the list of board member organizations that were teaming up and was pleased to see some very well known businesses getting involved with education. I found the sections titled Route 21 and the Resource Database as a potentially useful and helpful for me to use. There were many resources and links provided for a teacher to learn how to incorporate these skills into their lessons. I also found the Mile Guide very interesting and a great tool to help schools and teachers evaluate their effectiveness in teaching students the 21st century skills.

What surprised me about the site was the list of states that are part of the initiative and even more so, the states that were not. I was surprised that my state, New York, was not yet a state partner. Since New York is known to have many job opportunities and is considered to be a financial district, I thought they would have been one of the first on board to prepare students to become successful parts of the business/working world.

I think the teachers and educational leaders of today (and of the future) will have a difficult task of adapting education to align with the 21st century skills. An implication for me as a classroom teacher is that I will be responsible first hand to provide my students with an education that reflects these 21st century skills. This means that I will need to reflect on my current teaching strategies and make adjustments to how and what I teach. It is great to learn about and have access to an organization like the one that is trying to assist in this process of change. I look forward to re-visiting the website to spend more time reading the informative articles and start taking advantage of the great resources available.

Utilizing Blogs in the Classroom

How can I use blogs in my high school math classroom?

Since I don’t have any computers in my classroom, most of what I would incorporate would have to be done outside of class time as assignments or projects. I like the idea of creating a class portal as described on page 21 of our course text. “In this vein, a great entry point for Weblog use is to build a class portal to communicate information about the class and to archive course materials. From a teaching standpoint, having a place to publish the course curriculum, syllabus, class rules, homework, assignments, rubrics, handouts, and presentations makes a Weblog a powerful course management tool” (Richardson, 2006). Since I have never used blogs before, I think this is a good place to start and not only will it help inform students and parents, I could even have the students help create and update it so that they were not just receiving and using the information but they were involved in designing and making it.

I would also like to incorporate a collaborative space where students can each add information which by the end of the year could result in the creation of a useful resource around a particular theme. One idea I had about a theme is math in the real world. I feel like a huge part of my job as a math teacher is showing the students the connection and importance of math to their lives because they usually don’t see why the need to learn it, especially high school math. Instead of me feeding them examples, I think it would be great to have the students do the research or stumble upon them on their own. As they are discovered, students could post them on the class blog that could be called something like, “I Found Math………”. They would have to give a full explanation and the specific area of math it relates to. This may take a little research on their part to find the proper math terminology. They should even include links to more information they found on the internet. They could mention math they have come across in their daily lives, on the news, jobs that involve math, or even interesting trivia type math found in movies or TV. A great example I like to use is a quote from the Wizard of Oz. When the scarecrow gets his brains at the end of the movie, he starts reciting a statement about triangles. In case you don’t have the entire movie memorized like myself, he says “The sum of the square roots of any 2 sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side”. Now a student might recognize that it is math and want to post it to the blog. They may or may not need to look it up to be able to say that it is the Pythagorean Theorem, or I should say supposed to be, this is actually an incorrect math statement and I would be overjoyed if my students were able to find this one and notice the mistake. It would be great to watch the list of items on the blog grow over the course of the school year and read reactions and comments from others. Maybe other people from outside our class would add a few interesting places where they found math or maybe we could solicit people in math careers to share their experiences with us. I think it would help my students make connections and realize the importance of math or like the scarecrow mess up, it could just be an interesting trivia fact. It would be great if it could also help students beyond our classroom that read our blog.

References
Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wiks, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

What does work for me #1 ~ Hidden Notebook Check

I teach high school and I don't require my students to use a specific type of notebook, I leave that up to them. I do, however, require that they do something that will keep them organized. After a full year (2 semesters) of math, they are required to take a Regents exam in order to graduate so it is very important they save all their work and stay organized. I have found that the students hate to get notebook checks, especially at the high school level, they think it is immature. Also, I feel like they need to learn how to start taking responsibility for keeping track of their own work without me having to go through their entire notebook. Something that I tried a few years ago that worked well and I still use all the time is a kind of hidden notebook check where I can make sure they have all their important work without them realizing that I am checking up on them. I set it up like a scavenger hunt game with a list of things they need to recover. I set a time limit, sometimes it is short (only a few minutes at the beginning of class) and sometimes it is a long period of time (like over winter break). The list also varies based on time allowed with only a few items on the list to a quite extensive list. Some of the things I put on the list could be as follows: the notes from a specified date, test #2, homework #15, the worksheet on solving equations, the formula sheet from coordinate geometry, etc. The students must find and hand in whatever they find (usually in a folder with their checklist) before the time is up. The more the students find and hand in, the more points they accumulate. These points are then used for a number of different things from points towards individual classwork grades to rewards such as an extra 5 points on the next exam, to entire class rewards such as a no homework night. The students seem to find it fun and they don't realize that I am making sure they save and organize their notes.

What doesn't work for me #1 ~ Homework System

I have heard of many websites for homework help for students, but I am a teacher in need of homework help. I have been teaching for a while now and I thought I would have figured this one out by now. However, I still have not found a good homework system that works for me and that I am willing to continue using. I am constantly trying new things hoping to find something that will make this part of my job a little easier, but it seems that no matter what I try each semester, I am still overwhelmed with homework--how to assign it, collect it, mark it, keep track of it, and use it to compute part of the final grade. I normally have about 150-160 students and so the amount of homework that comes in is tremendous and I am still trying to figure out a way to stay on top of it. Anyone have some suggestions? Thanks.

Sharing a teacher story ~ I Know the Easter Bunny

As a teacher who works at a school in the same neighborhood that I live in, it is inevitable that I will run into my students everywhere. I am often someplace like the mall and hear someone yelling my name, when I turn around it is one of my students running over to say hello. For some reason, they always seem to find it funny to see you outside of the school building and in "normal" clothes. After my first few years of teaching, I thought that I had gotten used to bumping into my students everywhere I went until one day, I was caught off guard. My son was only 3 months old and I was talking him to have his first picture taken with the Easter Bunny. When it was finally my turn, I leaned over to place my tiny baby in this giant Easter Bunny's hands and was suddenly very concerned how he was going to be able to hold him properly with that giant fake head on, he couldn't even see what he was holding. As I put my son in his arms, I heard, "Hello Mrs. M". I was so surprised--the Easter Bunny knows my name. I was so curious who was in there but I didn't want the other kids on line to hear me asking so I leaned in close and whispered, "Who's in there?". The response I got was, "It's Andrew from math class."

Introduction ~ What should I post about?

This is my first time creating a blog. I am creating this as an assignment for a course towards my master's degree. I have to admit that I had a hard time trying to come up with an idea of what I should be posting here. As a high school math teacher, I thought that this could be a great opportunity for me to collaborate with other teachers that I would normally not have contact with. As a result, I have decided to make my blog be a place were I could share (swap) teacher ideas and experiences with other teachers. I have been teaching for about 11 years and have found many things that I feel work well for me, so why not share them. On the other hand, I still have some things that I am constantly changing and consider them things that don't work for me, so why not ask for some suggestions from fellow teachers. Finally, in addition to swapping ideas, it is also great to share teacher stories, whether funny, sad, stressful or inspirational, so I plan to have some of these too. So, while completing a course assignment, I hope that someone will stumble upon my blog and share some of their great ideas or stories about teaching with me or maybe they will enjoy one of mine.