It worked!

As you can see from my previous post, the email directly to blog post worked!  I’m very excited about this feature in blogger.

 

The way that Ramsey is implementing this in his classroom is he is having his students write blog posts (as reflections) at the end of each lesson / learning activity.  He has them write emails that post directly to their blogs.  Blog postings are typically part of their homework and students are expected to describe the learning activity and summarize what they’ve learned.  Students are also encouraged to ask questions about things they aren’t fully understanding.

 

I love this feature because it will allow students to use whatever they are comfortable emailing with to create their blog posts.

 

TIE Conference 2015

I am currently at the TIE Conference and learning some great new ideas.  One thing I just found out about was the ability to post to my blog by simply writing an email.  (Thanks to the Monday AM Keynote Ramsey Musallam!)

I believe I set this up correctly and am testing this newly discovered featured out.  I guess if you’re reading this, it worked!

How tall is the light pole?

In early March, Mother Nature was very cooperative with our lesson plans and we had a couple of 60 degree days.  We were in the middle of our similarity unit and wanted to get our geometry students outside for an activity.  My co-teacher and I had both done activities involving indirect measurement before in our previous schools, but we had both used clinometers and right triangle trigonometry as the vehicle.

This year, we decided to use mirrors and model our activity similar to the one shown here.

We modeled our lesson after Mr. Chuck Pack's lesson (from The Teaching Channel).  He does a much better job of explaining the activity on video than I could in writing.

The students loved getting outside and the day was a success.  Most importantly, students demonstrated strong understanding of the concept of indirect measurement and experienced it firsthand.

3.11.15 - Brookings HS

The indirect measurement activity using mirrors worked very well.

The one thing I really loved about Mr. Pack's activity that I had never thought of doing was collecting the data and tie in some data analysis / statistics into the day.  It's inevitable that at least one group make some major errors in their measurements or calculations.  Outliers and the effect an outlier has on the mean is begging to be discussed.  TI-Nspire does a very nice job of displaying the data from our three classes in the scatterplot. Great idea, Mr. Pack!

Next year, we're planning to improve our activity in two ways.  

1)  We used meter sticks and yard sticks to measure our distances along the ground.  Next year, we will hopefully have 100-ft tape measures.  It will be interesting to see if our data has less variation.

2) We are planning to use clinometers as well next year after our trigonometry unit.  We can then potentially use our mirror data and compare it to the clinometer data.  

If anyone has ideas of some statistical analysis type activities we can do to extend the lesson next year, please reply below.  I am especially interested in stats connections to the CCSS.

4-State Math Collaboration - Round 2

I recently returned from beautiful Phoenix, AZ and round 2 of the 4-state math leadership collaboration event.  It was again great to discuss and plan potential action strategies for helping implement the Common Core standards into 6-12 math classrooms across the region.

A couple of highlights from the meeting...
1.  Growth mindset vs. fixed mindset is something worth looking into if you haven't heard or seen the research yet.  (Keywords: Carol Dweck, Mindset)  This brain research can be applied to many areas of life.  The 4-state event facilitators had us analyze our mindset through the lens of a math leader.  I knew right away that I had a fixed mindset when it comes to me being a leader.  As a matter of fact, I blogged about it after the first leadership event in Rapid City this past fall.  I placed teachers into four categories and went on to say that I have no time for teachers that want to be left alone.  I had a very fixed mindset about being able to lead those particular teachers.

I want to expose my students to the concept of fixed vs. growth mindset in the fall.  I think it might be a great first week activity.

2.  The state of SD (and IA, ND, and MT) are closer to having a plan in place to help grade 6-12 math teachers have more support and resources as we implement the CCSS-M.  We have one more meeting in June that will finalize some of those plans.

3.  There are a wealth of resources available online that math teachers need to be made aware of.  I thought I knew about most of the Common Core resources and it turns out I was mistaken.  Once again, math teachers need one centralized location that provides details on the best resources available.

4.  The weather in Phoenix is beautiful in March.

I left the event feeling very empowered and ready to help initiate change.  Great professional development is very refreshing and motivating.  I'm excited for the final event in June.

Golden Ratio & Apple Cores

@BHSGeomety students recently studied the Golden Ratio and Golden Rectangles with a number of different activities.  For example, in one activity students found lengths on different measurements on their face and bodies and calculated to see if any of their ratios were "golden".

The activity I want to share about goes a little something like this...

1.  Give each student (or group of students) an apple.  Have the student cut the apple horizontally so that the cross section is a circle and it exposes the core.

2.  As you can see, the inside of the core has a pentagram shape.  This is one of many instances of the golden ratio found in the natural world.  We had students take a picture of their apple cores and import them into Geometer's Sketchpad.  Our document camera was extremely efficient at doing this.

3.  Using a regular pentagon custom tool in GSP, students constructed the pentagon around their apple core.

4.  Students then compared each other's apple core to see which had the most "golden" core.

This is a fun 10-minute activity that integrates technology and is very hands-on and student centered.  Students were interested to see what each other's cores looked like.  We actually used four different types of apples in our experiment.  No one type of apple seemed to be any more or less golden than the others.

Here are a few more examples:

Mr. Ott: Finding His Way

Mr. Ott (@iteach_kidsmath) was a student teacher in my classroom this past fall semester.  He was great with the students, very receptive to feedback, and open to new ideas.

Now that he has his own classroom, it's cool to see him continue to grow as an educator.  He has fully embraced the power of twitter as a tool for professional development and collaboration.  He has also begun to blog about his experiences in the classroom.

Keep up the great work, Mr. Ott.  We're glad you're going strong!

Student Created Videos

New year, new goals.

While doing some planning for our new semester, Mr. Huntimer found an activity on myOER that we decided to use to begin the second semester with our geometry classes.

Working in groups of two or three, students were given the task of finding real world objects that model a variety of 2-D and 3-D shapes.  Students were to either take a picture or a video clip of the object.  Then they were to create a video that fused all of the pictures or videos together.  As part of the video, students were required to define the object that they had found.

We allowed students to make a lot of decisions regarding their videos.  Students could define their objects using a number of different methods.  They could define objects as they recorded the video clips, they could record voice narration and align it to their pictures, or they could insert text into the video.  We had students use all three methods.

Students could create their videos around theme or concept.  We had one group use the theme of "shape hunters" and another use the theme of "mathletes".

We also allowed students to use whatever type of video editing software they'd like.  Our laptops have MovieMaker installed, so that served as our default video editor for those who had no preference.  Mr. Huntimer and I were rookies working with the software and found it very user friendly and easy to implement.  Some groups chose to use their iPhones and iMovie.  Another group used a third video editing software that we had never heard of before.  Our only stipulation was that students needed to submit their videos in mp4 or mov format so that we could view them from any computer (via Edmodo).

Overall, the task went very well.  We had some bumps in the road the first time through.  The biggest challenge was we had a number of groups submit their MovieMaker projects before they had converted them to mp4 format.  We simply had to ask those groups to convert and re-submit the videos.  A majority of the videos were similar in that they contained the minimum amount of effort / work needed to complete the task.  A few groups forgot to include all of the required information, thus costing them a few points.  Meanwhile, a few groups produced excellent videos that really caught our attention.

The content of the geometry in the task was really quite elementary, but the task did align to a CCSS ( G-MG.1).  The bigger skill that students practiced was collaboration and technology use.  We asked students to reflect on what they had learned in doing this project and many said they had never or rarely used software to create a video.  We were very happy with the technology application component.

I leave you with two links.  The first is a link to the task via myOER and Mr. Zachary Feldman (click here).

The second is a link to one of our best student videos.   The three gentlemen who created this video have agreed to share it.
Student Video