Thing # ?

Did something cool in my class. Took pictures of the students balancing triangles on pencils to find the center of gravity or Centroid. Transfered the pictures to my laptop and projected them on the wall the following day. The students loved seeing themselves and we used it as a review and opener for Geometer Sketchpad and constructing 4 points of concurrency. Once again the overhead projector and easy use of the laptop make life easy. We were able to access web site Dr. Math again to look at Napoleans theorem and Morley's theorem. This is cool stuff.

Thing 23

At our last meeting we went to Karen's wiki and I learned what a wiki is. A whiteboard to allow response to a certain scenario regarding copyright laws and plagiarism. I worked with a group on scenario 9 whether student work could be shown to a class removing the name of the individual for class teaching purposes. We came to the conclusion that it indeed could, but that it might be polite to request permission of the individual. Lindsey at the same meeting presented her pbwiki for her schools 9th grade academy. I thought that would be cool to create one for my geometry class. Unfortunately I was unable to complete it at the district building. I hope to complete that soon.

Response to Lippincott E-Connect

As I read this article I thought back to an experience last year at our High school where students in an English class had created a blog to discuss one of the books for the class. What was interesting was from the perspective of my discipline, mathematics, it appeared to be a creative discussion of the classroom literature. I was somewhat impressed that the students were taking time to talk about the material outside of class and online. Unfortunately the students use of this venue became somewhat abusive. Things were said online, some considered to be inappropriate. All discoveries, the good the bad and the ugly were disclosed with the parties involved. It was hurtful and scary to some of the teachers and administrators involved. I remember feeling the urge to talk about what had happened as a staff. We were prohibited to have an open discussion. This article iterates that students are already so well equipped to communicate on-line. We need to be promoting and demonstrating appropriate use. That is our job. A too quick response in some cases is to eliminate instead of embrace. So what can I do to support appropriate use of on-line materials? I need to be open to the discussion with our staff and administration and library specialist to invent ways to explore these databases in Math class. I need to become knowledgable of the variety of ways to recieve and disseminate material. Students need frequent exposure to try , in some cases fail and then get better at their research and communication. It is difficult for some students since they do not have the easy and ready access to online resources. We as a staff need to have the discussion to create opportunities for the students to use the technology on and off our campus. We will ultimately better prepare our students for their future no matter where that may be.

created rubric using Rubistar

It worked pretty well. I have created a rubric for my algebra class using the rubistar. I was able to save it and print it out to be used for a specific project for students in groups to determine the rate of change for different data. The program was pre-set problem solving and
graphing rubrics. I was able change the cells of the rubric to meet the requirements for my specific project. I see this as a very quick and easy method to create a rubric.