k12learning2.0

Through this course I have learned that our students are definitely changing; the world of education is also changing, but at a much slower pace.  I feel that the most successful schools will be those which reach their students through effective use of technology.  These schools will be the ones that can best motivate and train their own teachers to do so. I am now much more motivated to do my part.

Through this course I have learned various ways to integrate technology into the classroom and I have been directed to a number of differing teacher support sites.  Open Education Resources seems to be a great tool for finding and sharing teaching tools and strategies. I plan on spending a lot more time there.  I also am much more motivated now to have a web site for my students to use.  I plan on linking resources, web sites, and podcasts to help my students (as well as others) in high school mathematics.

From my search through Classroom 2.0 for high school mathematics I have found the majority of sites to fall into two categories: teachers looking for emotional support and teachers looking for teaching support.  I have no interest in the first category and I really did not find any great ideas or solutions for the second category.  Most of the sites had 1-3 posts…not a whole lot of collaboration or input.  However, this does tell me that there is a great need and opportunity for high school mathematics teaching support.  The first person to build a user-friendly all emcompassing high school teacher math support web site packed with worksheet generators, tips and techniques from experienced teachers, and practical applications of mathematics that is formed collectively will be one of the most signifcant contributors to secondary mathematics education of the next decade!

The math forum was much easier to scroll through but, again, finding content that was applicable to my class was not easy. 

Also of interesting note is that on the Educational Networking wikispace list there isn’t even a listing for “math” under the extensive table of contents!

I just recently saw in Successful Teaching that the K-12 Online Conference is coming soon!  The pre-conference keynote speaker presents the week of November 30th. Over the following two weeks, December 7-11 and 14-17, over 50 presentations will be posted.  I definitely plan on “attending.”

After exploring Pageflakes I think that I will eventually use this as my own personal homepage.  I like how I can compartamentalize areas (yes, I am a guy).  I can see the weather, the headlines, and have all of my common links readily available. Thanks for showing this to me!

I like the concept of Google Docs.  The Presentation document is a little slow and cumbersome to work with.  (Maybe I can try cutting and pasting PowerPoint slides into it.  Did anybody try that?)

Ideas:
1.  I can share professional documents (like the Practical that I put in as a Word document) with other math teachers that I know.
2.  I can share presentations (like a recent scouting trip) with other families in the Boy Scout troop.
3.  I can also share family photos with extended family (in California and England).

I found numerous helpful videos for teaching high school mathematics on YouTube.  One entertaining video was Darth Vader teaching the Pythagorean Theorem.  I did not find TeacherTube to be helpful at all.  I did not find any useful videos for teaching high school math and the TeacherTube site was clearly not as user friendly.

I would like to consider making a podcast for each math lesson that I teach.  However, the length of each would be about 20 minutes and I don’t know the implications of trying to record podcasts of that length.  By recording all of the lessons I would be able to have them accessible to students that were absent or even students (of other teachers) that need another explanation.

I searched podcasts for high school mathematics.  I found a handful of sites, some of which I just could not get to play on my computer (quite frustrating).  I can see how podcasts can be valuable.  I could make a podcast for every section of each chapter of Geometry and students that are absent could access these when they miss a class.  It would be nice for the publisher of a math textbook to provide a site with a set of podcasts done by a master teacher for the entire book.

I explored 43 Things and quite honestly was not all that impressed.  I am all for making goals, sharing them, encouraging others along with their goals, and receiving accountability and encouragement  along the way.  However, for me, doing this in cyberspace is really insignificant.  Most likely this is because I was raised in the pre-PC ages.  This type of forum would be insignificant for me.  Although, I can see the benefit and motivation of a site like this for people that are used to continually being in the world of technology.  I don’t think that I would ever send my students to an open site like this; there is a lot of bad advice that can be passed around through this forum.

I explored Quizlet.  This site allows you to make your own set of classroom flashcards.  Once the set is created, the student can select to familiarize, learn, test, or play games with the set.  I can see this as a great tool for use in my Geometry class and will do so for next year (especially for the first few chapters).