Math, technology, education, and beyond

Will Richardson brings up some amazing points in his blog entry The Privacy Gap.

I have an interesting stance myself, as I am in the buffer area between those who view privacy in the old way and those bringing about this new view of privacy. When xanga was big, I created one and found the kids. It was a bit of a lesson on privacy, as some of them came up to me and said, “I don’t want you to know that certain thing about me.” I told them, “If you don’t want me to know it, don’t put in on there. And if I can access it, then who else can?” It is true that kids view privacy a bit differently than it used to be viewed, but there are still lessons to be learned here.

Luckily, many of these kids are savvy enough to learn a quick lesson. The idea is not to restrict the access they have to information that is out there or to keep them from connecting at all, as some parents do. It’s amazing when I told some parents about my AIM screenname so kids could contact me when I was at home and they said they do not allow their kids to have AIM. This was a college professor! He thought he was protecting his kids. Yet they had xanga pages, with personal information written in the blogs for everyone to see! At least with AIM they could pick and choose who to speak with.

This is a fight that we will have to take up with parents first. We need to get parents to stress the correct way to share and access information on today’s world wide web and trust that the kids will do it correctly.

I have grown to become quite attached to the math site purplemath.com. There are many great modules on here that give great tips on how to solve many different concepts in math, as well as giving different ways of solving than what you would see normally in many math classes. I have been sharing this site with the math teachers and special ed teachers in my district, and even shared with a few students and parents already, as well. I hope to have a site up soon that has a collection of these links for all to access. When that’s up, I’ll be sure to share the url.

Seeing Math Secondary

I was sent a link to this site today, and I found it to be quite interesting. Who would have thought that there would be such a nice interactive grapher out there? And the best part is it’s free! You can download the applets for working offline, as well, which is a great feature, so even if there is an outage in your network, you can still work with the program. I am still messing around with the different graphers, so I’m not 100% sure of what all they can do.

It seems like everyday I talk to at least one teacher in my school about how to use technology in their classroom. And the great part of it is that I don’t go up to them and say, “Why don’t you try this?” They come up to me and say, “How can I do this?” The teachers in my district are so technologically advanced when compared to some of the districts in our area, it’s amazing. And they are not afraid to try out new things. We have one teacher who is going to use blogs to discuss a book among different classes (and hopefully also with the author)! There was never an opportunity like this when I came through school. Another teacher is planning on using Comic Life so students can create a storyboard of a presentation. I only wish that I had more time to work with all of these teachers. Sometimes, I feel being a half-day coach is like only doing half the job.

This past weekend I went to both Hershey Bears games. I took a glance up at the Bears’ suite and noticed Ray Borque was sitting up there. He and his wife were there to watch their son, Chris, who is a second year member of the Bears. During the game on Sunday, my roommate looked at me and said that we should get his autograph. I remembered that they sell NHL pucks in the gift shop, so we bought two Bruins pucks and a marker. We walked to the spot under the suite and my roommate said, “Excuse me, Mr. Borque, but would you mind signing a couple pucks for us?” He said to toss them up, and he signed them! Real sweet! It was awesome of him. Now we each have a signed puck from Ray Borque!

Also, after the game on Sunday, the third star was the goalie from Binghamton, Kelly Glass. They had lost 5-2, but he faced 45 shots, saving 40 of them. Great performance. He got a nice round of applause from the Hershey fans, and then handed out his goalie stick to a little girl in the stands! Now that was a real class act! I have never seen that from a visiting goalie, and he has now made a number of fans in Hershey.

One quote I will come away with from PETE&C is “We need our stickers!” It’s amazing how crazy us educators get over Act 48 hours (I’m not sure why). In order to get Act 48 credit, you needed to gather different stickers for different sessions you attended. From there, you had to place them on a sheet. Now, for those of you who don’t know what Act 48 is, it basically says that every Pennsylvania educator has to obtain 180 hours of professional development every 5 years. To put things in perspective, my 3 credit grad class gives me 90 hours for Act 48. Two classes will take care of 5 years. I currently am averaging over 180 Act 48 per year. So, I was not sticker crazy.

Another thing that bothered me were the people who didn’t silence their cell phones. I am sure that these are the very same teachers who would berate a student in class for the same thing.

I really enjoyed Will Richardson’s talk on Tuesday morning. I found it a bit humorous (but effective) that he used a wiki page instead of PowerPoint. It was much more fitting that he did it that way, what with his Web 2.0 views. He raised three questions at the end of his presentation:

1. Who are my teachers?
2. How am I building my own learning network?
3. How am I modeling my learning for my students?

These are questions that people have not really asked themselves as educators. This is something that I need to take into consideration as I progress and grow as a teacher.

With the storm having rolled in Tuesday morning, it was much more empty at the conference. There were 1200 people there on Monday. By Tuesday morning, I would have to estimate it around 700. By the time I left (mid-afternoon), there were probably only 200 people. It’s a shame that more people couldn’t have stayed, but at least I was able to get into some more sessions.

The first I attended in the morning was for free Mac software. Check out the following sites if you are a Mac user:

1. softwarearchives.com/macintosh
2. download.com
3. macgamesandmore.org/downloadfreemacsoftware2.html
4. opensourcemac.org

Now, I haven’t taken the time to peruse these sites yet, so I can’t really mention what is offered. However, I figured I would share the sites.

The second workshop I sat in on was for unitedstreaming from Discovery Education. Very good presentation, and I learned a bit about using unitedstreaming. I would have liked it better if it showed me more how to use the site itself, but I can learn that by playing around with it.

Wednesday and Thursday were fun, as the snow and ice was not easy to remove. As a matter of fact, I only removed that which I felt necessary, as I was not going to kill myself trying to deal with it all. It did lead to having two days off of school (which will be made up in June) and a two-hour delay today. I do have to say, the break was nice, as I was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed. I am now refocused and ready to move on!

I received an email today from a colleague from another school with a link to a video that helps to explain what Web 2.0 is all about. It doesn’t define it, it doesn’t say it has to be one thing in particular. It makes you think though. I would love to hear some thoughts on what people think of this video.

Overall, an enjoyable first day of the conference. I highly enjoyed the keynote speaker, Joe Caruso. His speech was basically a collection of stories that let us know who he is. It is such an incredible technique, and highly effective. But in the end, there was a great message, and one that every teacher and student can take to heart:

“Bring all you are to all you do. It’s all you need.” - Joe Caruso

To go along with this quote, Caruso stated that you can’t control anything outside of what you can do. How true is that? I can try to inspire others. I can try to show them the way. But in the end, the only person who can make a difference in your own life is you.

Caruso also said, “Just use it. It becomes part of the culture.” We didn’t learn how to use cell phones before we had them, we just started using them. They became something we all used and had, and nobody really had a second thought about it. This gives me hope as I move further along in CFF. We are going to be getting these computers in the classroom. How can I help to make sure they are used in a productive way (that is, not just for word processing, etc.)? I have the hope that the computers will be in the classroom, and the teachers and students who use them will use them in productive, innovative ways.

Beyond the keynote, the day was interesting. It is apparent to me that the conference has outgrown the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, at least if it continues to be run in the same way. The workshops were overcrowded. And that was somewhat disappointing, as there were a few workshops I really wanted to sit in on. It should be easier tomorrow, as the impending snowstorm will most likely chase many back to their homes earlier than they expected.

I am looking forward to tomorrow’s keynote speaker, Will Richardson. I read his blog Weblogg-ed, and also have a copy of his book Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts, though I haven’t gotten through it yet (or started, for that matter). I wish I had time to get into it, as I am highly interested in the Web 2.0 tools.

MATH TIP: When dividing by a complex number, we need to get rid of the imaginary part of the denominator. We do this by multiplying the numerator and denominator by the complex conjugate (the complex conjugate of a + bi is a - bi), and then simplifying. Write your final answer in the form of a + bi, where a and b will often be fractions. Remember that a is the real part and b is the imaginary part.

I knew going in to this CFF program that there was a possibility of having days like today (and last Wednesday, for that matter). It is amazing how I can go through a course on coaching that has a whole unit devoted to adult learners, yet for the last two day-long sessions through CFF, I have not seen any of the characteristics of adult learners followed! Why did I have to sit through an eMBEDDED Learning presentation TWICE in five days?

All day Wednesday I was in a presentation on the online courses that all CFF teachers have to take. I’m taking one now, myself. I could have received the manual and been off and running. Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t others who highly benefited from the training, but I feel that I could have used my time in a different manner. At least I was able to give some feedback to the gentleman who designs the training. I mean, cut me loose with the manual and have someone there that can answer questions that come up!

Today, I got to hear more on eMBEDDED Learning. I had to excuse myself to get a breath of fresh air (and an iced chai). I came back a bit refreshed, but still having to hear some of the presentation. On my jaunt, I got to re-explore the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, as I have not actually been in the building for about two year, when I was still with HersheyPark Security.

I wish I could have written this blog earlier in the day. Unfortunately, we were not provided with power in our conference room, and I had not charged my computer. You would think that with being told to bring our computers and chargers that power would have been provided. I would have also liked to have gotten some other work done during this time as well. I am of the multi-tasking generation. I think I need to have more than one thing to do. Maybe that is why I took the chance to become the CFF coach at Annville-Cleona. The first four periods of the day are used for CFF work (which could be any number of things). Then I get lunch, teach three (different) classes, and then often use my prep time (and possibly some after school) to work with my colleagues some more. I would not recommend to anyone else to take on what I have. If you are going to do CFF, make sure you do it full time. I don’t even want to think about what it will be like when soccer starts…

Anyway, I am planning on using this blog for numerous reasons:

1) I want to be able to share math hints with my students. I want to put some of the main ideas down in here from some of the lessons I will be covering. It is my hope that they will check this blog for helpful hints.

2) I want to talk about some of the technology that I find (or am told about). There are so many pieces of technology out there. I may not be able to become an expert on everything, but I would like to learn as much as I can about that which I can.

3) I am an educator. Period. Everything that I aim to do is based off of a great need to be a part of the educational process. Whether it is as a math teacher, technology coach, soccer coach, advisor, or role model, I aim to do what I can to improve education.

4) “Teaching is your job, it’s not your life.” This was told to me by my student teaching co-op. It is probably some of the best advice I have ever gotten. I have a life outside of teaching. I like soccer and hockey and comic books and music. I’ll probably mention these in here from time to time, as well.

The fun part will be trying to add info to this page as often as possible. It’s that time thing again.