Math, technology, education, and beyond

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.