I Clemmer's Blog

2020 Vision – Through the looking glass…

iclemmer — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:12:13 +0000

I will be turning 62 years old when the school year begins in the year 2020 – assuming we are still starting the year around Labor Day, as we have for quite some time. As far as I know, we originally scheduled school terms to fit with agricultural endeavors, which very few of us are still personally involved in. I know some schools have adjusted their calendar to fit more of the full year, and to give varied vacation times that seem to jibe better with the current society, but so far this is not true where I teach. This is just one way that education had begun to respond to changes in the world and how it operates. Public education was designed to make essential skills and content available for the common man (and woman eventually), and not just those who could afford it. What was considered “essential” 100 years ago or 50 years ago or 10 years ago is no longer what we know to be necessary for today’s world. What will be “essential” in 2020? There have certainly been significant changes with regard to technology in the past 50 years (my lifetime), the past 30 years (roughly the time since I first became a teacher), and even in the past YEAR (since I first heard about wikis and tried to use one for my students’ benefit). My sons (almost 17 and 19 years old) and my students (high school age) approach new technology tools with far less anxiety and mistrust than I do. They multi-task better than many people my age (although not always as well as they think they do, I believe). I expect that this generation and future ones (the digital natives) will continue to adapt and learn new tools as quickly as they are developed, and I hope they will learn to teach us (the digital immigrants) how to use them too. I believe many of us who have been teaching for 20 years or more still view web 2.0 tools and other technologies as something we would like to learn to use, but not as “essential” to know or to teach to our students. I would like to leave that teaching to my colleagues who are comfortable using it themselves, but I no longer think this is possible or even appropriate. Several teachers I have met this summer who have successfully used web 2.0 technology already have promised me that high school students (and younger ones) will “learn the tools in no time” and so my worries about not finishing my required curriculum will be for naught. They have explained to me that using these tools for assessments other than typical tests and quizzes or other “paper and pencil” assignments has increased student interest, productivity, ownership, and learning while reducing teacher time and overload. These teachers have made choices and innovations in their teaching that have affected me by demonstrating that they are worth the time and effort it will require for me to implement them in my classroom.

So, I expect that each year I teach, from now until 2020, and beyond that as God allows me, I will find new ways to use the new tools that are available. My hope is that I will in turn give my colleagues reason to step out of their comfort zones and try these new tools themselves with their students. Technology can be a wonderful way to unite us or just another way to divide us. (Mr. Mac and Mr. PC in the TV commercials will have to learn to stop competing!) I anticipate the actual vehicles by which we access and apply technology will become smaller and easier to use - just as we can now access email and the web via phones and palm pilots. Hopefully these things will eventually be affordable and available to everyone. Digital natives will have to have patience with digital immigrants, and the immigrants will have to graciously fill the role of learner and apprentice under those younger than them, but who have more experience in technology.

As the world continues to shrink in the sense that I can now speak to, hear, and see someone on the other side of the world in real time for a two (or more) way conversation, I look forward to our being able share what we’ve learned with others near and far. However, I am concerned that we could lose more and more opportunities for face-to-face interaction as we increase the ways we use computers for learning and that this might leave us with disjointed relationships. Will we choose to spend time with our cyber friends who we like better than our familyand friends who are nearby and not as much fun or not as interesting? Will we become technology biggots, and devalue folks who don’t choose to learn the latest new thing? I fear that we may fill our days with all the things technology allows us to do, and lose time for simpler things, for just being ourselves and fellowshipping with one another.

Certainly these changes will affect our teaching. Being a “good” teacher will likely morph into being more of a guide who helps students find what they want to learn most and supporting them in using technology to do that. It will continue to require discernment regarding how students learn best, when to let them struggle and when to help them out (so that they can become more and more independent of the teacher). Teachers will still need to encourage and challenge students, and they will still need to model being a good learner themselves. We will need to foster learning communities that extend beyond our classroom, school, and locale. Collaboration on assignments and learning in general will require us to look outside of our classroom and usual confines more and more. We will need to teach and practice good internet safely to protect our students from being harmed or harming others. It will be important for us to help them develop priorites with regard to how much time to spend learning and using the technologies, and when to put them aside and enjoy other pursuits. We should be better able to keep in touch with students and follow their successes.

In 2020, my oldest son will turn 30. I trust he will be happily involved in a job he enjoys, still close to his brother, and his dad and me. Maybe he will have married a wife who will partner with him to raise some nice kids who will help keep their grandma and grandpa up to date with the latest in technology and still let us read to them or play in person. I don’t imagine anyone will find a way to give a virtual hug that’s as good as a flesh and blood hug, so I hope they don’t live too far away from us…but if they do, we’ll be all set with the latest version of Skype, anxious to hear from them!

Choosing a Web Application

iclemmer — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:15:05 +0000

This week I have spent time in another regular classroom learning about how to “Integrate Quantitative Reasoning Throughout the Curriculum”. I met teachers from a number of schools – parochial, innercity public, and suburban public, private, elementary, middle school, high school, and college level. We shared all sorts of tools we have used and hope to use in our teaching, and the most common thread was (no surprise) web tools. I was able to hear stories of how these teachers and their students used various tools (some that we have studied and some additional ones) and then to see presentations of their ideas for next year. The Web Application that stood out as the easiest to use and most reliable or “friendly” was Google Docs. Google is a name our students are familiar with, and many already have accounts and have explored some of the tools here. Most of the work they need to produce and present will be easily handled by the word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tools available. The calendar can help organized and disorganized students plan and keep track of their schedules and assignments, and they can maintain an email account via Gmail. Many of the students I teach struggle with school assignments and lack self-confidence when it comes to typical classwork and projects. However, I believe Google Docs would serve as a sort of “home base” for them, where they could go to a known name and find all the tools they need to be successful in their projects and presentations. They could easily access these tools from home or school, which would help them to feel safe and secure and boost their self-confidence (and probably their grades).

Paperless Classrooms

iclemmer — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:13:12 +0000

The article found by clicking the link below discusses the first paperless course offered in the General Studies program at Columbia University. According to the article, many of the students in this program are working full time and returning to college to complete their studies. The class still meets in real time and space, so that face-to-face interaction happens, but their papers and projects are submitted online and can include more than just written media as a result.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol26/vol26_iss10/2610_Paperless_Course.html

We have been asked to consider the following questions, with respect to the article and what it would be like to have our paperless class in the context of our teaching roless – which for me is as a high school math teacher.

How would a paperless class change your role as a teacher?
How would paperless classes change learning?
How would you measure learning in a paperless class?
Would a paperless space make it easier or harder to build a learning network? Why?

A paperless class room would mean no written textbooks, but there could certainly be an on-line version of a textbook (many companies already provide disks or downloads for classes who purchase hard copies of the book). In addition, there would be on-line availablity of supplemental books, videos, podcasts, blogs, wikis, and the possiblity of connecting with people working in jobs that use the mathematics we were studying. My role as teacher would have to expand to be something of a tour guide, leading students on a Web 2.0 journey – or at least getting them started, and being available to help them if they got lost. I would lecture less, need to become a good organizer of equipment necessary to access computers and the internet during class. Because parents might be concerned about this new type of learning, I would have to be a good communicator and find ways to reassure and instruct them about the Web 2.0 tools and about how assessments might change from a more traditional classroom. With regard to assessments, I would have to craft and grade them paperlessly (would that word count in Scrabble?). This would mean finding ways to ensure math symbols were available in documents, which is sometimes a problem. Students would be more responsible for finding sources from which to learn, and they would also have to be more organized and purposeful in planning when and where to study…although they really have greater flexibility with respect to time and place (provided they have internet access). They could delve deeper into a topic that particularly interests them, and be more creative in their delivery and production of content on assignments. Learning would be measured in terms of their Web skills and likely in conjunction with collaborative efforts with classmates. The learning network for a paperless classroom could include other classes in the same school or classes around the world, and also experts or other students at varying levels of education. My high school students could learn from math education students at universities, and they could also create lessons for elementary and middle school students. All of this would be much easier to attain paperlessly than traditionally.

I must admit that I cannot imagine an entirely paperless math classroom. Certainly calculators and other tools help when solving problems, but it is hard for me to think that I wouldn’t see myself and my students reach for a pencil and paper to draw a helpful diagram or tally a sum or in some other way organize the solution of a problem. Perhaps with increased facililty of Web 2.0 tools, and keyboards or some means to get the math symbols easily, the paper and pencil would become obsolete. But in my lifetime?

Who ME – write a textbook??? (Big Shift #1)

iclemmer — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:02:36 +0000

Every year when I meet my students (and their parents a few weeks later at Open House/Back to School Night) I am asked to explain what our course, “Finite Math” is all about. Most of us who are of an age to have children in high school did not take a course called this when we were their age (or perhaps ever!). Math majors or those in related fields might have some idea, but most folks do not. In fact, we have found it hard to find a textbook that includes the material our curriculum seeks to cover in hopes of preparing our students for Algebra 2 and the SAT’s and ACT’s they will soon be taking. Over the ten to fifteen years of teaching and developing the course, we had continued to add new activities and worksheets to our files. We finally decided we were using too much paper printing our own version of a textbook. When course assignments changed a bit, a couple of new teachers were joining some of us who had taught Finite Math for a number of years. We decided it was the perfect time to work together to sort through the materials to find what we really thought was the most useful and current to keep, and toss the rest. Each of us took a unit or two and served as the leader to produce the notes and homework for that unit. Others in the group were asked to supply any new materials they found and we all agreed to share anything we found along the way as we were teaching the course. In the end, we had collaborated to produce a streamlined and very useful tool for teaching the course. There was still room for a teacher to add their own special features to their lessons, but we had achieved a core curriculum that was easy to explain and attain for any teacher who was assigned to teach the course. We still had to print out materials, but there were less of them, so we saved paper and time. Sometime during the semester, our librarian offered an introduction to wikis and to help us find ways we could use them in our classes. I realized this might be a way for to get the documents available to our students on-line, so we set up wikis and used them mostly as a means for students to have the materials accessible from home as well as school, and found this especially helpful when a student missed class for one reason or another. What I now hope to do with these wikis is far greater. I have recognized that we teachers were actually in the process of making Big Shift #1 – Open Content, as we pooled our resources, experiences, and creativity. We had communicated a bit through emails and attachments, but mostly face to face as a whole group or in smaller parts. We stored everything we created on a common storage drive, accessible to the whole math department. Now what I envision is our collaborative efforts shifting to using the wiki as a place to continue improving the curriculum via teacher and student input - editing documents, connecting to links for podcasts, articles, blogs, and other wikis all pertinent to Finite Math. The wiki will become part of the students’ assignments and assessments won’t just be limited to tests and quizzes. This year’s students will do work that will benefit other classes at our school, and potentially elsewhere – just as we will be gaining from others. They will (hopefully) have a greater motivation for learning and interacting with the material to produce something they can share and be proud of. We’ll save paper, be part of a larger learning community, and have fun doing it!

Connectivism – Response to Group Wiki

iclemmer — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:14:14 +0000

I visited all three wikis constructed by the other groups and found so much I could agree with in each one, but the most convincing argument I found FOR connectivism was the link to an article on Group B’s wiki, http://bce-summer2009.wikispaces.com/Group+B+For+Rusty%2C+Steve%2C+Hollie , which was written by our book’s author, Will Richardson http://www.edutopia.org/new-face-learning). He explained his own entry in to the wonderful world of web 2.0 – via blogging. He also mentioned how a student of his had surpassed his own personal experience in learning at a great school simply because the student had the ability to connect so easily with an original author from the Washington Post. So, I am not ready to toss aside the other learning theories, but I am willing to count connectivism as a valid additional theory which cannot be ignored in our present technology-filled age.

Skype Connections

iclemmer — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:48:00 +0000

I first heard about Skype when a friend had her first granddaughter and they developed a plan for a weekly visit via Skype to bridge the distance between Pennsylvania and Ohio. Now, as I am planning to send my oldest son off to his freshman year of college in Massachusetts, I look forward to Skype visits with him (as often as HE wants them). There is something about seeing and not simply hearing your loved one that seems to make the connection much more real. Similarly, being able to have a real time and visual connection with other teachers via Skype seems to make our sharing more valuable, and makes me feel more “in touch” with them. I have noticed many comments about the loss of a personal connection with students and people in general that occurs the more we use computers to keep in touch and for teaching from a distance. I believe that Skype will serve to alleviate some of those concerns. One colleague from my current school is moving to Calilfornia, and I will miss his ideas and being able to collaborate with him next year – now I believe we will be able to come up with some times to keep in touch in a better way – via Skype! For my students, I will encourage their group efforts on wikis to be done in conjunction with Skype so they can work at the same time for some of their work. I may also try to connect with some of my friends who are math teachers across the country to find out if their classes might want to connect with mine for some projects. Hopefully this will increase their enthusiasm in engaging in some of these projects and in learning to use the web 2.0 tools.

Podcasts as Teaching Partners

iclemmer — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:14:04 +0000

We are always hearing about the shortened attention spans of today’s high school students, and therefore looking for ways to keep our lessons interesting and innovative. Through our wiki assignments, I have decided to try using podcasts as a way to get my students to help produce materials for introduction, review, and to supplement our classwork – especially for students who miss class for one reason or another. In listening to a variety of math podcasts, I found some that were produced by students (such as I hope to have my own students do in the fall), and other produced by mathematicians seeking to make math more accessible for “the non-math-geek”. I considered sharing one of the student-produced podcasts, but instead chose to first use a more polished podcast with my students – one that would give an overview of a topic we all use and which can be explained without diagrams and pictures (since you just LISTEN to a podcast). I found www.mathgrad.com, a project by grad stuent, Christoper Frederick of Colorado State University. I love Sudoku, and was tempted to share his show #19 on the math of Sudoku, but felt his show #5, Intro to Probability, was one I would more likely use in my Finite Math class this coming school year. In order for me to find time in this semester course to teach some Web 2.0 tools, I am going to have to deliver some of the content via these new tools, like podcasts. Christopher’s podcast introduces a number of key terms and concepts which we will study in our unit. I plan to assign the students to listen to this podcast for homework on the night we take the previous unit’s test, so they will already have some knowledge base when they come to class for the first day of the probability unit. The link to this podcast is http://www.mathgrad.com/podcasts/mgp3-06-06probability.mp3.

Flickr Fun for Geometry

iclemmer — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:54:32 +0000

What GEOMETRY do you see?

Mention Geometry in a group of adults and you are bound to hear some groans. “I hated PROOFS!” or “Yeah, but it was SO much better than Algebra!” When you teach math, you get used to groans and moans, and the infamous line, “When am I EVER going to use this?” I think I have found some new options for answering that question, or at least getting students to see that Geometry does show up in real life! Early in the year, we talk about parallel lines, and there are always some students who know more than others. So, to get the discussion started this fall, I plan to use the photo above and ask my students to write about as much geometry as they know and see in the picture. Maybe I will follow up later in other units with a sort of scavenger hunt portfolio for them to keep of images THEY find that are descriptive of what we are learning in class. Now if I can only figure out how to upload my chosen picture from Flickr, we’ll be all set…….

Uploaded on February 2, 2009 by hatdow . Taken April 29, 2008 – http://www.flickr.com/photos/shrimphead/archives/date-taken/2008/04/29/. Retrieved July 4, 2009 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/shrimphead/3248220100/.

AP (Advanced Placement) Classes – How much is too much?

iclemmer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:30:39 +0000

AP (Advanced Placement) tests and classes are a wonderful and terrible phenomenon in my opinion. How great is it that high school students can have the opportunity to reach beyond the normal high school curriculum and study college-level material – IF they are ready to do so. And how great that some can save money by earning college credit for courses while they are still in high school. Over the past 20 years or so, I have seen more and more students sign up for more and more AP classes. In the school where I currently teach, freshman can take AP Biology, sophomores spend hours doing homework for AP European History, and not a few students take 4, 5, or even 6, or 7 AP courses in their junior and senior years. Some start college as sophomores because they have accumulated so much college credit while in high school. In our current economic times especially, this can have great advantages. However, I have noticed that many of the students who take multiple AP classes seem to be “on the edge” much of the time. They have little time for socializing or other than academic pursuits. They are often sleep-deprived and get sick easily. They have to choose which course is most important on any given day, and so the others suffer and their learning is compromised. Certainly there are some very talented students who might be able to manage this very rigorous schedule, but is it worth it? What about the other parts of high school and being a teenager that get left behind? And what happens when anxiety takes over and they find they have taken on too much? You might want to check the link below, especially if this is not a topic you have considered before.

http://www.wikihow.com/Take-an-AP-Class-Without-Crashing

Wonderful Wikis

iclemmer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:18:47 +0000

“Wiki-wiki” is Hawaiian for “do it quickly”, or so I have been told. Well, my wiki learning has NOT been quick. I seem to be a slow learner when it comes to Web 2.o tools. As a math teacher, I don’t often assign my students to do research, so I have not had to deal much with Wikipedia. My sons use it often for their research, and I was initially the typical nagging mom who said not to use it at all because it was not reliable. However, at an in-service last year and during this past week, I have come to believe that Wikipedia is an excellent starting place for research. There you will find very up-to-date information, and many links to explore further.

I first came upon wikis as a classroom tool last year when our school librarian and technology mentor (and cheerleader- “GO TECHNOLOGY!!”) sent an email to the staff suggesting we come to a session to learn about wikis. I somehow had come upon the idea of using a wiki to post our rather lengthy Exam Review Packet for Finite Math to save on paper use and waste (many students would lose their copy and ask for a second copy, and some never even used it .) There were four of us teaching the “Accelerated” level of Finite Math, and so, to keep things “fair and even” for all of the Accelerated Finite Math classes, I first had to convince my 3 colleagues who also taught this course that we should try it. Happily, everyone was willing to give it a try, and Cathy (the Technology Cheerleader / Librarian) graciously met with each of us to set up our wiki and give us some training. She showed us her family wiki, whereby she and her grown children were finding it oh-so-easy to share photos, plan get-togethers, and generally co-ordinate all sorts of planning and communication. “Far better than all sorts of emails flying around,” she said. And she was right. However, once we got past the ooh’s and aah’s and found ourselves in the thick of the end-of-the-year paperwork and responsibilities, we all agreed we would have to put off learning and doing more with our wikis until this school year. You guessed it, not much more happened this year. We did lose one member of our team, and gained another, and we did manage to use the wikis for the whole semester the course ran, but it was still pretty much just a means by which to post pdf and Word files (particularly for homework). And, did you notice I said our wikis (plural)? It never occured to us four teachers to collaborate on one central wiki for the course. This course uses no published text, and for years we have printed out way too much than our kids really needed. We undertook to create our own handouts for notes and examples, and also for homework last year, but we printed it all out for the students. This year we only printed out the notes and examples, and students were responsible to visit the wiki and download the homework, or just view it on screen and answer the questions on notebook paper. It was a step in the right direction, but still left so many wiki possibilities untapped. The real value – to foster collaboration – was missed. Now, there may be good reasons to each have our own class wiki, but I’m just saying we were so new to the whole idea we missed out on some great opportunities for working together and sharing the load. This is one of the things I appreciated the most about working on our group wikis this week – I was not alone! I learned I could depend on my fellow group members to join in and ease the burden of producing a good product. Initially I was frustrated that we weren’t all on-line at once and couldn’t have immediate feedback. I’m sure the first member who was anxious to get started was nervous that it took the other two of us a few days to get on board. But the discussions on the wiki were great, and we really came together as a team. I think the accountability and knowing that what I do or don’t do affects my group members is a great motivator that will hopefully transfer to my students when I use wikis in my own classes.

So, my goal for next year, will be to get students to become partners with me and with one another to research and then write about some of the Finite Math topics we will be studying (Probability and Statistics, Permutations and Combinations, to name a few). I plan to have them use RSS feeds and tools like del.icio.us to find some news about these topics, and to locate some homework help sites and such. Most likely, I will use the wiki for extra credit projects as well, and I think I will invite parents to join us, too. Since this course is taught second semester, we have no “Parent Night” like we do first semester, and I don’t get to meet the parents in person unless we schedule a conference. This should be a good way to foster some more interaction. It should be interesting to see if I encounter any of the objections that were raised in our various forum responses this week. I’m glad to have had the experience to answer some of those objections and to glean insights from the wisdom of my classmates. SO, let’s hear a big cheer – “give me a W, give me an I, give me a K, give me another I …… what’s it spell?…..WIKI, WIKI, WIKI!!!!!”