Interview

This week I was asked to interview for a math position in the High school.  The interview was Friday.  As I began the meeting with the High School principal he asked me what my ideal role would be in the high school.  I expressed my interest in working with the faculty to incorporate effective technology into their lessons.  As our discussion continued he asked me a question that I had never thought about and it caught me off guard.  “How much of your curriculum is spend on information that students don’t need to retain? With all of the technology around our students today and how quickly they can access the information, how important is the retention of certain information?”  I think this is a wonderful question.  I began to think about the curriculum and how many equations and formulas I try to get the students to memorize and how much time I spend on getting them to practice them.  If I took that time and gave in to allow the students to “look it up” not in the book but using technology; I could focus more on teaching the students how to use the information and apply it to solve problems.  Would this not cut down on the amount of material and increase the time we could use to master the application of it.  I told him we would have to change a lot about the structure of education and make a lot of teachers uneasy.  Teachers like to teach the way they were taught, even if the students they are teaching are not going up in the same world.  Our conversation was wonderful and he shared several articles using Evernote that he has been collecting and some discussion he has been having with a few of the upper school faculty on the subject.  This was my first time using Evernote which seems like a really cool way to share information and articles.   This has gotten me extremely interested in the direction of our school.

Podcast

I was unable to create a podcast due to issues in personal life.

Globalliance Simulation

This week the students at my school took part in a competitive simulation in which students used technology and collaboration to find solutions to real world problems.  A colleague and I have worked for over a year on developing a “game” for every student in our middle school (353) to “play.”  The idea of the game was to have students learn about other countries and current issues involving different regions of the world.  Our students took on the task with a lot of enthusiasm and determination.  The students had to use their laptops to research characteristics of countries, perform group challenges and then create and present a formal presentation to the “World Council”  (Model UN students in our High school).   Although we were interrupted by some snow days, the students did incredible.  If you have a few minutes, please take a look at the video that the school had made from the experience.

http://www.dgchallenges.com/globalliance-video.html

STEM EVERYWHERE

Edutopia posted an article on STEM Everywhere video series.  The article provides links to videos showing how STEM education is reaching beyond the classroom wals is engaging students with the real world.  As a Math teacher, there is a continuing push for STEM at my school.  In fact we are finishing a $20 million dollar STEM building to our campus.  Our Middle school started a STEM club for students would want to do STEM activities during recess.  Some of the videos in the article are really cool.  You should check them out. 

http://www.edutopia.org/article/stem-everywhere-science-technology-engineering-and-math-real-world

Setting Up My Feeds

So this week I feel more connected to the world and yet overwhelmed at the same time.  The idea of being able to pull information from multiple resources into a single feed will allow me to stay on top of new trends and technologies in education.  I added 10 educational sites to my Feedly, mainly focusing on technology in educations or leadership in education.  Through out this initial development of my professional learning network, I am coming across some very cool people who I have beginning to follow.  They are providing with some very interesting insights and I can’t wait to read more about. Check out Twittermathcamp if you can and let me know what you think.  They have a ton of really cool posts.