My World

M:I:3 Warmup

2010-09-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

We had some fun with this in an Applied Algebra class last week. Most of the students got the Pythagorean Theorem application here, but not a lot of them gave poor Tom the shorter length rope he might need so that he doesn't smack into the side of the building.

In an advanced class we used this for a warmup just for fun and the students went on to find some applications from Trig stuff.

Enjoy!

Visuals

2010-09-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

This guy has the market cornered on data visualization. Good stuff

Math In Action - Construction (Part 1)

2010-04-14T22:11:00.000-07:00

This episode of Math In Action features Bob Storar of Storar Construction discussing the mathematical concepts he uses on the job. In Part 1, Bob calculates area and volume so that he can determine how much concrete is needed to pour a foundation for a building. Students will measure, calculate area and volume given those measurements, and calculate the cost of pouring a concrete slab. (Youtube video here...links to download below).

Lesson Suggestion

One of the reasons I love this episode (and the concepts of area and volume) is that we can get the students to actually measure something instead of just handing them the measurements depending on how we deliver the problem.

I try and ease them into the math without them knowing that our conversation has anything to do with numbers or any concepts from our textbook. After talking a bit about how my daughter wants a basketball hoop for her birthday I tell them that I need to pour some cement for a court since the street is either too busy or has cars in front of the house. Then, I show them this pic of my house (all photos are clickable thumbnails), courtesy of Google Earth and the proposed court space in the backyard (please forgive my Photoshop skills...or lack thereof):

We agree that a 20' x 20' court is sufficient, and I start wondering if I have enough cash to do the project and the best way to get it done. Someone usually pipes up and says that they had a concrete truck at their house, and another student usually jumps in and touts the merits of do-it-yourself labor. We then start to compare the benefits of each:

First, DIY:

The students aren't just handed the information, but I wait until they get curious about a solution and ask the questions. Depending on how much access to tech you have, you can infuse some time on a computer, or you can Google information at their request, or just have it waiting for when they do request it. Either way, we find out that a bag of this concrete costs $4.98 at Lowe's.

A little calculation suggests that we are going to be buying a lot of bags of concrete and that doesn't even cover the cost of other materials and a healthy supply of donuts for nourishment. After deciding that the world is better off without me as a do-it-yourselfer we dug up a couple of quotes that we either found online or through a simple phone call:

Quote 1: $100 per yard.

Quote 2: $90 per yard plus $1 per square foot.

A couple of nice teachable moments that the students stumble into is how to calculate correctly the number of cubic feet in a cubic yard, and how to work with a depth of 6" when your other measurements are in feet.

Have fun with this and please let me know how you use these videos in class.

Links

The download link below is a link to an M4V file. You can also use Keepvid to rip it straight from Youtube, or Video Download Helper if you're a Firefox user.

Youtube Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxtOx2qL5jo

Download File Here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?qn1jzynmmzi

Math In Action - California Highway Patrol

2010-04-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

This episode features the California Highway Patrol Multi-Disciplinary Accident Investigation Team performing analysis on a set of tire tread marks to determine the speed of the vehicle that left the marks. Students will measure, substitute variables into a velocity equation involving a square root and simplify, and perform unit analysis to determine the speed of the vehicle in miles per hour (Youtube video here...links to download below).

Lesson Suggestion

Get the kids involved. Have them guesstimate or measure SOMETHING. That's something we don't do enough in math classes, but that's for another blog post. I started the video at around 2:56 and played the speeding car. I asked them how fast they thought the car was going on received a range of responses from 50 mph to 100 mph. I recorded responses from each pair of math buddies (that's what I call groups in my class) so that I could ask questions later once we found out the real answer.

Then, I upped the ante a bit and asked them if they could show me how long it would take (in feet) for a car to stop that was traveling 50 mph. We went outside and I had them stand at the mark that represented the length that their math buddy cohort came up with. We had everything from 10 feet (really?) to around 30 feet from the railings pictured. It looked something like this (sorry for the crappy Photoshop skills, but I need to protect the identities of the innocent somehow:

The students were shocked to find out (after some calculations and watching the math portion of the video) that the answer really looked something like this (notice the faceless student about 75 feet away from everyone else...BTW, the kids had their pick of how to go faceless and they were split 50/50 between a clone of me and having their souls sucked out of their picture by me erasing their face. It's on them.):

The substitutions and simplifying ended up being the easiest part for most students, while the unit analysis and guesstimations on the distances seemed to be the hardest. After watching the interview portion of the segment we talked about the guesses and things like mean, median and standard deviation without actually calling it those things until the end of our discussion.

Links

The download link below is a link to a high quality Quicktime file. You can also use Keepvid to rip it straight from Youtube, or Video Download Helper if you're a Firefox user.

Direct Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4x2mdtqaz0

Download Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?umnthzyknwb

Math In Action

2010-04-04T20:23:00.000-07:00

During my trip to Washington D.C. I met quite a few educators with some amazing video projects that all got off the ground with the help of their local cable company. When I returned home I had an itch to create some videos to use in the classroom that served to answer the question that I've heard more times than any other question in 11 years of teaching...say it with me now..."When are we ever gonna use this stuff?"

I've seen other attempts at answering this question, but in my opinion most of them suffered from a few faults that kept me from ever showing them to my students: they're too long, sometimes unrealistic in their application to my classes and they never get the students involved in any actual mathematical work.

With the help of Bright House Networks I've been working on a project that I hope fills a void left by some other similar videos. We started filming this series, "Math In Action", back in July of 2009 and are finished with 7 episodes with plans to continue shooting this summer at Edwards Air Force Base and some other great locations here in Bakersfield and in Los Angeles.

The videos are kept under 10 minutes so that they are accessible via Youtube and can be a conversation piece without monopolizing all of your precious instructional minutes. Each segment features actual math problems from each career featured so that students can work on the problems along with the video.

Keep in mind that these videos are created mainly as a cable television program. It's really up to the teacher to present these in such a way that accompanies your lesson. Please get involved and don't just press play. PLEASE!

With each video post I will include the Youtube link, download link, and also a sample lesson plan. You can use these in your classrooms in any way you like as long as you don't reproduce any of these as your own work.

Let me know what you think of the videos. All constructive criticism is welcome. Enjoy!

Back to the Blog

2010-04-04T20:19:00.001-07:00

My doctoral defense and all of the paperwork that goes along with it is finally behind me so I hope to start posting on a more regular basis. It's been a long journey (4.5 years!) but it's been rewarding.

Now that I'm done I realize that I miss the class sessions more than I thought I would. Developing new friendships was the favorite part of the whole process.

Dan's 2009 Annual Report

2010-02-02T19:40:00.000-08:00

I've been offline for quite some time now putting the finishing touches on my dissertation. I hope to return to you sometime in early March after the oral defense. So, if any of my 5 followers were concerned, don't call the search and rescue team just yet. :-)

In the meantime, I haven't surfaced to post anything, but this is post-worthy. If you haven't caught this over at dy/dan, make sure you get over there and take a look at his 2009 annual report. Amazing.

Online High?

2009-11-15T16:40:00.000-08:00

Over at dy/dan, Dan put up a great post recapping some of his weekend reading. I got lost thinking in Cringely's post. Re: Cringely. My dissertation topic (I'm almost done, which is why I've been absent from the blogosphere...not like anyone noticed save my 5 followers :-) focuses on learning in the online environment through differing methods of communication (real-time chats vs. message boards) so his post was of particular interest to me. In higher education I can see this happening to some extent. When the internet can erase the geographical barriers that a student faces then it's a great solution. But, I don't see online education rising to such a popular point that a student would be willing to give up the "college experience." Moving away from home, tasting freedom, tailgating at a football game...all irreplaceable experiences. At the high school level, I suppose this could happen at some level, but his idea of an education floating around the internet would never replace the brick and mortar buildings that we call home. Why? We're babysitters. OK...OK...calm down. Don't get upset. We're much more than that. But, allowing high school students to learn from home would require a major shift in how society operates. However, our high schools could be replaced by "learning centers" with a one-to-one student to computer ratio. For every 35 or so students there is a proctor of sorts that would get the students logged on and direct them to the best source of...ERROR: UNDEFINED.

THIS is ultimately where this idea fails. This would require that most districts, and ultimately our government, be forward thinking and ahead of the curve. This just won't happen. I'm thinking of this possible solution within the confines of technology and education today as we know it. By the time this could become a reality, desktop computers will be old school. All of the teachers publishing content would either have to work for the government or textbook companies and those information traffickers would end up suffering from the same restrictions that we do today, just in some different form. Think about it. In my own classroom I can't access streaming video, some of the best pictures out there is blocked, and Youtube is a distant memory.

The greatest merit in these ideas is that they're on the bleeding edge of thinking in our field, and that is what some of the failing districts and schools around us need: ideas and the green light to implement them. I know too many teachers that don't bring forward good ideas because they know the answer before they bring forward the question. Stifled creativity is what is being penned right now as the C.O.D. in our schools' obituaries.

Mad Pumpkin Carving Skillz

2009-10-31T10:44:00.001-07:00

OK...maybe not mad skills, but at least slightly angry. File this post under bad math humor.

Happy Halloween everyone!

I pity my 1st period

2009-10-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

Quick thought: My poor first period gets the worst of me every day, and my last period of the day gets the best I have to offer. Not because I don't try, but because after I goof things up a time or two with 1st and 2nd period, I've cleaned everything up by the time 7th period rolls around.

Bright House Networks 2009 Educators Conference

2009-10-21T21:22:00.001-07:00

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking at the Bright House Networks 2009 Educator's Conference. The conference was free and it was one of the best conferences around. Kudos to those who helped put it together.

Speaking at the conference reinforced a few beliefs for me:

1.) Teachers need a Google Reader/Blog subscription service of some sort. Professional Development is morphing into an online practice and every teacher needs to get in on the game. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but we all need to make a point of telling the teachers/administrators at our sites about the benefits of blogging. Need a good starting point for some great blogs that run the gamut through a range of disciplines? Start here. Most good conferences I go to have 300 teachers (all with great ideas) staring at one teacher doing all the talking. There needs to be a practice that allows the audience to share best practices. I'm thinking...I'm thinking. My early years in teaching made me feel a lot like the guy in the slide below. Teaching is a profession that, as a whole, needs to get better at sharing our great ideas with one another so that we don't feel like thieves surfing the net for someone else's great ideas.

2.) Our blog subscriptions need to be diverse. What are you reading right now? If you don't have Garr Reynolds or Nancy Duarte dialed in yet, then what are you waiting for?!

P.S. Sorry I've been away from the blog for so long. I've had some busy times with illness in the family and dissertation deadlines to deal with, so the blog took a back seat. But I'm back!

TMAI: Dallas Stadium

2009-09-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

As a die-hard football fan I can't wait for the start of the NFL season so that I can bring in something mathematical from a game for the kids to chew on. I've had some success with videos that show a team's negative yardage play to illustrate adding negatives, but this year I wanted something different and wasn't sure I would find it. Then, Sunday night rolls around and this one drops in my lap:

I ripped the video from my DVR using Pinnacle's hardware for Mac. Then I exported an image sequence using Quicktime Pro at a rate of 8 frames per second. I took the images that illustrated the dimensions of the stadium:

I reminded them that the whole point of "Tell Me About It" is to get them to deliver the numbers in context so that it makes people say "Wow! Now I get it!" This is especially true when the numbers are so large that they are outside of the realm of our ability to experience them.

For example, I start my first TMAI segment of the year asking the students if they are 1 trillion seconds old (I got this from a book somewhere but can't remember which one). Half say yes, and the other half say no. After some investigation, and simple math operations, they calculate that 1 trillion seconds is equal to around 33,000 years. Now they understand how difficult it is to conceptualize numbers that big.

What about 1,225 feet?

I insist from Day 1 that a successful TMAI session is all about the four basic operations of math, creativity, and Google. While I operate Google the students fire away questions.

"How big is the Statue of Liberty?"

"Good one! 309 feet including the pedestal."

"How tall is Beyonce?"

"Well, she's 5'8" according to Google, but have you seen that many Beyonce's?" (Again, we're going for a tangible comparison that other people can relate to.)

Overall the students did well, but this isn't our first outing and won't be our last. Some students still aren't comfortable thinking like this but we're working on it.

Thank you, Kanye.

2009-09-15T20:44:00.001-07:00

Well, Kanye's a tool, but he did give me some fodder for math class yesterday.

Each school year something goes viral and I'm right there, hittin' Youtube, gettin' my Ctrl+C on (or Command+C, for you Mac freaks like me), ready to let it loose the next day in class (we're keepin' it PG, of course). Something scandalous (like Kanye being stupid on the VMA's) happens, and I know the kids are going to be talking about it. Much to their surprise, I have the video set up, ready to roll.

Just when the kids thought they got out of a minute or so of math class, then we start talking about the internet age and viral video.

Two people see it and each person sends the link to two of their friends, and each of those four people Facebook it or Tweet it to their friends, etc. After some good discussion about how the viral video spreads, the students eventually come to terms with the fact that it is exponential and we've been talking math the whole time (ha!).

I put a similar graph into Geogebra and used a slider to control how steep the curve gets. Then we start talking about how quickly ideas spread today as opposed to fifty years ago. I ask the students to adjust the graph to show how this graph might look if this happened in 1959. Just to mess with their heads, I contend that the graph looks the same, and the only thing that I would have to change is the x-axis. Each tick on this x-axis in 1959 might represent months, whereas today it represents minutes.

Good discussion, all thanks to Kanye (let's see how long the above video lasts on Youtube before it gets yanked for some sort of copyright infringement).

Tell Me About It: Did You Know? Edition

2009-09-14T21:33:00.001-07:00

My favorite Did You Know? version to date is hot off the digital press and ready to take into class tomorrow. I'm looking forward to running a Tell Me About It segment with this one:

Tell Me About It

2009-09-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I came to the realization (not sure why it took me so long) that my students could number crunch like nobody's business, but had no idea what the answers meant or, more importantly, how they could meaningfully convey that to other people.

Take these clips from the Food Network's "Unwrapped", for example:

These relatively short clips are chock full of ratios and other cool numbers, and the story makes it mildly interesting.

Calculations like this might seem out of place in an advanced math class, but how many students in those classes will continue to operate in abstract math-land? Not a lot. But a good portion of them will benefit from having a strong command of some of the most basic skills, such that when employed correctly, makes people take notice.

Break It Down

In the beginning of the year I usually give them an interesting (well, interesting to me anyway) fact alone on a slide:

Alright, so Garr Reynolds might not be inspired by this slide, but it serves its purpose. On the first iteration of Tell Me About IT (TMAI) I will usually walk them through my expectations. I want them to convey the information to me in such a way that is different than what they see on the slide, and might inspire people to say "Wow!".

This usually doesn't involve anything more difficult than the four basic operations, but it requires some creativity and it asks them to search for information that I'm not willing to give them. This exercise is presented to ALL levels of classes (yes, pre-calc included) and ALL levels have trouble with this at first. Not because they're not creative or intelligent, but because our system doesn't allow them to think this way most of the time. Wrote memorization? Check. Multiple choice strategies? Check. (On a side note, when was the last time a real-life math problem presented itself to one of your students in the form of a multiple choice problem? Just thinking out loud.)

Creative manipulation of numbers?

I break down their responses into categories:

1.) Factual. A student operating at this level can tell me that 2,400 boxes per hour equals one box every 1.5 seconds, or 57,600 boxes per 24-hour day.

2.) Comparative. At level 2, a student might use statistics from the internet to compare consumption of Whitman's Sampler to consumption of vegetable servings, beef, chicken, etc. Are we eating more chocolate than the four basic food groups?

3.) Descriptive. The good ones that make level 3 take the numbers and convey them into something powerful. For example, in an "Unwrapped" episode on Twix candy bars, they told the viewers how many times the Twix candy bars manufactured each year, if laid end to end, reach to the moon.

That's it. That's what I'm looking for. I don't care about how many miles it is. Tell me about trips to the moon and back...a small nugget so meaningful that I won't forget...no...CAN'T forget the comparison and will then go tell my friends.

Earning My Job

2009-09-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

During my first couple of years as a high school teacher I was atrocious. Meaningful, inspiring pedagogy was not included in my beginning teacher's toolkit. Most of the decisions made during my first two years teaching helped me survive but did little for the students.

The more I thought about my situation as a rookie my mind started to dissect it and then organize it in to something that resembles the quadrants above.

Quadrant 4 (Nice/Meh): This is where I spent my time. I wasn't voted off the island during those rookie years because the students actually liked coming to my class. I showed them some respect, got some back, lightened the mood, and a lot of them actually listened. Not because the math part was fun, but because we had a give and take relationship: I gave them fun, and a place to feel at ease, and they took the crappy teaching.

Quadrant 3 (Jerk/Meh): These guys helped me keep my job. I'm not sure why so many teachers like to be angry.

Quadrant 2 (Jerk/Good): These teachers could run circles around me in front of a group of students but they had no sugar, no spice, nothing nice, and respect for students didn't run across their minds. But when a student is confronted with excellent pedagogy wrapped in an angry package, walls go up that prevent them from learning in such an environment. So many of our students are suffering from relationships with angry authority figures at home and are trying to find sanctuary in poisonous, temporary solutions. Why would they be receptive to that treatment in the classroom?

Quadrant 1 (Nice/Good): The Promised Land. The students respect you because you earned it, not because you demand it. They feel comfortable coming to your class and can focus on learning from you because you bring "it" everyday. You've got good ideas oozing from your pore. The students are inspired to learn not because of your brilliant oratory skills but because you catalyzed the question that will make them hunt down the answer themselves.

I spent a lot of time sitting in quadrant 4 trying to keep my job. Now, I'm striving for quadrant 1, trying to earn my job.

Home Videos: Intro

2009-08-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

I finally had enough. I mean, how many times do I have to answer same question? I wasn’t frustrated with the students...I was frustrated with myself. His furrowed brow and clenched fist told the whole story. “How do you expect me to do this when you’re not here to help me? It’s so easy to do it when I watch you do the example. But when I’m at home doing the work by myself...oy!” Admittedly, since this frustration first emerged a few years ago I’ve morphed my homework practice a bit: not as many problems and more of them done in class with me there to help. But, still, they do have some work to complete on their own.

My response remained constant: “Take good notes!” ... “Call a math buddy!” Unsatisfactory.

I decided to take a swing at delivering a better answer. To make a long story short (I’ll deliver the longer story over a series of shorter posts), I devised a way to record my pen strokes on a tablet PC using my Toshiba Tablet, my Macbook Pro, and Pinnacle’s hardware/software for Mac. I then recorded my voice using Garageband, and synced the two in iMovie, then uploaded them to my Youtube channel for the students to access, and embedded them on my website.

The Verdict

I uploaded my first set of Youtube notes for my Advanced Algebra class a little over two years ago. Surprisingly, my inbox housed positive responses from my students and from students in other classes, students enrolled in home study, students that tried to keep current with the class while vacationing, and high school and college students in other states. Thankfully, my work with Youtube notes, Message Boards on my website, student projects and utilizing cable content earned some recognition this year with the Cable Industry, but I’m still not completely satisfied.

The Problem

I have not yet mastered the art of capturing everything that occurs in class in a slidedeck that is meant to stand apart from the interactions that drive our classroom discussions from time to time. Typically, the slidedecks I use in class are a bit different than what I deliver in these videos. For example, today I took my classes outside and we measured some distances and then calculated some observations in groups. How do I translate that effectively using this tablet PC? Yeah, I tried taping our activities but it just doesn’t work for the one student watching at home. There might be a clever way around that, but I haven’t figured it out.

My Honest Assessment

I feel like I can do a better job, but not sure exactly how to accomplish that. I’ve tried different formulas but keep returning to where I am right now. Maybe the recognition is because I’m the first one trying it (that I know of, anyway), and not necessarily the one that’s perfected it. For the record, though, I’m just happy to be part of the journey. Self-criticism aside, I feel like it's opened up learning opportunities for a lot of my students that need a pause/rewind button without the embarrassment that's tied with hitting those buttons too many times in a classroom full of your peers. I'll cover the reflections a little bit more in depth in future posts.

I usually make each video at the end of the day, and they take about 15 minutes each to make, with about a 30 minute upload time each, for a grand total of 90 minute a day from start to finish, with only 40 of those minutes involving me sitting in front of a computer. With the time consideration, and the fact that I want my family to remember my face by the weekend, I usually skip over some of the fancier post-production luxuries that the Adobe suite or Final Cut Studio afford me.

This is where you come in: I want to make these better and would love some feedback. Give me some ideas that I can run with that don’t involve me forfeiting meals or sleep.

So, what’s the goal then?

The goal isn’t necessarily to recreate the classroom environment, but to give students that might be stuck on a concept in a problem access to help anytime in a digital environment. That said, these videos might not be burning up the Youtube charts, but they serve the purpose that I want them to serve.

So What Next?

In the next few days I will be posting how and why I do it, alternatives to this method (Jing, Smarboards, etc.), and some reflections after two years of delivering content through Youtube. In the meantime, here are a couple of videos that are fairly representative of what I’m doing (please excuse the goofy voice, and blatant copyright infringements):

Ellipses:

Parabolas

Elmo on the Cheap

2009-08-24T21:24:00.001-07:00

I'll skip the obligatory Sesame Street reference and get to the meat.

Early last school year I submitted a request for an Elmo document camera that got denied. I expected as much given the budget crisis in California and our district's dismal projections and cuts. I didn't really need to project documents as much as I needed a way to demonstrate a pre-algebra activity utilizing manipulatives for 40 students.

Using some award money that I received from the Best Buy Teach Award (no way could I afford this without help), I bought a $350 Sony camera and an $80 tripod. A Sony-suppled A/V cable, a little tripod-tweaking, and I've got a demonstration/document camera that also comes in handy for filming different student projects.

POV and Pic Problems

2009-08-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

POV

Here's a pic, courtesy of my good friend Jerry Burdick:

Jerry wears many hats: dog trainer extraordinaire, IT professional, bass player with mad skills, overall great guy and salt of the earth, and last but not least...great photographer. With online sharing resources such as Flickr, etc., teachers have access to loads of free pictures. The problem is, the vast majority of these pictures don't capture our world from a mathematically friendly point-of-view. You can't blame Jerry though. How often does Jerry think, "Today I'm going to cut a satellite dish in half and take a picture of the cross-section so Mr. 2pi will have a good resource for his chapter on conic sections!"? Never.

Sometimes if we just change the POV a bit, we get something a bit closer to what we need in the classroom:

Same tower, same Jerry, different POV. I'm not sure exactly how I would use that, but I do know that it's a better candidate for appearing in my slidedeck in one of my classes than the first picture. (If I were really mean I could make the students count triangles...mwahaha!)

Start Snappin'

Keep a camera with you at all times. If your phone is anything like mine, then you will want a better quality camera that is a little bit more robust and can fit in your pocket or purse. No need for a Digital SLR with multiple lenses, but at least something whose primary function is picture-taking.

Now, just keep your eyes peeled and be on the lookout for anything mathematical and interesting. A scenario that, in pixelated form, could deliver the catalyst for that essential, burning question, all with the click of a button. Once you've done that, load it up to your favorite photo-sharing site and post the link in the comments.

Have fun!!

Club 1-7-7: Part 2

2009-08-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

Towards the end of last school year we hit Permutations and Combinations in the latter part of Advanced Algebra and I broke out in a cold sweat. All I could think about was the previous year when the students could NOT remember the definition and application of each term. Maybe it was the slide:

No way. Couldn't be, right? I mean just LOOK at that thing! A work of art! Notice how I used a stylistic font, coupled with an exquisite, non-standard white background theme ("parchment" to be exact). Throw in the underline on "Matters" and the all-caps on "DOESN'T" and you've got a winner!

In most circles this slide would be a step above the typical work found in most slidedecks. My "best" years of teaching produced fruit similar to this slide.

I started to think about a better way ... but ... if it weren't for that pesky song I had stuck in my head all day then maybe I could think. Then it hit me. The answer is...Disneyland! The Magic Kingdom! Specifically...

Come on...admit it. You have the song stuck in your head now, right? That's the "Small World" attraction at Disneyland if you've never been there. If you've never heard the song I will spare you the pain. At that moment I knew that in order to make it stick I had to make it a learning experience, not a teaching experience. The first slide is a teaching experience. I talk. They write.

A learning experience, though, (at least for me now) is to create some sort of get-it-stuck-in-your-head experience for the student - a video, a picture, an activity, a question - that their mind can't let go of. An experience that will run through their head all day just like the song.

My next best effort was this:

I throw the picture up there and ask the students to tell me about it. Most of them say "combo meal". Next, I ask them if it matters whether or not they put the fries first on the tray, or the burger, or the drink, etc. I show them a few more pictures of the same combo meal, but with the items rearranged, and they all agree that changing the order of the pieces did not change the actual combination itself.

One combo meal, a couple of pictures, no typing, no writing, 3 minutes worth of discussion, and they were all on board. Permutations? No need for taking pictures of ladies at the beauty salon.

Seth Nails It...

2009-08-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin, marketing guru, nails it in his blog post on education:

School was the big thing for a long time. School is tests and credits and notetaking and meeting standards. Learning, on the other hand, is 'getting it'. It's the conceptual breakthrough that permits the student to understand it then move on to something else. Learning doesn't care about workbooks or long checklists.
For a while, smart people thought that school was organized to encourage learning. For a long time, though, people in the know have realized that they are fundamentally different activities.

I remember when I first figured out that I was a "school" groupie. My life, post-awakening, is now a little bit easier, but also a little bit more complex.

Can we survive this paradigm shift as a nation? Can the larger institution change?

Passion

2009-08-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

Check out this video of Janek Gwizdala, legendary bassist from the U.K.

Janek’s playing, in my humble opinion, transcends some of the other “good” stuff out there because of his passion for the music. When he plays, it’s as if the music rises from the part of his soul that first spoke that passion into existence. When he plays, it moves people to listen ... it makes them slide forward in their chair and lean in. The music resonates with their soul as well. Their heads bounce...their feet tap...everyone’s groovin’. His passion for his instrument, his craft, and his music stirs something in the listener.

There are lots of Janek’s out there that reach the musical part of our soul by letting their passion fuel and guide their quest to develop the technical proficiency that allows them to express the music inside of them. You might not dig this video or this type of music, but you’ve got a playlist full of Janek’s on your iPod.

When we teach, do we exude that same passion? Do the souls of our students resonate with that passion? Do we also couple our passion with technical proficiency? I want to have that same proficiency and passion for teaching. When I teach, I want my students to lean in.

Club 1-7-7

2009-08-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I turned in my membership card and my decoder ring. It’s one of the best moves I ever made with regard to how I deliver content in the classroom, but I spent far too long drinking the Kool-Aid, thinking that I knew the secret to developing a happy group of slides: (1) idea per slide (7) lines of text per slide (7) words per line.

Sadly, this is still an acceptable rubric for creating a digestible slidedeck, and it’s still being taught to teachers as an acceptable way to create a “Powerpoint” (more on professional development and the like later).

With regard to creating a good slidedeck, none do it better than Garr Reynolds, Nancy Duarte, and Jeff Brenman, all must-have names in your Blog Roll.

Students from years gone by (my sincerest apologies to my former pupils) would have likely seen a slide the likes of this, if they managed to stay awake for the intro:

Very unfortunate. This slide is the equivalent of using a crowbar and shovel to feed information to the kids. Painful and uninspiring. This slide does nothing to inspire curiosity. Nothing to evoke the one question that I want the students to develop on their own. Much like current textbooks, it tells them what to think and when to think it.

I will be the first to admit that my transformation is still a work in progress but I’m getting better. Here is a slide I gave to all of my classes this year (pre-algebra and advanced algebra) when the Apple App Store neared 1 billion downloads, and asked them to “Tell Me About It” (a regular feature in my class we will talk more about in future installments).

Lots of great discussions evolved from this one slide, whereas the other slide, from a former club 1-7-7 member, acted as a catalyst for absolutely zero. This slide's hook turned on their curiosity, and I had students watching the Apple website often to see how their initial calculations compared to reality. The discrepancies started some great discussions about our assumptions with the original calculations and what might have caused the differences. Now this slide might lose its luster a bit because the App Store already hit its mark.

I used to spend hours typing text and the students would spend hours copying. Mindlessness at its finest. Now, the heavy work isn’t the typing, but contemplating the right image or video...searching for the right photo or creating one of my own (Dan Meyer and I are cut from the same cloth in this respect). I’m now convinced that one good photo or one good video could do more for instruction than all of the text-filled slides used to accomplish. This new lens for viewing pedagogy turned me into a curious student myself. I can’t get away from looking for math in every nook and cranny. My wife wants to slap me sometimes, but I can’t get enough. If only I would have learned to get the hell out of the way sooner.