Almost Done

Another wonderful - most awesome - class experience this past week!  A variety of lessons both on and off the computer were greatly enjoyed.  I uploaded one of the paper folding lessons and just found another similar paper folding lesson from AIMS  (that I will soon add to the Teacher2Teacher file on our Bb site).  I will make a movie of and then upload the Logo file created by Dennis.

Can I entice any other folks to present a favorite lesson or an excerpt from your master's project to our class on the 27th?  Please respond here so I can plan our last teaching night accordingly.

It looks like a contribution of $5.00 should cover the cost of the pizza and drinks for our last night, for the folks who are not making  a food dish or dessert contribution.

PS. Liz asked for any thoughts on how to teach improper fractions and mixed numbers on her blog.  

Learning

Thank you to everyone for last night!  I was really struck by the level of cooperation that was apparent in both activities.  I learned from both watching and listening to your comments regarding the volume and surface area activity.  I found wisdom in the suggestions that were offered and am open to other insights as I revisit this project and how I will use it in the future.  I value the encouragement, to trust in the process of student learning from group work and then revisit the concepts individually for assessment purposes.

I want to thank Bill and Paula for sharing their lessons.  I learned that the perimeter will always be an even number and noticed more about patterns with this topic - cool!  I learned about integrating GSP with Powerpoint.

It looks like we will hear from Liz, Sara P, Mark P, and Dennis on Monday next.  Anyone else?

You get to Teach

Life is grand!  I was able look at all of the folders and read what many of you have completed before leaving for EIU.  I will get to the blogs soon!  What is striking me is the fact that we do need to take more class time to share with each other the specific activities you all have tried out with your students or the activities some of you have created in order to better understand the mathematics.  So, I want to invite you to sign up - as a reply to this blog entry - for an informal sharing with our class over the next three class meetings.  I will set aside time each night for you to showcase what you have completed as a part of your master's project.  This is not mandatory and you will not be graded on your public speaking but I strongly encourage you to take this opportunity to share something.  Please indicate about how much time you would like (no guarantees), a general topic, and I will plan a schedule out accordingly.  If you would be ready by this Monday, please let me know that as well.  I am going to TRY to set up a class session in the library so we can use the SmartBoard.  My hope would be that we can do that on the 20th, but will need to get the room reserved.

Green Globs information

Here is the name and email for Green Globs.  I believe that this is now offered free to educators.

support@greenglobs.net  

attention Dave Kibbey

Two Thoughts

Okay, my first thought is what to do when I will be gone on April 7th.  There are so many possibilities... what are YOUR thoughts?

My second thought (limited to two today) has to do with how much we should expect our preservice teachers (PST's) to use technology in our classes on campus.  I read an email today from a researcher in Canada and he said that the feeling up there is that the novice teachers have too much to worry about and that technology can come in later.  Therefore, technology is taught as an "add on" and not integrated in to the curriculum for the PST's.  Now, you all know how I feel about technology but am I needing to do a gut check here.  Does he have a point?  Where and how much technology should our PST's be exposed to, or have to become proficient in, and why?  You can comment here and I will count your reflective responses on this posting as your week's blogging entry.  You may still post your own blogs on geometry - I love reading them!

Topics Question

I am looking at topics that I want to get to yet this semester and could use some feedback.  What geometry content do you have questions on?  I am looking at Tessellations, Area and Perimeter, More on Circles, Volume and Surface Area, 3-D Shapes and Nets; and possibly revisiting Transformations, Congruence and Similarity.  what ONE topic is most important to you?  Please feel free to add to this list.

I posted an external link to a cool Tessellation site and will add some more links today.

Trees, light poles and bell towers

What a fun night! I would like for you to post a reflection about tonights class on your own blog. You need to complete AT LEAST one blog this week. I will take a look at the project sheets tomorrow and let you know if there is a problem with what you have outlined for your master's project. If you would like to continue with weekly assignments, your tasks for this week should come from Chapter Two and Chapter Nine of EGwGSP. We will look at tesselations next week... I will try to find the article on the clinometers from the Mathematics Teacher.

Hello From SC

I am sitting in the opening Keynote session and the topic is our education system in the US and how the model is not working.  As I type this, the discussion is about how many teachers are leaving the profession and how little support teachers actually get.  The numbers leaving, due to general attrition versus retirees are 3-1.  That is scary but we all know why.  Schools and the job market is changing but teacher preparation/professional development is not.  I could go on but will stop here because you all know this better than I do!

It is comforting to know that there are folks at the policy level in our national government who are aware of the need for a massive overhaul of our educational system; and that huge numbers of our teaching work force is close to retirement (over 50% in the next few years) and a large percent of new teachers leave in five years or less.

Class Questions

These are the questions that you may blog/journal on.

1) Andrew's principal wants to know what your schools are using for a definition of a cone.

2) Bill would like to know about differentiation of instruction as well as planning tips for short classes.

3) I want to know what everyone has decided on for their masters' project. If you just posted about this you can skip it but if not, please share the idea with the rest of the class. It does not have to be technology.

4) Your reaction to the state tests that you had to give this week.

5) Aha moments you would like to share with us (and the world).

6) I would like everyone to revisit the proof of the sum of the angles of a triangle = 360 degrees. What would you write for this one? You saw one approach in class today.

7) Post a sentence or two about the article you choose to read, from the NCTM Research Book. ("Student Understanding" and "Measure Up" - these items are at the bottom of our course reading list on Blackboard.

Take care and see you in two weeks.

Questions

I am looking for you folks to help me with the blog/journal prompts this week.

What would you like to ask each other? Post here please.

Definition of a Cone

Andrew posted a question on his blog about the definition of a cone.  See if you can help him out at http://wildcatluvr.blogspot.com

Okay, so who needs an idea for a Master's Project? I am reading a book tonight about building scale model houses to support the learning of surface area, nets, and 3-D shapes. The models are made with constuction paper and my personal favorite is the one that has stilts and is sitting on a beach, over the water. Needless to say you would have to be about 3 inches tall to live there but it does look nice. I LOVE miniature things.
I taught an intro to Logo lesson in my 5 pm class tonight as they had to learn the "Rule of 360." I challenged them to draw equilateral polygons starting with a triangle, sqare and then the pentagon and up. I had one darling say to me "just tell us how to do it" and you know the rest...
Have a great weekend and see you Monday.

Animation Tours

I noticed that a few of you commented, either on your blog or in your PGP, that you wanted to look at animation in GSP so I have uploaded two animation files from the Middle School materials from Key.  There are four animation "tours" in the pdf file and the companion gsp file is there as well.  They do a pretty good job of walking you through the steps of how to animate and how to create buttons.

Hey - another fun class!
I would like for everyone to read the Slavit article.

"Suggested" homework is to 

1)  Complete the always/sometimes/never charts in Chapter Five of the Shafer text that was handed out tonight. Complete a few (not all!) activites from Exploring Geometry with Geometer's Sketchpad CHAPTER FOUR on quadrilaterals; OR

2) Complete the Logo Set #2 on the last two pages in Chapter Five of the Shafer text. This will help with a future Logo project.

Here are your blog/journal questions for this week:

1. Reaction to the Slavit article.

2. When is your spring break and do you get to go somewhere fun?  No need to elaborate, I just want to know when folks will be gone.

Thank you all for working so hard!

Class on Monday

I am very excited about our class tomorrow.  Our hands-on activity will use spaghetti as we create different quadrilaterals.  Please note that I am going to begin encouraging you to sit with folks who have similar interests as to what they want to pursue for their master's project.  For instance, there is a group that wants to create a LOGO curriculum, so they will be sitting together.  I have noticed a few folks who want to learn more advanced features of GSP (like animation) so they need to find each other.  I am also detecting a few that want to look at the concept of proof and how to teach proof in the middle school.  I will bring a number of resource books down to our classroom, so you can see what is out there and generate more ideas.

Master's Project - Algebra

A. O. indicated in her blog that she would like to learn more about Sketchpad and how to use this with algebra.  This is a great idea and one that would be approved.  There are algebraic concepts that she has explored (like slope) but one down side is that slopes are measured in decimals.  Or is that a down side?  GeoGebra will measure the slope (and illustrate it) as a ratio of the sides of a right triangle (which is how I teach slope).  So my point is that just because this is a geometry course, algebra on GSP would be a worthwhile project.

Thoughts About Class

So, I am on the second airplane of the day, after a VERY fast walk across the Cincinnati airport, and am working on our lesson for Monday night.  I am sitting next to a couple who are going to Disney this week and the gal is a retired third grade teacher.  So I share with her my lesson plan (poor woman) and then take a "nap" as I process the lesson.  I periodically come to life as I add notes to the lesson and list the manipulatives we will need.  My last revelation is that we will need a hula hoop.  Joyce (she gave me her card) then went on to tell me what other math we could complete with the hula hoop.  She wants me to let her know how the lesson goes and what else we come up with for that hoop.  Math is just too cool!

Speaking of cool  - I gave out a few "cool points" this week as I was reading blogs and emails. These points do not count for anything except your own personal coolness. 

On Monday we will begin class by working on blogs and posting comments on other folks blogs. Some of you have a blog created but have not posted a journal entry, so we will do that in class.

An optional location for the electronic journal is the Discussion Forum on blackboard.  This is an option we can discuss and explore as well.

Final note - I had a chance to read through a few of your file folders (class work) and personal growth plans.  AWESOME!!!!   I LOVE IT!

Final, final note - I linked two websites to the COURSE LINKS on BlackBoard.  Check these out.

Blog on Blogging

If you posted a journal entry to your blog (and I could get to it) you should see a comment from me (today's date).

I have tried to go to the blogs that were posted in Blackboard this week and for some reason am having technical issues.  Some of the url's are taking me back to my blog and not to the ones that I am trying to get to.  So, please forgive me for not posting a comment today!  If you can link your blog to my blog, I should be able to follow you that way. 

If you do not want to complete your journal on Blogspot.com you may do so in Blackboard.  Please start a new discussion thread like "journal - kathy" so we know who it is and we can reply to you.

Monday Night

That class went really fast.  I know that someone in the room (male voice) was saying that there should be an "if and only if" added to that last theorem (about alternate interior angles) and that is true.  But at that time of the night I did not want to get into biconditional statements.  We will pick up on that next week.  So, I want to encourage you to focus on what you want to focus on.  I will get a template up for the Personal Growth Plan by the end of the week. 

Also, If you have never received an email from me it means that I do not have your correct email address.  It would be helpful if you could send me a test email so I can add your address to my list.

I tired GeoGebra in my second class today and love how it measures angles.  It can measure the reflex angle which is really cool.  I promise not to make you learn another program though!

Welcome to Blogging

Dear Class,

If you are new to blogging or a seasoned pro, no worries here.  Consider this an adventure and you will be just fine.  In fact, I just created this blog and it is my first one EVER!

Katie