Greenhaus Education and Other "Effects"

Last week was a crazy, hectic and tiring week at both the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM)  and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) conferences. I mentioned these conferences in my most recent post , which sad to say was over a week ago. The conferences, from a vendor perspective, are a lot of set-up, talking, preparing for big events we host, preparing for presentations I was doing, and just being constantly ready for the next day, which comes pretty quick after a 12-14 hour day of working! If you want a great perspective, read Karen Coe's blog Behind the Scenes at NCSM and NCTM . Despite the long hours, the sore feet, the loss of my voice, my overall feeling from both conferences was that they were both great events, and that it was both gratifying and encouraging to meet, talk with, and hear what math educators are doing in the 'real-world' to engage their students. Which leads me to my title - are conferences such as NCSM and

In a recent post , I talked about planning for my talk at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference next week in Philadelphia. Not surprising, I am doing a presentation on dynamic mathematics with Sketchpad . Since effective use of technology in education is such a passion of mine, it's something I tend to want to share with others.  If I was able to, I would also be attending as many technology focused workshops/sessions as I could. Being on the vendor end of things, that is virtually impossible since I spend most of my time at the booth.  Though - the beauty of the booth is I get to play with technology all day and meet and show lots of teachers what they can do with dynamic math. Anyway, I know attending these conferences can be overwhelming sometimes, since there are so many choices at any one time so it's hard to know which sessions to try to go to. I myself use to have a daily focus.  The first day I might focus on algebra and technology, so look for s

No surprise, but I am inspired to write after another great online, live professional development collaboration on Twitter with the weekly #Edchat group.  For anyone who is new at using Twitter as a means of professional development, #Edchat is a great way to get started - every Tuesday at 11 am CDT.  Just reading the conversation thread is informative, even if you don't respond yourself.  Great ideas from a wide mix of educators. Today's topic was "If collaboration is high on everyones list as a needed skill; how do we work it into every aspect of our education system?"   There were lots of suggestions and questions - a true collaboration, where everyone contributed their thoughts, their strategies, asked great questions, all to further the discussion and work towards some solutions.  Not get a solution , but work towards strategies that can get things started, since there really isn't just one solution - every situation is different and what works in one place

I have been thinking and planning for my upcoming NCTM presentation on taking the hands-on, physical math manipulatives we use to help students learn and model mathematics to the virtual realm in order to provide  unlimited capabilities to explore and understand. It's something that I think is often thought of as an either or - either teachers use hands-on, physical models or they use virtual models, such as The Geometer's Sketchpad , and my thoughts are we should be using both. It's a way to help students see and understand the power of technology by exposing them to the limitations of the physical and then providing them the opportunity to see the capabilities to go beyond with technology. Some simple examples of what I mean: 1) Geoboards - students begin to explore polygons with geoboards, but are limited by the number of pegs on the geoboard, the number of rubber bands and the physical limitations of both (you can only stretch a rubber band so far before it snaps

I have been trying to avoid taking a stand on the flipped classroom, because in all honesty, I can see advantages if it's done right . But...here's where I am a bit of a pessimist, mainly because I have been in the math and technology education field for over 22 years now - I don't think it's going to be done right MOST OF THE TIME!  I think it's just a flipped model of the same old thing - lecture and practice: we've just flipped where those things happen and patted ourselves on the back that we are 'integrating technology'.   A lecture is still a lecture and not all that engaging no matter if it's in person or on a computer. Hopefully I am wrong - but I don't think I am. Image courtesy of images.google.com 'flipped classroom' I have had the advantage of seeing K-12 education from various perspectives (teacher, administrator, consultant, teacher trainer, and vendor), and in my very diverse set of experiences, have seen the '

Just a short post today to provide some feedback from my most recent face-to-face with my two blended PD cohorts. Last posting I discussed the focus, listed here: Lesson Five: Provide suggestions and examples of taking the activities/content of the professional development and modifying (adding to, deleting from, etc.) to meet the diverse needs of their students. By helping teachers consider how the activities might need to be altered to differentiate for students, you provide them with power and control over what they are learning, and help them make the PD learning and content their own. Things went pretty well - we had our customary share out at the beginning, where there was some nice conversation and suggestions for helping integrate Sketchpad into lessons. There were some teachers who shared really fun experiences with their students and then some teachers are experiencing real frustration with trying to integrate the technology into their classrooms, from classroom manage

This week I meet for the fifth face-to-face with my two Sketchpad cohorts. It's only been 3 weeks since our last face-to-face meeting and it is also the beginning of their spring break, so planning for this week has been interesting, since I know their minds will be elsewhere! As I posted in last weeks online community development posting (part 4) , the teachers have really begun to think about student needs as they consider using Sketchpad and the Common Core Standards, so I want to continue to foster that in our face-to-face meeting.  As I did last time, I had participants make suggestions of content/topics they wished to focus on in this weeks face-to-face. Our content focus, based on their input, will be on learning some more about the multiple-representational capabilities of Sketchpad as well as some of the animation capabilities. In addition to teacher input as I planned, I also really wanted to think about addressing student needs, since in their online discussion for