My Math Videos for JCHS

I made several math videos for school-wide use at Junction City High School, a diverse 6A Kansas high school of roughly 1700 students. JCHS is well known in the area both for the district's investments in technologies and teachers' uses of technologies. I taught there for two years and was fortunate to come into a nice situation where equipment and software were available to me and there was a need for someone to make some videos. I got a lot of support from my principal and fellow teachers so I did it.

Of course I couldn't have done it without the groundwork already laid down by the School Improvement Team chairperson. Before I arrived she had put together numerous SmartBoard Notebook files complete with standards-based questions. I simply tweaked these to make my videos. Really, I got the fun part.

Teachers across the building showed these videos and then I'd try and throw them up on YouTube, mainly for my own pleasure. Here they are in chronological order:

Symmetric Property of Equality (2008)


Parallel and Perpendicular Lines (2008)


Measures of Central Tendency and Stem-and-Leaf Plots (2009)


Slope-Intercept Form (2009)


Scatter Plots (2009)


Zero Product Property (2009)


Probability and Odds with Shaq (2010)

6 Mobile Apps for Distance Education

Note: this is an assignment for a Master's course at K-State, EDCI 887: Professional Seminar I, taught by Dr. Rosemary Talab.

Assignment Description
What, if any, mobile apps can be used for teaching at a distance?

Assignment
Cell phones and other mobile devices, such as iPod Touches, are much more than they appear; making calls is only one of the thousands of uses for an iPhone. I found some Apple apps that could prove useful for Distance Education (DE). This is a small list and I'm sure there are many more out there.

Michael Staton on Why SmartBoards are a Dumb Initiative

Smartboards don’t change the model that’s broken. They just make that model way more expensive.
--
Michael Staton

I can't complain about SmartBoards too much; I taught two years in a district with a whole slew of them. I came in after the money was already gone and most of the moaning had ceased and was able to find a niche using the SmartBoard software to make math videos for our school.

But here's a blog post that takes a critical look at SmartBoard purchases by school districts from the CEO of Inigral, Michael Staton, from his blog Edumorphology:

http://www.edumorphology.com/2010/05/why-smartboards-are-a-dumb-initiative/

Screencasting with the Interwrite SchoolPad

Basic setup for a screencast.

Note: this is an assignment for my Master's course at K-State, EDCI 763: Instructional Design, taught by Dr. Gary Whitt. It is the end product of several weeks of work.

Assignment Description
Think about something you could teach me and my colleagues here in the Education Department at Roanoke College. Design your own instruction to do just that.

Part1. In a document, include each of the following:

I. Statement of Purpose
II. Needs Analysis
III. Task Analysis
IV. Learner Analysis
V. Objectives
VI. Design
VII. Evaluation

Part2. Then implement your instruction in a format of your choosing.

Assignment
My instruction is over how a math teacher with an Interwrite© Wireless School Pad, a Bluetooth‐enabled computer with built‐in microphone, and moderate computer skills can create a video lesson by doing what is called screencasting.

Part1. Here's my document breaking down the design of my instruction (pdf)

Part2. Here's my screencast which is the instruction. It can be viewed in two ways. I think the second way is cooler.

1. YouTube



2. Shockwave File (.swf) - will open in browser

Temple Grandin on skipping algebra and autism: the “very big continuum”

Temple Grandin

I enjoyed the enthusiasm of Temple Grandin, “the most accomplished and well-known adult with autism in the world,” in her Ted talk from February (notice the people-first language in that quote). And I'm intrigued by what she said about her struggle with abstract thinking such as in algebra class:

You see, the autistic mind tends to be a specialist mind. Good at one thing, bad at something else. And where I was bad was algebra. And I was never allowed to take geometry or trig. Gigantic mistake. I'm finding a lot of kids who need to skip algebra, [and] go right to geometry and trig. 

The way most schools teach geometry requires a strong knowledge of algebraic principles. That is not to say that Temple wouldn't have learned these principles much better in a geometric rather than purely algebraic and abstract setting.

Something to think about. Here's her talk: