Patty Papers

Thanks to all who attended my NCCE session, Moodling in Math. For those who would like more information, here is a link to our session’s Moodle site.

Session Highlights:

• Creating a Course Glossary

If I could suggest one way to begin using Moodle with your students, would be to begin creating a class glossary.

• Using Forums

Forums are a great way to continue class discussions beyond the classroom. They help teachers to assess student learning and get students to talk math!

• Hot Potatoes!

The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available on the web.

• Assessments including Moodle Quizzes and ExamView

Students regularly complete a variety of formative and summative assessments via the web including formative quizzes, “tickets to retake”, and summative assessments.

• Using Video to Support Learning

As the instructor, I regularly provide video tutorials of class lessons/topics to support student learning in the classroom. In addition, students typically create several video projects throughout the year including screen recordings of their work, math music videos, and an end-of-year movie.

• Non-Traditional Assignments delivered, collected and graded using Moodle

I use Moodle to deliver projects and assignments other than the typical “book work”.. This allows students to access class presentations, handouts, and templates, and assignments are typically uploaded and graded through Moodle.

I’m currently preparing to present at NCCE 2009 in Portland this February. My session is regarding the ways in which my students and I use Moodle in our math classroom. It should be a great conference and I hope to see you there!

Find out how school districts are saving money with Open Source Software and how it can improve teaching and learning in the classroom!

Workshops

• Open Source for Schools
• Moodle for n00bs (newbies)
• Web 2.0 Basics: You mean you can do THAT on the internet?
• Create Powerful Learning with Moodle
• Free Internet/Online Tools to Increase Student Achievement
• Multimedia Moodle Marvels
• Managing Moodle for Teaching and Learning
• Web 2.0: All you can eat buffet
• School 2.0: Living Learning and Leading in a flat world
• Making Moodle Matter for Learners and Families

Educators, Administrative Leaders and Technical Staff will experience how Open Source Software increases both access and opportunities for students and teachers.

Concurrent Sessions

• MUG-NW (Moodle User’s Group) Gathering
• Web 2.0 – Voice, video on the web for free! Skype, UStream, Voice Thread
• Moodling in Math <— This is my session
• The IT Admins Guide to Managing Web 2.0 in Schools
• Open Source Smackdown
• Web 2.0 – Collaboration Tools you can’t live without. Delicious and Google docs
• Content Management Systems for Schools (Drupal, Joomla and others)
• Using Moodle: Supporting Administrators and Professional Development
• Opening Doors to Learning with Moodle

SEARCH LEARN and EXPLORE @ www.ncce.org

I will be presenting this summer at the Summer Institute in Olympia, WA. During my session, Math & Technology in Today’s Classroom, I’ll show how I use technology such as the electronic whiteboard, student response systems, software, mathcasts and video projects to promote student learning and achievement and for assessment (both formative and summative).

For those who want to learn more about mathcasts, I’m pleased to announce that Tim Fahlberg along with a wonderful team of partners (including yours truly  ) will be conducting a session at NECC entitled Mathcast Spaces: Thinking, Doing, and Sharing Mathematics Out Loud.

Presenting at EduComm this year was a great experience but didn’t really allow time in my schedule to attend any sessions. Well, here is a page of 2007 EduComm Post-Event Conference Material with links to handouts and videos of sessions so now I can watch them. And so can you.

I spent last week at the AP Calculus Summer Institute in Vancouver, WA. I took the AP Calculus AB (experienced) session with instructor Sharon Cade. I was glad to have her as an instructor again; I took a week-long workshop from her a few years ago at PLU and learned so much. I gained a lot of insight during this session into the reading and scoring of the AP exam which will definitely help me better prepare my students next year. Besides the calculus, I also love her team-building activities and definitely plan to use them this year. I think they get kids in the right frame of mind, and they are fun. I know I learn more if I’m having a little fun. :)  The experienced session was also great because I got great ideas for lessons and incorporating technology from the other teachers in my session.

Here are a few math and tech highlights from the week:

• We worked with programs for the TI-83/84 and TI-89 graphing calculators. I especially liked the programs in Work Smarter, Not Harder by Venture Publishing, available for the TI-83/84 and the TI-89. More programs can be found at the TI Download Center  and at http://www.ticalc.org .
• A fantastic FREE graphing program is Winplot. You’ll find this and other free software on the Peanuts Software Homepage at Phillips Exeter Academy. Did I mention that it’s FREE? Free is good.  
• For those who use Geometer Sketchpad 4, a great resource is the Calculus In Motion by Audrey Weeks.
• TI conducted a session on the new TI-Nspire which was interesting. We also received CDs for a 30-day trial of TI SmartView. I am currently using Virtual TI (another freebie) and will continue using it since I have the TI-89 rather than the 83/84, but the advantage of SmartView is that it records your key strokes which is a definite bonus when a kid gets 3 steps behind. If they create SmartView for the 89, I’ll be first in line.
• We looked at some great resources from Stu Schwartz at http://www.mastermathmentor.com/ including his Clue game.  I like games.
• I like to use some of the activities from A Watched Cup Never Cools by Key Curriculum Press.
• Sharon shared OES’s curriculum map for AP Calculus AB.  You can also view curriculum maps for other courses at OES here.
• For students that need tutoring, consider http://www.aleks.com .
• We looked at lots of calculus questions. Here are some sites we looked at as well as some from Sharon’s resource list and others that I personally use:
  • Of course, use the free response problems posted at AP Central
  • COW: Calculus on the Web
  • http://tinyurl.com/24lu2b and http://tinyurl.com/2g8ssk have released AP items for download
  • Good Questions for Calculus at Math 24-7, in ExamView and PDF format.
• If you want a class website that is easy to build and maintain, consider www.eboard.com . I have used eBoard for the past two years and found it to be extremely easy to use, although now my site is hosted by our district. Thanks to Wendy Droke for showing us around her own eBoard.

I’ve updated the Mathcasts, The Sustainable Classroom, and About Patty pages.

Mathcasts: I’ve included links to student projects and to some of my own videos, directions for creating your own mathcast, and links to other mathcast resources on the web.

The Sustainable Classroom: I have included a link to a video created by ESD 112 of my students and I using and discussing the technology we received through our participation in the Sustainable Classroom Grant.

About Patty: I’ve updated this page with information about technology grants that I have or am currently participating in, presentations I have given, and articles and press releases about our classroom and projects.

You can either click on these links or use the menu at the top of each page to visit these pages. Enjoy!

Shari Conditt and I presented this morning at the ATI/ETS Summer Conference. Our session, Practical Applications and the Role of Technology in Assessment FOR Learning, focused on how we have applied Assessment FOR Learning strategies in our own classrooms for the past four years and how we use technology to help us assess student learning.

We shared our syllabi and how we introduce our assessment practices to students and parents, assessment software that we use such as ExamView  from FSCreations and Hot Potatoes from Half-Baked Software Inc. (see previous post), how we use our eInstruction “clickers” (aka student response systems), and mathcasts.

I hope to post portions of our presentation soon.

If you attended our session and have questions or comments, feel free to post your comments here or to send an email.

My EduComm presentation, a joint session with Michele Conway, can be viewed here. Michele’s portion of the presentation can be viewed in slides 1-32; she gives a great overview of the Hitachi StarBoard and its uses in the classroom. My portion of the presentation can be viewed in slides 33-the end; I primarily discuss how my students and I use the Hitachi StarBoard to create mathcasts.

I am honored to be presenting on July 24th at the 14th Annual ETS Summer Conference. In this presentation with my colleague, Shari Conditt, we will describe how we have implemented Assessment FOR Learning practices in our own classrooms and how we utilize technology in formative assessment. In particular, will share how I am currently using ExamView and Hot Potatoes (LOVE the spuds!) online assessments, eInstruction student response systems, and mathcasts.