Patty Papers

Yesterday I spent the day at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR where I attended a one-day workshop featuring research-based best practices for creating math and science classrooms that are engaging and motivating for girls. Based on the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) practice guide, Encouraging Girls in Math and Science, we explored strategies for implementing a more relevant math and science curriculum, engaging students in real-world problems, and recognizing the diverse needs of students when it comes to math and science learning and motivation. It was a very interesting day where I met some great people and hopefully will be able to follow up with this new network to bring some new and exciting ideas into my classroom.

The day began with a keynote by Dr. Diane Halpern, a professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College and lead author of the Institute of Education Sciences practice guide Encouraging Girls in Math and Science. She discussed what research says about supporting girls in science and math classrooms through strategies such as project-based learning, use of technology, and group work on real-world problems. After Halpern’s address, I attended a panel discussion by teachers that focused on applying the research findings to support girls’ pursuit of STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics) careers. After lunch, I had time to work on action steps for my classroom and to learn more about the mini-grants offered by the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Girls Collaborative Project. The afternoon concluded with a panel of women working in STEM professions, reflecting on what motivated them to follow this career path. The event was sponsored by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Institute of Education Sciences, Pacific Northwest Girls Collaborative Project, and the Lewis & Clark College Graduate School of Education and Counseling.

Overall, great day! As a teacher, it’s hard to leave your classroom sometimes but this was a very worthwhile day. Follow this link if you’d like to download the practice guide, What Does Research Tell Us About How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science.

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

In his blog, Tom Barrett discusses how he plans to use a Wii game system to teach and reinforce math concepts in his classroom.

I can’t wait to see the creative ways in which teachers use this technology!

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).

At InterMath: Constructionary, users can obtain a list of constructions in Geometer’s Sketchpad. Clicking on a letter of the alphabet gives a list of constructions for that letter. When you chose a construction, clicking on the numbers shows the steps for that construction. Clicking on “Notes” at each step will give a brief description, and I do mean brief, so newbies may need additional help. This is not a stand-alone tutorial but definitely makes a great resource.

Here’s my Friday math joke. Yeah, it’s corny, but it made me laugh.

A great Pi Day pic:

by VROG in Bristol

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.

Tagging, Tumbling, and Mathcasting posted by Paul Allison is a jam-packed thirty-nine minutes that explores the power of tagging, teachers using tumblogs, mathcasts, VoiceThreads in health, speech, history, math, music, technology, and EFL classes. This session includes an interview with my friend, Tim Fahlberg, on mathcasts. What’s a mathcast, you ask? Well, mathcasts are screencasts (screen movies) of writing with voice that focus on mathematics, and Tim is the pioneer in this field who got me and my students started 3 years ago.

Click here to learn more about mathcasts and to view mathcasts created by me and my students. You can also learn more about mathcasts by visiting Tim’s mathcast wiki at http://math247.pbwiki.com/.