Education Week

This week I decided to take a look at a different twitter @educationweek which I found to be pretty cool.  Unlike @RenLearnUS which posts links to many different blogs relating to all different educational topics and subject matter, @educationweek posts links to live chats.  There is a different topic to each of the chats, for instance, this week was 'Integrated' Math: A Transitional Approach to the Common Core where you can see it is not just teachers on the forum.  There are superintendents, teachers, supervisors and coordinators.  People are given the chance to ask questions about integrated math.  For instance:

2:41	Madeline Will:  Paul, we have a great question from Michelle about how it's been teaching integrated math.

2:41	Comment From Michelle L.  In addition to changing the course sequence, have methods for teaching math changed? Is there more of a constructivist approach used? Are students doing hands-on activities with manipulatives and problem-solving? Or group work? Or is lecture-based?

2:41

Paul Stevenson:  Michelle, perhaps the biggest change has been in terms of teaching pedagogy. Implementing the Standards of Mathematical Practice forces a change in instruction. Students are doing far more problem solving and teachers are assigning far fewer problems each day, but the work is more meaningful and application oriented. We are moving away from lecture and using group structures pretty much every day in our classes.

This is taken directly from the forum, where questions regarding such a dramatic change in our schools are being answered almost instantly and making those fretting about the change feel more comfortable with it.  Common Core is a hard adjustment for many so as a math major, I of course found this forum to be interesting.

Flipping Math

From the blog I follow dy/dan, I discovered Kevin Davis' blog Flipping Middle School Math.  Now Kevin just decided to flip his eighth grade classroom this past week in November which he called "Day Zero."  He had faith through friends who flipped their high school classroom and succeeded with the highest state exam scores they have ever seen in their school.  Others however, put the breaks on and explained it would never work.  Now their isn't much to his blog since he hasn't gone further than assigning thee students as 12 minute video to watch and take notes on it.  But Kevin seems to be getting frustrated and antsy with flipping as only one student watched the video as of 9pm.  Might I add, the student watched less than 5 minutes of video.  However, I thought this blog would be a great one to start following, and seeing how he progresses over time because as he said at the end of the blog - he will wake up in the morning with a plan.  I also thought that it was an essential blog to discuss because well, Kevin introduced a new form of technology to me that I was not familiar with when it comes to flipping the classroom.  It's called Zaption. Now I haven't started my free trial just yet because I would like to experiment with it next semester when I myself am in a classroom.  But I did watch the demo!  It seems like an amazing tool for flipping the classroom, as Kevin said in his blog, it allows him to see which of his students watched the video and for how long!  Now you don't even have to ask your students to show them your homework, it tells you!  Also, it allows your video to become a full interactive learning experience.  Taking snipits of other YouTube Videos and dragging them into your Zaption, then adding an interactive question.  Now, if you have your own YouTube channel... you can use your own video, add it in to Zaption, and ask your students questions on exactly what you just taught.  It tracks every detail and response, and there are also some pre-made video that you can tailor.  Though there is a fee, it seems worth it to me!

How does a teacher learn?

The Daily Riff presented a blog entry Ask a student, how does your teacher learn?  which explains that teachers today are found everywhere thanks to the internet which becomes personalized.  But as the article states, designing your own education or curriculum isn't easy.  But having the internet at our fingertips with educators is great because it is often "how-to" which according the the article, the author doesn't believe that is happening in our schools today.  I might have to disagree - I mean yes, it isn't done in every lesson, but it is certainly happening.  You can not possibly teach a math class and assume that just because a child can add, that they also know how to multiply.  Not at all, you must pave the path in how-to's an build their education based on what they already know.  But then he continues and makes a really great point :

This is not to suggest that the content in our classrooms is no longer important, or that the adult in the room isn't still a critical part of our kids' learning or their social and emotional development.  I want my kids to be in places where they are cared for, where they are supported and encouraged by people whom they look up to, respect, and trust. There is no question that "teachers" still have a lot to offer my children. But those "teachers" now need to be experts at only one thing, and that is learning. They need to know how to help kids become those self-directed, literate learners who can ask meaningful questions, probe difficult problems, separate good information from bad, connect safely to strangers online, and interact with them on an ongoing basis. And, most importantly, our educators need to be able to do this themselves.

I really liked that he addressed that teachers need to be experts in learning.  Teachers need to constantly update what they know and continue to educated themselves and their students.  Teachers need to not only teach classroom materials, but encourage students to be responsible, sociable, literate, and the list goes on.  It is true in my eyes - an educator is an educator far beyond subject matter.

To Love What You Do, or to Love Money?

The Twitter account that I actively follow @RenLearnUS tweeted and article from @TheAtlanticEDU which is about students majoring in "fun things" while in college.  As a college student in her 5th year, going on 6th to finish a dual degree with a BA in Mathematics and a BA in Education, it sure has me shaking in my boots.  Being that I'm in school much longer than most, my debt has certainly surpassed what the "average" student debt is of $26,500 (I really wonder how that was possible for most people?).  Those who start in a field with a lower income often struggle when paying their student loans back.  So according to this article, students who major in things such as Theater have to payback 14.1% of their paycheck, but those in energy and extraction engineering only put about 7% of their paycheck towards these student loans.  I think this is a great article for @RenLearnUS to post because this allows teachers to encourage their students even more to shoot for the sky.  Granted, those majoring in "fun things" can also shoot for the stars - it could be more encouragement for them to focus on more than one thing to have a back up plan with something else that they love.  Or maybe encourage them to apply these "fun things" to a more intensive major that could be incorporated with what they love, this way they can still feel passionate about the subject matter.  This would help out our economy as well as our futures wallets.

This week I found a new mathematics and education blog dy/dan (it is a math joke, I promise).  A few weeks ago I posted about having math connect with students in the city by embracing graffiti within the school.  They would put graffiti on the walls inside and out of their school, however they took data of students in the school and made graphs on the walls and turned this data into art.  Now on this blog, Mr. Dan Meyer writes about Coral Connor's students who creates 3D chalk charts to show that they understood trig functions.  NOW THIS IS NEAT!  Not only is it connecting art and mathematics, and not only is it turning everyday math into hands on math, but it is giving the teacher a great way to evaluate his students knowledge on the subject matter without testing them!  YOU SAID WHAT NOW? (Sounds like a red flag to the common core if you ask me - OH WELL!)  Testing isn't everything.  In math, people have always struggled because people often think the only way to evaluate ones understanding is to test them... news flash... you are wrong.  dy/dan just showed you otherwise!

Behind on the Times

The twitter account that I have been following @RenLearnUS tweeted on November 10th as follows:

"An interesting look at what happens when schools simply don't have the budget for the technology students need."

Attached to the tweet for the link Struggle to teach students ’21st century skills’ when classroom technology isn’t up to speed.  As fast as software is changing and constantly being updated,  the computers often can not keep up with the constant change under a school budget.  Just as something new comes into the school, it is already outdated.  In today's classrooms, teachers are often encouraged to utilize technology in their lessons, but as things begin to run slow and aren't compatible, it often becomes more frustrating for the teacher and the students.  The constant change in technology and lack of being able to upgrade constantly also causes trouble in areas where they may not be "well off" and in that case, their peers at the school just one county over is getting a ore knowledgable education, leaving some students at a disadvantage and basically creating a technology gap.  The article names that it is one day "a dream" for there to be a technological device for each student in the classroom, or one to one.  In my personal opinion, though this could truly be a great thing for many teachers, I do not believe that technology should be implemented throughout an entirety of a lesson and find that it should be included as a part of a lesson.  With this being said, it is not necessary for there to be a device for every single student in the school. Now BYOD can be a great thing to implement throughout the schools because many students have relatively up-to-date devices.  But not all students, so you then have to ensure students without devices have access to another there at school, which if they aren't quite familiar with them, could cause them to be at a disadvantage.  At the end of the day, it all depends on the teacher in the front of the classroom that makes the decisions that they know themselves and their students will be comfortable with, and ensure the best possible education they can deliver.

Common Core, Just Another Brick in the Wall?

Well, it seems all three blogs I have chosen to follow, have all stopped blogging in September, so in order to get something fresh, I decided to look into Diane Ravitch and what she has to say about the Common Core.  My eye was instantly drawn to her first post, a video which was created by a student in Ohio who doesn't like the idea of the Common Core.  The video give explicit reason to the distaste of the program, including data to support his feelings.  The video is a spin off of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" which is a great analogy for the Common Core.  Though it is today's curriculum, education is always changing and adapting, just adding the bricks that make the walls of our schools.  When I was in third grade... yes many many moons ago, there was one standardized test.  Now, as the video states, the average third grade student takes over 20 hours of standardized tests which is the equivalent of the Ohio Bar exam for law students to become lawyers.  The video also informed me that the creators of Common Core have their students enrolled in private school, where they won't have to take these tests.  In that case I'm quite confused because if the Common Core is supposed to move education along in a more proficient and efficient manor, than why would your own children not be going through the same program in which you came up with?  Wouldn't you want you child to get the "best education?"  Even the photo of the baby at the computer being timed on their test, reflects back to one of my other blogs about students feeling rushed and not giving them the time to correct mistakes they may have made.

What made me furious was seeing that the Common Core tests taken this spring, will not be graded until 2016.  If these tests are supposed to improve our education system, how are we going to reflect back an entire year?  Which at that point, it's almost like going back 2 years of education.  How do you evaluate students that way?  You can't send students back two full years of learning if thats what these tests are supposed to evaluate?  I just don't understand.  Plus, with education constantly changing along with society, so will the Common Core whether the program makes some changes, or the program is replaced by something more efficient.