The internet or lack there of.

I arrived at school this morning to find the internet was still down.  I was unable to prep by making QR codes for the warm-ups, I couldn't find the videos I normally use in class, couldn't print off anything or post anything to the web.  I didn't realize how much I use the internet to prep for class.  The only thing that I was able to use today was one of the games.  Due to a medical emergency, I had another class moved into my room and I let them play prime smash.  Several of the kids had so much fun with it.  Several others opened Garage Band and created music to enjoy while waiting for the medical emergency to end.  I heard some really awesome music being created with just a few instruments.  I am looking forward to having things back to normal. 
Tomorrow I am hoping to post the answers for the worksheet I gave the students today.  The answers had too many characters to post as a QR code.  Maybe I am going to have to post the sheet or post them to the classes in Schoology so the kids can check it on their own.

Thoughts on mastery

I just got some of the results back from the state on my students.  One or two of the ones who should have passed did not.  I realized today one reason they may have had difficulty is they want every single problem they do in class checked to make sure it is correct and they want me there guiding them on each problem.  I think they are afraid to make mistakes.  So I am going to implement a weekly mastery test on the computer so they can do 4 or 5 problems once a week and they will select the correct multiple choice answer.  I hope this will help them prepare for the State Tests better and will give me a better assessment tool to use. 
I struggle to get the students past the "I can't do it so why even try" attitude many of them have.  If I can help them succeed, their attitude changes and many go from disrupting the class to actually working. 
I am open to suggestions.

There is a push for my students to do more reading and writing so they do better on the standardized testing.  I've been thinking about how to include in my classrooms.
1.  Word problems - Use the KWC  after underlining the important sections.  Perhaps even have a short video or illustration included so my students can see what it is.  My students tend to be so remote that they have little or no prior knowledge of some of the situations.  For instance driving the car from Philly to NYC.  We don't have cars and they have no idea of the distance involved.  So I  end up rewriting the problems to use boats, snow machines or ATV's.  If I included a map, perphaps a google trip using google world so they could see the actual routing that might build some prior knowledge.  They could fill out a short pdf form for the KWC and then on the bottom write in an explanation for how they came up with their answer.  This would add reading and writing into my math class.
2.  NASA math problems.  I've tried these but the students do not do well with them.  Again, if we had a pdf form to help them organize information, pictures or videos on the topic so they can "see" what is being talked about and perhaps have them create a video to record how they came up with the answer, it might help them improve their mathematical vocabulary.
3.  Finding real life problems such as telling how long a body has been dead using logs and temps.  Include a web page with the information so students can find the equation used to determine the time since death.  Provide them with a scenario where they are the corenor and they have a body.  They discovered that the body temp is such and such and they make a report on how long the person is dead. 
These are just three ideas I came up with to incorporate more reading, writing, and technology into my lesson plans for next year.  I did not mention iPad apps because there are several that could be used.

Stats and sports

Today, I had a warm-up question where I asked the students to come up with three stats used in sports and how are they calculated.  The students promptly replied average, mode, and range.  It showed me that they were missing a basic concept in how they have a disconnect between the terms of mode, range, median, and mean.  Since we won't be doing much next week, I am going to find a website with either activities or with stats to have the students look up stats for either basketball, NYO (native youth olympics), volleyball or wrestling. These are the major sports played in our school.  If anyone has suggestions on websites for doing this I"d love to hear about it.
Maybe I can have them find certain stats, how the stats are calculated and have them write up a compare and contrast between at least two players so they can practice analyzing and writing.  My students are not good at synthesizing information and this could be turned into a good activity to help with that.

Prime numbers

I keep hearing that we need to relate math topics to real life so students can see where the concept is used.  I had my 9th grade algebra I students go to Safari and research the answer to this question.  "How is prime factorization used in real life.  they found these answers.
1. Cryptography - developing and breaking codes
2. Internet security
3. Credit cards
4. Random number generators
5. breaking thing into parts
6. Magicians use them
I have a small class. Two of the students gave up on looking and one always takes her time.
This exercise gave them an opportunity to do research on a topic and find out more about real life.  I think I am going to integrate more of this next year along with having them write more.  My students score low on the writing and need to see you use it in other subjects.
I am hoping to do a bit of mind mapping on prime numbers on Monday.  It will help them develop some thinking skills they are low on right now.

Correction, observation and announcment.

I've have been increasing the amount of time I have the students on the iPads this week.  After the warmup, I send the students to a website to do something such as read or do practice problems.  They are much quieter than when I try to officially teach a lesson and they are more focused.  I feel they get even more work done.  I also show a video or two during the week instead of lecturing and they seem to pay more attention to the video than a lecture.  I still assign the study notes worksheet so they read the section but I first assign four reading for meaning statements so they preread the section.  I do not actually assign the study notes until mid week when they have had a chance to build a foundation.
The correction is that at cool math, not all lessons show up on the iPad, only some of them. It turns out the lesson on the sieve of Eratosthenes works on coolmath.com but the one on algebraic fractions does not.  So I need to check ahead of time.
The announcement is I published a short e-book on Amazon titled "Teaching math using the iPad".  It has general suggestions or types of programs, specific recommendations for how to use those apps and recommendations or suggestions for apps themselves. I give reasons for many of the recommendations.
 I will be choosing one day to offer it for free in the very near future.  I will post the date here so you all may take advantage of it being free as a thank you for reading my blog.

website and communicating.

One last website I like is www.coolmath.com.  It works for the most part on an iPad but the games do not work because they require flash.  Otherwise, the cruncher or practice problems work pretty well.  This site has some good material in it.  Tomorrow I am going to send my 9th graders to read up on prime numbers and prime factorization.  The prime numbers section has the Sieve of Eratosthenes in the definition.  I think I will provide an unmarked one for them to do along with the explanation.
Over the summer I am going to try to put a syllabus, homework and class info on the school wiki so come fall, I can just send students there to download information and check on assignments etc.  I just found out one of the teachers who runs an afterschool activity, uses Edmodo to communicate information, dates, etc to her students.  I need to further explore this option further. 
One thing I need to consider as I do more things on the iPad has to do with keeping student work safe.  I have one set of iPads which are shared among all my classes.  I have to research how email works on the iPad to see if my students can keep their privacy.  I have an idea but I need to pursue the idea further.

logs and volume and surface area.

The project started off well.  One young lady discovered that they use logs in regard to determining pregnancy while the other discovered it is used for carbon dating of artifacts.  So they both had a great start.  I am going to do some research to see if I can find a website to help the geometry class work more on calculating surface area vs calculating volume.  Due to having to take time off, I did not use my usual introductory lesson on 3 dimensional shapes where I have them build actual models out of construction paper, and tape.  I need to find a program that will allow students to put pieces together to create 3D shapes on the iPad.  For instance,  a cylinder is made from two circles and a rectangle.  I use this lesson to help my hands on  and visual learners to see how the formulas for SA and Volume relate to the object.

I found a website  http://www.mathguide.com/lessons/SurfaceArea.html  which shows in wonderful detail how to find the surface area on various 3 dimensional shapes with a quiz to take afterwards for each shape.  This works on the iPad so I'm going to have my students try it tomorrow to see if it helps them increase their understanding for finding surface area.

Logs and Lns and reading the textbook.

We have a short teaching week so I am going to have my college prep class do some research.  They will find out how logs and lns are used in real life, prepare a report on it using any app on the iPads. They have to find one for logs and one for natural logs, include the specific situation, a graph and write an explanation of who is using the function and why.  This may help them make the real world connection they miss in the book.
 The textbook we use has real world examples but the students try hard to avoid reading the textbook.  I've started using a reading for meaning exercise where I make a table with three columns and four rows.  In the center column, I write four things out of the chapter.  The left column is for agree and the right most column is for disagree.  The student reads the chapter and decides if the statement is true or false and writes the sentence out of the book that proves the statement is true or false.  They have to include the page number with the information. 
I find students read much more carefully, especially if I tell them that I will  not help them.  The may help each other.  The next time I do this exercise which will be next Monday, I am going to try it using the iPad.  I just have to decide what will be the best app to use to share the form.
I do this type of exercise because most of my students are classified ELL (English Language Learners) and they hate to read.  So this helps them read the material and get a chance to understand it.  They help each other.

Idea for the last week of school and today's exploration.

I am about 4 to 5 weeks out from the end of school where I am.  The last week of school, we don't do much so I am thinking of running a project that will be cross curricular and should be fun. I was reading the back of a VHS tape and there was a project listed called The Math Trail. The students are to use concepts from the math curriculum and create books of problems based on objects and events in their community.  For instance, students might create problems concerning how much heating oil is held in their tank and then write a problem on how much it would cost to fill.  Students would be using math and either ibooks author or some other book making publication. They could take pictures of the items, add arrows, etc. They possibly could add a voice over.  I am going to spend the next few days working up the parameters on it.
Today I had my 9th graders use their iPads to research how scientific notation is used in real life. They found two real life examples and posted them on the board (smart board).  They came up with some really good examples.  Some were the speed of light, government debt, size of a virus, size of the space inside a computer chip, a mole etc.  The kids needed experience searching for information and they also needed to discover how scientific notation is used in real life.

State mandated testing

Since these tests seem to. Take over the curriculum, I am thinking of beginning the first day of classes by setting up an online test with practice questions.  I figure that I can use the data as a starting point for what I teach, the starting point, and where I start.  Since the push is for data driven teaching, using testmoz.com or other site, I can have ongoing data to refer to.  This opens up lots of good possibilities.

Too much to do and not enough time

With high stakes testing coming up, I've been focusing more on the mathematics they need to pass the tests.  Unfortunately, I know I should be incorporating my technology into this more but due to pressure I end up resorting to standard teaching methods.  I was realizing today, that I could have taken the practice tests in PDF form, sent them to my students one page at a time, had to work on the problems, create explanations and mark up the forms with the information.  They could have sent the forms back so I could look at the responses to monitor their knowledge and understanding. 
I stumbled across a website today where the author of the article discussed having students create the questions for use with the clickers.  It was noted that many of the students created low level questions.  When I say low level, I am referring to Blooms Taxonomy.   Anyway,  this person gave up but I'm wondering if this could be done with my students.  I am wondering if I can have them create the answers and questions for a Jeopardy game using my SmartBoard. 
I have a few other outlets such as Quizlet and Survey Monkey to check out to create quick quizzes my students could take on-line.  I've read of one technique where you set up three or four quizzes for the week.  If the student passes the first time, they are done, if not they can try it a second time to see if they pass.  Its a mastery learning technique.  I know it uses a lot of paper and the kids like to "loose" it so I don't get them back. This might work better.  I plan to try it in two weeks due to testing happening next week.

Bandwidth and videos

Due to the cost of internet in some places and the shrinking educational budgets, some school districts are electing to go with minimal bandwidth.  This means that the distance classes using face to face technology may get priority and the rest of the school has to be careful of how much is used.  For myself, I tend to make the video a part of my lesson and show it over my smartboard.  This eliminates the need for earphone for each student, requires less bandwidth and I can stop the video to ask questions on the topic.
I realize there is a move to flip the classroom and have students watch a video, podcast, do an interactive activity or such as homework so they are better prepared for the next day's lesson.  This works well if you are in an area where your students have good internet access.  Not all my students have internet access.  So I've been contemplating having things ready to go in my classroom, after school, so students can come in and do the work.  This way the demand on bandwidth is less, the students get the opportunity to do the preview and if needed I can have a cart of computers in my classroom.  Otherwise, if the assignment is one I can use on iPads, I just have them do it on iPads.
With the high stakes testing, teachers have to do a bit more than they used to.  I have to take into consideration, those students who do not have access to reliable internet at home.  This is one way we might be able to improve student performance.