The Constant Gardener

Gardening in February?

Last night I found myself excitedly checking all kinds of different sites - the McGoldblog, then the voicethread, then the discussion post, then explorelearning to see the assessment results. I felt like I do during gardening season, when I check to see what's blooming, what new weeds are sprouting, or what's just plain pretty to look at.  It certainly is a lot of fun to see what the kids have said, and they are making me laugh outloud sometimes. As usual though, not everyone is participating, which is discouraging. It seems like I am still only reaching those kids that I know are always with me anyway, and don't get me wrong, it's great to be connecting with them in new ways, but I was hoping to see the invisible ones emerging from the shadows. Only the first day of the classblog, so I guess it's a bit early to get discouraged!

Class procedure day after first post:
Yesterday I began my class by looking at Kristopher's post, thanking him for it, giving positive feedback on the length and amount of detail, and asking if anyone had anything to add or share about it. Then I told them there was one tiny mistake in it, and gave them a minute to try to find it. All it was was that sohcahtoa was spelled sohcahtao. Normally, I wouldn't make a big deal about spelling, but this one could lead to some pretty nasty math mistakes. No one found it, and I was wondering if perhaps no one wanted to, because they might feel it was not their place to correct a peer? Just a thought...

Post #2
Yesternight's blogger was Catherine. Her post was not quite as detailed as Kristopher's was, but I have a feeling that the lesson was a bit short on content anyway. I got hung up on showing them something that I hadn't planned to show them - where the exact values for sin, cos, and tan of 45, 30, and 60 degrees came from. I had a feeling that it would affect the posting. Maybe it was boring, too! This is kind of like getting instant feedback from the kids on the lesson. Scary.

What's next?

I'd like to be able to embed my powerpoints here so I'm trying that out with scribd. Wonder if I'm donig too much at one time? Am I the flower or the weed?