Thank you, Quebec Ministry of Education, for Beaucoup de cool student projects!

In Quebec, up until 2 years ago, all grade 11 students were required to produce, by the end of the year, a math project, called the Independent Assignment. It was to be based on their own interest, of course related to math somehow, and it was to be done mostly during class time, in 10 sessions, with guidance from the teacher. This was so that it would be good training on how to do a research project as well. (We were given some excellent scaffolding for implementing this.)

I griped and panicked about how I would fit these project sessions into my classes AND still cover everything on time, for this was pre-flip, when classes were all me, me, and more me yammering away. But I dutifully had my students do the project anyway for the first time in the school year 2009-2010. They pretty much all made powerpoints, which was fine. The projects were great, and even though they had taken up a lot of class time and energy, I found it was worthwhile having my students do something that interested or inspired them mathematically.

Then I went to ISTE in Denver, and I heard about all the bazillion other tools there are out there. And I heard a casual reference to something called "flipping the class" during a session about something called "Twitter." Hmmmm", I thought, "interesting," blissfully unaware that, in that moment, my entire world had just been rocked to the core.

Well, back to reality, the next year, Quebec dropped the project as a requirement, but I decided to keep doing it, partly because, I really wanted to have some PBL in my course, but also because I really wanted to try out some of the tools I had heard about. That year's projects were a tiny bit more varied, I think I had one or two videos and the rest powerpoints. It had still been a challenge to fit in the sessions. Plus I started flipping late in the year, when many of the projects were already well under way.

This past year was my first full year flipping. And just like that, there was zero issue about fitting in the sessions. Class time was all about what THEY were doing, not what I was saying! I could discuss with them about their topic, they could discuss with each other, show what they'd found, experiment....I even had a period at the beginning of the year that was all about investigating the various tools, which was inspired by Terie Engelbrect's brilliant blog, which I had found on Twitter. Yup. Rocked to the core.

Well, it's two years after the government started it all, and here is the latest batch of projects, just handed in after a year of working on them in and out of class. The variety alone is blowing me away - voicethreads, videos, glogs, googledocs, prezis, AND powerpoints! If, two years ago, in Denver, you had told me that my students would soon be producing these kinds of projects, uploading them to their blogs, and never mind the fact that I have a blog and I'm embedding the projects on it....I would have looked around and said "Me? You mean me?"

Most of these are embedded, but some you have to click on the link to see the actual project. Enjoy! I know I did, in fact, I have this math rap song stuck in my head now:

Arnold's rap video:


Brett's intro video to his project:
:
....and the guitar math voicethread:

Emilie's googledocs presentation:


Kaily and the End of the World:

Kaitlyn's stepdancing voicethread:

Katerina's sizes of infinity video....definitely channeling Vihart here! ;)

Laura's mathitecture glog:

Madison's origami video:

Olivia's snowboarding prezi:

Patrick's fractals powerpoint:

Ricky's sizes of infinity slideshare:

Taylor's energy glog:

Melissa's hockey math:


Joey's drum math:


In my dreams

So now off they go to CEGEP, which is the Quebec equivalent to college. A small, selfish part of me hopes that at least one of these students will next year submit a project using one of these tools, or something equally cool, to an astonished professor, who will then ask:

"Who are you really, and what is this amazing thing you have done, and where on earth did you learn how to do this?"

And they will say, "Oh I had to pick a webtool from a googledocs list, and learn how to use it so I could embed it in my blog, for my math teacher, Mrs. McGoldrick."

The professor will eventually regain the ability to speak, then he/she will exclaim "BLOG? GOOGLEDOC? How have you come to know all these wondrous things?"

And then he/she will learn about all these wondrous things, from one of my students, who will get to be their professor's teacher, at least for a few minutes.

How cool would that be? Beaucoup de cool. Merci MELS!

Flipping, Voicethread, and Sakai

I jonied a ning that is for teachers who are flipping their classes - "The Flipped Class Network" - a great place to get advice and ideas! I feel like a bit of an imposter, though, because so far I haven't done the true, full flipping of the class. Last week, I had taught a lesson on degrees vs radians, and didn't quite finish all the slides. The leftover slides were all they had to look at on their own. But those leftover slides were just worked out examples. Not really the meat of the lesson, and there was no teacher voice to guide them.

Now to try the true, full flip. To record a lesson, have them listen to it on their own for homework, then spend class time the next day doing assignments/activities, going at their own pace, getting help as they require it from me or from a peer.

Step 1: Recording
To do the recording, many people seem to use Cantasia or some other type of software, but I think I will just use voicethread. I have everything I need right there to display the slides and record my voice, writing, etc, plus the kids all have their own voicethread accounts, so they don't have to upload anything, I can just give them the link like I usually do.  One advantage voicethread has over other recording software is that while they listen and watch the lesson, they will have the option of commenting with questions, or by answering someone else's already-recorded question. So by the time we get together the next day, I will potentially already know what their questions or issues were, and we can get to the doing part of the learning...

Step 2: Wiki-ing
From what I've read, the idea is to have them go to a wiki to find out what their assigned work is, get files they need, and upload their completed work. There are more things assigned than most can get done in a day, so their paths begin to diverge as the week goes on. Once they have completed a certain body of work, they listen to the next lesson and repeat the cycle. I don't yet have a wiki of my own, but we do have Sakai, which for the time being will perform the same function. It is what is called, I believe, a CMS - content management system - that is used by my organization.

Questions/issues I will be posting for the ning folks:

• I must have to set a time limit of some kind? Like they all have to be at a certain minimum place by a certain time?
• Are answers made available along with the assigned work, so that students can self-correct and then move on, or does the teacher correct?
• Can anyone really do this ALL the time? Brian Bennett said that his students felt they preferred to have a regular lecture once a week to feel secure.
• I need to find a way to be able to see what they're doing while they're doing it, since I don't have the luxury of face-to-face. I don't want to only see the finished product, which they could do at home and then spend class time doing zip. Possible ways to deal with that:
• design activities that can be done right on the eboard in a breakout room which means minimal handwriting needs to be involved, since most don't have a wacom pen.
• tell them to keep checking in with me about where they are in their work
• stop everyone every so often and have a discussion or a round of private message anwers to key questions, which is the strategy many of us online teachers use to see who's working. This assumes everyone is going at more or less the same pace, though...
• have them use their cellphones to take shots of work in progress
• I could make a Skype video call and have them show me their work. Probably not enough bandwidth for that though. Hmmmm....something for my class checklists - who has a cell with a camera, and who has skype with a webcam...
• Have them blog about what they're doing...assuming the flipped class is the same one that is blogging, which is the Gr 11 Science Math.

Like anything else, you just have to do it, jump in the pool, and see what happens!