Woo hoo! Geogebra!

Thanks to Kate Nowak, and also to Guillermo Bautista, I was finally able to embed this geogebra worksheet! All the instructions for how to do this can be found at both their sites, which are both BRILLIANT!

I know I can probably get it to be a lot prettier, but for now here it is, and here's how you work it:

All you have to do is drag the point B around the circumference of the circle, and you will see something cool emerge, then drag the point D around, and another cool thing will emerge. You can also clean up between draggings with the reset button.

Enjoy!


Sorry, the GeoGebra Applet could not be started. Please make sure that Java 1.4.2 (or later) is installed and active in your browser (Click here to install Java now)

An Airbus-sized ego?

On Good Friday, my husband and I noticed a large crowd gathered at the corner of our street, all eyes focussed on the sky. By the way, we live across from a runway. We ventured into the crowd, and as it turned out, a ginormous airplane was about to land at Pierre Elliot Trudeau Airport. We got front-row seats of the landing! Here is one of the photos my quick-thinking husband took of the behemoth (the plane, not my hair):


Me and the Airbus!

As we were waiting for it to arrive, we met a nice couple, and as usually happens during the course of introductions, we all ended up saying what we do for a living. When I tell people that I teach online, there are two types of reactions: smile-and-nod, or wow.

Usually it's the first type of reaction, that says please don't say anymore, I really regret asking you what you do, I don't get it and it sounds way over my head so I'll just slowly back up. This comes from people who are, I think, intimidated by technology, or perhaps just plain bored by it and everyone who loves it. I don't expect everyone to be fascinated by me or what I do, I get it, not everyone gets how fabulous I am, or how awesome my job is. Cue Audrey, change the subject. Gee, maybe my ego is oversized, kind of like that airbus.

Fortunately, that didn't happen while we were waiting for the airbus to land. I got the wow one this time. These people actually wanted to know how it worked, who I taught, etc etc. Talk about Good Friday!
What happens when you tell someone you blog?

It's the same when I tell people that I blog. Does anyone else get this, or is it just me?

There's a congealed smile, and a look that says "Oh you're THAT type." It comes from the belief that people who blog are somehow self-centered and egotistical. I know that's what they are thinking, because that's how I used to feel. It probably came from the typical way bloggers are portrayed in pop culture, as morons who assume the world is fascinated by every minute detail of their lives, including when they go to the bathroom. People who tweet are portrayed the same way. The movie "Julie and Julia" went a long way to turn that around, but not everyone saw the movie, unfortunately.

I think bloggers blog because:

• We have found something about which we are passionate. Hopefully, it is also something we are good at, as Sir Ken Robinson talks about here:
Ken Robinson on Passion from The School of Life on Vimeo.
• We are compelled to express ourselves. I started blogging because it felt like my head was about to burst. I needed a place to put all these thoughts, questions, ideas, feelings that kept swirling around in my head. It felt like there were themes to it all, connections that I could make if I could only organize it somehow. And putting all of it down somewhere that only I had access to just didn't seem good enough, because then it would end there.
• We love to write. And to read! And the two things go together just like teaching and learning - sometimes it's hard to distinguish one from the other. Reading inspires me to write, writing helps me figure out what I think, thinking points me toward what I want to learn next, then I'm back to reading.
• We like being published. It's way easier to be published now than about 10 years ago. It definitely gives one a sense of empowerment, that with one click I can make myself known to people all over the world!
• It is exciting to find out that someone in India, or Australia, or South Africa has read your post!
• We need to connect with other people. Comments are the lifeblood of blogging, because that's how we connect. I think that's the part that those people simply won't get until they have experienced it.

Sometimes it feels like the posts write themselves. Like the ideas and turns-of-phrase are sort of floating around waiting for someone to pluck them down and give them substance.

Anyway, the airbus is supposed to land here every Friday afternoon now, so I and my ego and my hair will be there again. All else aside, it is just unbelievable how such huge things can fly!

Techno-alphabet

Photo taken by my friend Lisa Woo, who teaches phys ed in Thailand. She was at a conference in Hyderabad last weekend and snapped this:

I would change a few:

B: blog
H: hyperlink
F: flipped class
O: online
V: vimeo, or voki
W: wimba

But this poster works too!

The Flipped Class Webinar

After attending this great webinar yesterday, which was hosted by Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams, I sat down and tried to organize my thoughts. First, some snippets of what I heard, to the best of my memory:

• Jonathan, about the flipped model: "This is the magic bullet for differentiation."
• Aaron said that in their first year, they had everyone more or less doing the same thing at the same time, then it evolved over the years into what it is today, mastery, self-paced, active
• On a weekly basis, this is what happens: Monday the teacher gives the class the current week's benchmarks, then every Friday gives marks based on how much of the assigned tasks each student has satisfactorily completed. 
• During the week, the teacher roams around the room and talks with each kid, informally, to assess their progress
• How to monitor progress without collecting every single thing the students do: the teacher can tell during the daily walk-arounds who is copying, who is working, who is struggling, and can then redirect kids who need it when they need it, by saying ok by now you should be here so today you are doing this
• Students take tests using Moodle, and if they get 75% or better, thay can move on to another unit
• Noise can be an issue for kids taking tests - well it won't be in the virtual class!
• Students can do an alternate assessment if they can't get 75% on test
• moodle can generate a different test for each kid, even though it covers the same topics, which helps guard against cheating
• Aaron said that there is some debate about whether or not each teacher should make their own videos, or use some kind of a "master" video
• Katie (Jonathan's daughter and student) said that copying (cheating) still happens, like in any class, but she still thinks this is a better way to learn
• Anyone who goes to this June's conference gets a free copy of Camtasia!
• Jonathan said that he could never go back to lecturing.

What occurs to me about my own experience so far: 

• re: my discomfort with the quiet, not being sure what they're doing: the walk-around that Jon & Aaron can do in the brick and mortar class takes care of this, so instead of me waiting around for my students to come to me with questions, I will go to them one at a time and ask what they're doing, get informal assessments each day - if they won't initiate the conversation, then I will. Kind of my job.
• I need to get me some moodle
• I need to make my voicethreads shorter
• ....or my camtasia podcasts, if I can get my hands on that software
• Looking at what Jon and Aaron have put together over the years, as a team, for each unit...stunning and scary too...it's going to take me years to build the kind of system these pioneers have. I need banks of activities, all my lessons taped one way or another, a system for checking off who's done what and when, a marking system, everything packaged, a new website to house all this....a fantastic challenge but very exciting!
• I'm so glad I tried this now instead of at the beginning of the school year, when there is just too much going on. Next year, I'll be able to start off doing this and improve even more as the year goes on. It would have been too overwhelming in September.
• In fact, this is the time of year when I am typically running out of steam, and instead, I am energized and excited about the possibilities that are out there! Today I spent time trying to embed a geogebra dynamic worksheet in my blog, and even though I haven't gotten it to work yet, it's another thing to look forward to. Unheard of in April!
• I still want to continue the classblog, but one thing at a time. I had initially thought that it would be harder to have a scribe type blog with flipping, because everyone's doing something different, but it seems that overall the kids are at the same place more or less, so it should still be doable. In fact, it might help keep up the pace for everyone.
• I've had to do a few lectures since starting this, due to this and that, like one day only 1 kid had watched the voicethread in Tech Sci Math. And boy was I bored giving that lecture. Which has to mean my kids were, too. This is not how I want to teach anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time.

I don't think there's any going back for me either.

Try this! I dare you!

This is what I did instead of corrections. Hey, you gotta live, you know?



And now it occurs to me that this is a good way to illustrate the concept of a locus...after all, this is the locus of my finger!

Anyone can try to draw the locus too. Just do this:

• click "comment" (you may be asked to join voicethread - all they want is an email and username so they can assign you an avatar)
• click "record"
• click one of the pretty palette colours
• click the play button (lower left hand corner of video window - only appears when you move your mouse there)
• try to follow my finger with your mouse!
• click "save" if you're happy with it, or "cancel" if you're not

Fun Audrey shall now get back to her corrections.

Flipping with Fun Audrey

Amazing and weird things are happening!

There are two of me now. One of me does all the work, and the other one has all the fun. The workhorse me does the delivery of the content, and then fun me gets to do the fun stuff with my kids. The workhorse is voicethread Audrey, and then in class I am Fun Audrey. I like being Fun Audrey.

For example, voicethread Audrey shows them that the equations of the asymptotes of the hyperbola are:

....but Fun Audrey gives them three different hyperbolas:

....asks them to find their asymptotes' equations, and surprise, surprise, they all have the same asymptotes!...It's the ratio of b:a that influences the slope...and now that they know the same asymptotes can belong to many different hyperbolas, I can give them this:

...and feign astonishment when I say".... "What? Which hyperbola, you say? Well, what else do I need to tell you so that you'll know which one I mean..." Now they know something about the hyperbola that voicethread Audrey would have taken 10 times as long to show, and that only one tenth of them would have gotten anyway.

Oh yes....Fun Audrey is having fun!

More thoughts:

• I don't think I am covering the content faster, but it sure seems like I am covering it better. I have more class time, for sure.
• But someone is paying for this extra time by getting less time to do something else. Who is paying and how much is it costing? Are they doing less written work than pre-flip? Are there some who are doing more work than they've done all year?
• My two J's continue to REALLY astonish me, no feigning here. There is no denying that they are learning more, working more, and participating more since I started this. Can't wait to see what their next tests are like.
• As I mentioned, I am having fun. Hopefully, I am not the only one. Soon time to poll. Or blog.
• At the very least, they are now getting two chances to get the content. I used to tell them over and over that most people need to listen to a lesson twice before they really get it. And I always made the recorded lesson available to them right after class, but very few actually listened to it a second time, even if they didn't understand. Now, by the time we're in class, anything I say in relation to the content is already the second pass. Theoretically.
• If I were a first-year teacher, there would be no Fun Audrey, maybe not even a voicethread Audrey. Because first-years don't already have a huge bank of powerpoints that they can just polish up and upload to voicethread. I do. Because I am also.....Powerpoint Audrey!

Looking forward to the flipped class webinar Monday! Fun Audrey will be there!

Keeping track of student progress in the flipped class

Sci math:

Today I decided to give as much class time as possible to letting them get through their work. SO first I spent a few minutes going over questions on yesterday's voicethread, and pointed out a mistake in one of the slides - which was discovered by Juan, and which he commented on right in the voicethread. Virtual nods all around..."oh yeah I thought so too but I wasn't sure". Fabulous. Maybe next time I should plant a mistake or two and tell them to find it. Hmmmmmm......interesting.

Anyway, after that, it was Hammer time. Here's the work you have to get done, kids, have at it!

Then.........chirp...chirp....aaaaaaannnnnnd it's too quiet for me I'm going out of my mind.

Adapting flipping to the online class:

I'm feeling a bit insecure about who's getting what done during our class time, because, as I've mentioned, I can't actually see my students. I have tried a few things to track them:

•  getting them to private message me twice about where they are - at the beginning and the end of our work time. What's making me insecure is that in between those two times, I get a few questions, from the kids I usually get questions from, which is great, but most of them I don't hear anything from. Worries me. Are they doing nothing? Or worse, are they doing something, getting stuck, moving on, and forgetting about it? And not asking me for help? Not a problem in my keener beaner class though, they are math terminators!
• I posted at the classblog "What did you do today?" a couple of times, and asked them to reply by telling me everything they've done. Not all did, so that's one more thing I would have to do a checklist of, not only the work, but the post about the work. Don't like that idea.
• I know I could just get them to hand in EVERYTHING, but, well, geez. I'm just one woman.

Which leads me to this deep thought:

What occurs to me as I ponder this is that making them report on themselves, however I do it, might be something big. It makes me think of the principle that measuring something usually changes how much of that something there is.

For example, in order to watch my fat and salt intake, I keep a log of what I eat, along with the fat and salt totals for the day. I have found over the years that the act of writing down what I eat not only keeps track of what I eat, but it influences what I eat. It makes me behave better, because as much as I love to eat a Big Mac and fries, I hate to write down the horrible numbers that go with them. So I might still eat food that's bad for me, but way less often than I would without the log.

Maybe something like that could happen if they had to write down what they've completed. Because they will not want to have nothing to write. And not just because they know that I will be looking at the log, but also because they know that it will be there tomorrow and the next day for THEM to look at. They could potentially become more motivated to work, to get organized, to take responsibility for their own learning.

And if I can come up with an easy way for them to do this...maybe a googledocs checklist type of thing? I'll have to check that out. I know how to do the online quiz with googledocs, which generated an excel file that showed me, and only me, who answered what for each question. Seems like there must be a way to tweak that into an online checklist.

And hey, that would be useful for anyone, online teacher or not, no?