Enough Said.

I went ahead and made a podcast for my class using the site blabberize.  The best part about it, besides it being hilarious, I was able to do it all from the cell phone.  A lot of great ideas will be spawned from this.  Can't wait to see what the kids can do with it.

Busy, busy, busy.

This week was so much fun, but so much to handle.   We (my students and I) didn't stop getting used to the new technologies that we are going to use in class.   The soccer teams that I am coaching now had a game under their belt and we as coaches had a bit more direction to educating them.   My master's classes are now in full swing and the work, so far, is manageable.   My wife is in full support of all that I am doing and giving me great ideas on how to stay energized.   For example, this week we had Parent-Teacher night on top of all of the "BUSY", and she suggested I stay down in the local area at my parents, since we live about an hour away.  Great suggestion and I even had some of the kids ask me how I had so much energy.  I think I was running on fumes, but I'll never know.  I was pretty happy how I managed the week and hopefully can continue to reproduce this over and over again.
In class we were working with collecting and analyzing data.   This is the greatest approach to the subject that I have taken since I started teaching it.  The only problem is that it takes so long to work with the data, but I felt that the students were way more engaged in their projects.  I'm hoping we can continue to use chunks of data to recreate ways to analyze it.  I'm at a place where I feel that I want the students to understand mathematics and the beauty of it rather than understand the little processes of each integral part of a particular area of the subject.  The way I look at it is like a look at life, if we want an easier way to do something, we will either create it or ask if there is an easier way to get the job done.  This is a reason we create internally so we will tend not to forget the easier ways out of a sort of survival skill.   I'm hoping by providing the students with some authentic problems during the quarter, they are going to ask these questions. In turn, they have become lifelong learners of the subject, rather than students who regurgitate?? information.  We'll leave the internet for that.
This week we worked on Bell Curves and Box and Whiskers Plots. My goal was for the students to compare and contrast the same set of data through two lenses.  Although most understood the 'how to' of the process, many didn't understand how to view which one means more to that set of data.  Because this line of thought is open to interpretation and opinion, I think they were in shock that math could allow so much deep thinking.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun this week.  We created a reflection blog in class using this site, a Glog in Glogster, we organized posts and information in Edmodo & the students were able to start to understand that my expectations are going to be a lot different than any other math teacher they've ever had.  I hope they like it and stay engaged.