Upcoming PD to register for – TTA, Mathcon, and 6 conferences (In Australia and overseas)!

Professional Development

Conferences:

QAMT	Queensland Annual Conference	23/06/2011 – 26/06/2011
UOW	University of Wollongong – Mathematics Teachers' Day 2011	28/06/2011
AAMT	AAMT-MERGA Conference 2011	3/7/2011 – 7/07/2011
	Psychology of Maths Education Conference, Turkey	10/7/2011 – 16/7/2011
	Teaching of Mathematical Modelling Conference, Melbourne	14/7/2011 – 20/7/2011
NZAMT	NZ Maths Association Annual Conference: Mathematical Journeys 2011	19/7/2011 – 23/7/2011

 

Upcoming PD up that you may need to register for within the next month…

Provider	Course Name	Course Date
TTA	Preparing to Teach Extension 2 Mathematics	10/06/2011
TTA	Preparing to Teach Unit 2 Mathematics Preliminary Course	14/06/2011
TTA	Preparing to teach 2 Unit Mathematics	15/06/2011
TTA	Supporting Struggling Students in Yr 7-8 Mathematics	16/06/2011
TTA	Preparing to teach Extension 1 Mathematics	16/06/2011
TTA	Laptops in the Maths Classroom	16/06/2011
TTA	Getting the best 2 Unit Mathematics HSC results	22/06/2011
TTA	Getting the best Extension 1 Mathematics HSC results	23/06/2011
TTA	Getting the best Extension 2 Mathematics HSC results	24/06/2011
TTA	Dynamic Maths Lessons Using Smart Board	25/06/2011
Mathcon	Numerical Literacy and Problem Solving	11/7/2011
Mathcon	Introduction and Applications of the Calculus	11/7/2011
Mathcon	Introducing Statistics and Probability	12/7/2011
Mathcon	Binomial Expansions and Parametric Equations	12/7/2011
Mathcon	Fractions and Decimals	13/7/2011
Mathcon	Alternate Assessment Techniques	14/7/2011
Mathcon	Algebra	14/7/2011
Mathcon	Understanding, Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning in Mathematics	15/7/2011

 

University of Wollongong Mathematics Teachers' Day 28 June 2011

 

After attending in the past, I can highly recommend this free professional development day. Details can be found here. If you want to be added to the mailing list to be reminded of the upcoming events, you can email Lisa Pyle at lpyle@uow.edu.au.

Khan Academy and Inverting the Classroom

After finding out about Khan Academy and reading a recent post by Mathematics and Multimedia which highlighted the presentation below, I have decided to give it a go!

Why do we spend so much time on instruction in the classroom that students are likely to understand themselves. Why do we give them the majority of work to do at home, when they cannot get help? Inverting the classroom is about swapping these two activities around.

The biggest challenge is to hand ownership of learning over to students and for them to recognise the importance of completing their part of the work at home, when it may not be checked. One solution (which is mentioned in the slideshare presentation) is to use quizzes to assess the nights understanding. I will note that khanacademy does allow teachers to follow students progress and see how many videos they have watched.

All students except one had either a facebook or google account

Lets see how it goes!

[slideshare id=7467479&doc=iupuiseminartalk-110331131627-phpapp02]

Chromebook: We’re not ready yet

Image from Engadget

It is surprising how many times I go to quickly grab something on the internet, retrieve or send an email and the internet at either work or home decides that it has other ideas.

The Chromebook is basically the Google Chrome browser and nothing else – everything has to run in the browser! This is great for google docs (or Microsoft Office Live), but I don't think that the internet is reliable or fast enough yet. Without an internet connection – you can do NOTHING. Maybe this will change with the NBN. (Even though I don't think the government should be building a wired NBN – wireless / satellite would be much better, and should be provided by private enterprise).

The pricing system of $25 per month for rental (no purchase price), I think is fair and reasonable (if it includes 3G internet reception with it).

There are so many applications that we would want to run that simply do not run in a browser – including many for Maths Teachers. I also dislike writing equations in Google Docs – MathType or the Microsoft Word Equation Editor do a much better job.

So far (Flash aside) I would prefer an iPad or a full-fledged laptop – not a half-and-half! The typical netbook would also be a preferred option, given that there is offline storage.

Using twitter with my students and their parents

Twitter is a very easy to use site for communicating with parents and students. I have decided to trial using twitter for this purpose – if you would like to see what I'm doing, you can follow @MrHarnwell. I decided that it would be best to create a new separate account (to the one I already use - @jharnwell), so that parents and students aren't bombarded by things that they are not interested in.

So, letting parents know when the next assessment task will be, what the days homework was, or what we did in class will be as simple as entering a 140 character tweet. But, having to load up http://www.twitter.com/ or tweetdeck could get annoying. Thankfully Tech hit have created an outlook plugin: http://www.techhit.com/TwInbox/twitter_plugin_outlook.html. Now, I can tweet straight from outlook. It also allows me to see tweets from within outlook.

The best thing is that parents do not need a twitter account, nor do they need to log in to a particular website - and it is very easy to update!

The other main advantage of this, is that it provides another avenue for parents to request information about curriculum and have input into the teaching and learning process.

Australia: National Maths day – 20 May 2011

AAMT and Questacon have put together some activities for National Maths Day: http://nlnw.aamt.edu.au/Activities-and-projects/National-Maths-Day

Some other ideas you may like to consider include:

• Have a Sudoku challenge at lunchtime
  
• Invite a guest speaker – try to contact ex-students who are now working in a mathematics related field
  
• Have a Mathletics online challenge
  
• Investigate how calculations may be done without a calculator (e.g. log tables)
  
• Use some problems from http://www.twitter.com/nctm
  

If you have any more ideas, please share them in the comments section below, or via twitter @jharnwell.

Google Cloud Connect

Google Cloud Connect is a plugin for Microsoft Office that will automatically upload, backup and sync your documents to your google account. Of course, you will probably need to purchase some additional storage – but for that peace of mind that everything is backed up as soon as you create it – priceless! Download here.

Terminology in Maths Exams

In the process of writing a recent Mathematics Examination, I realised that I had misused a term and quickly changed it. This reminded me that many of my students may not know what these words mean.

I have pulled together the most common terms that students should be familiar with:

Solve 3x + 2 = 5	Find the value of x.
Simplify	3x + 2x    Write in a simpler form (5x)
Evaluate	Find the value of
Equation	3x + 2 = 5
Expression	3x + 2
Find	Find, showing working (don't just state)
Prove	The answer is given, but act as if it is not given
Hence	Using what you have already done
Otherwise	or do it another way
State / Name	one line/word answer
Explain	Use numbers and/or words
Sketch	Draw neatly using a ruler, but does not have to be to scale