EDU 255 Week 5 Photosharing

As I was browsing through the different photos available online, a few ideas came to mind about how to use photos in the classroom, both as a teacher and as a student.  The following are a topics and bulleted lists of some of the ideas I’ve had so far.

Teaching Geometry

·         Images of 2-D geometric figures in “real life” such as stop signs to find perimeter and area.

·         Images of 3-D geometric figures in “real life” to find volume and surface area – or just identifying the figures

·         Assigning a scavenger hunt to have student search for photos of figures

·         Using Escher art photos to discuss Tessellations

Connecting Math to Everyday Life

·         Math and Art – find photos of art and describe mathematical connections

·         Math and Sports – find photos of playing fields, equipment, statistics, etc.

·         Math and Architecture – find photos of bridges, buildings, etc.

·         Math and Music – find photos of musical scores, sine waves for notes

Showcasing or saving student work

·         Take photos of student projects such as poster projects or projects where students build items (we have build tetrahedral kites and flown them)

·         Have students create drawings or art or mathematics cartoons and take photos of their creative work

Have photos available for students to use when writing word problems – or provide several photos and have students write about the photo.

EDU 255 Week 4 Focus

Week 4 Assignment:  Steve Hargadon; Classroom 2.0

Focus in important to having a good conversation. An unfocused network doesn't offer a good reason to come back. Future of Education faces this as a very real challenge, and I'm hopeful that the interview series will provide some focus since the topic is so big. A network doesn't need to be 17,000 people. It can be a great place for 25 or 50 if there is a good conversation taking place.

I think that Steve Hargadon brought up many good points, but felt that focus was probably the most important aspect.  It seems that in these weeks of exploring new technology, there are many distractions and sometimes so much information that it distracts from the main idea.  It is easy to start “wandering” through and spending more time than is needed by being distracted from the original purpose.  Creating a place for students to learn involves focusing on a topic in particular and inviting many points of view on the same subject.  One of the concerns I have had while exploring is the distracting nature of this “connected” world where you are one click away from a new idea and yet another new idea without depth.

I think that one of the benefits of a classroom discussion is that many points of view are expressed or presented in a small time frame which gives members of the group a lot of information about one topic so they can function at a higher cognitive level – analyze, compare and contrast, synthesize.   Many of the articles we have read refer to the classroom as a lecture – which is really not the model in many instances – many discussions are taking place that provide an opportunity for students to focus on a concept in depth. 

The question is how to recreate that in a virtual environment.  Discussion boards, comments on blogs, shared creations on wikis all have a “time lag” for that conversation.  Any discussion board I have assigned and participated in requires an initial post and a response –but how many students really read the entire conversation?  How do we get that depth of analysis by reading other posts when it takes so much less time to have a conversation or discussion?  These are some of the items I struggle with in the online environment – how do we re-create that problem solving conversation when a group is working together on a challenging task – those AHA! Moments that happen when someone else is showing you or the AHA moment you have when you are trying to explain the concept to someone else.  In math – it is with words, symbols, and diagrams that we communicate.

EDU 255 Week 4 Facebook

I chose Facebook to explore:

The target audience for facebook was Harvard-only in 2004, expanded to other schools and required a university email address.  In 2005, high school students, professionals, and then everyone had access and the site is still in existence.  I think it is popular because you do have to give people permission to view your site, but you can also visit portions of other people’s pages but ask to “friend” them.  It must be popular since there are links to facebook pages, movies about the origin of Facebook, and references to it in numerous places.  There is such a potential for connectivity to many other people.

I joined facebook to get a better idea of how it worked – started by sending “friend requests” to a few people (mainly family and a few high school friends).  I checked email 24 hours later and WOW - what happened?  All of a sudden people I haven’t seen in decades are sending information – I see many family members are already on the site and it seems there was a great social gathering going on since 2005 that I was unaware of – it is easy to sit and get “lost” in catching up with friends, family, previous students, previous teachers for hours.  Will I get any work done?  

I still don’t understand what exactly can be done on the site – but it has been really interesting.  It is amazing how many people you meet – especially in 24 years of teaching – but most of the pages I visited were high school friends and family.