I read this chapter of Ditch That Textbook last Wednesday and attended a PD session on Saturday. When I saw someone else post their notes from the day I figured I would join the club... Last weekend I had the chance to make a 45 minute drive up the coast to attend Edcamp Ventura. Edcamps model the words in my booksnap: YOU decide what you want to talk about. If you are in a session that isn't lighting any sparks, go join another one. This was my second official Edcamp and I was able to join in some discussions about things that I have been working on. In the first session we talked about coding, and I learned about Bootstrap , which incorporates Algebra with Computer Science. Something to check out when I get a little free time. Here are the notes from our session if you are looking for ideas. You can also check out my blog post about the Week of Code for some quick things you can try out. In the second session we began talking about Jo Boaler's Mathematical Mindsets. My department read several chapters from the book and we had three meetings about them last year. I used some of the activities from the Week of Inspirational Math in my class last month to begin the new semester. After talking about the book and the course, I asked whether anyone was using Number Talks in their classes. I have seen some blogs about Number Talks here and there but haven't tried them in my class. This launched us into a whole different discussion about Counting Circles. Here is a few websites where you can read about them. The teacher leading the discussion said that it definitely helped his RTI students and he uses them on a regular basis. It is definitely something I want to start using in my classes, but I'm not sure about my 37 desks forming two circles... I was a little lost for the third session. There wasn't anything that super interested me. I started in a tech discussion, which led into Green Screening, which led to using Apple products. I have looked into doing green screen prior to this and the other teacher was also using DoInk, which is not available for Android. So... I voted with my feet and walked over to a discussion on PBL. Again, nothing lighting fires for me, but it is good to hear about cross curricular projects where students are making their own creations. The other cool thing about EdCamps is that they get lots of cool sponsors, which leads to excellent lunches and cool prizes/freebies. I ended up winning a set of 20 headphones that I can use in my class! So keep an eye out for any upcoming EdCamps in your area. They are a great chance to find out about things that you are interested in, and and an excellent opportunity to expand your PLN and meet people from your PLN in real life!
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AuthorA father to 2 little girls. Archives
January 2018
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