The one thing I learnt from using netbooks with Year 9 in 2009, is that their inclusion is best done as a whole lesson activity. An additional or alternative activity at the end of a lesson is not effective due to the time for login and dealing with technical issues.

However, the problem with consuming a whole lesson for a laptop activity is that it has to be worthwhile. I think this is where many teachers will struggle. If they have an effective lesson already, why change it? For me, my lessons may be effective, but how do I make them more so with the laptops? Does having a lesson using the laptop near the start of the unit establish a better foundation for the rest of the unit?

To start planning for the inclusion of netbooks, here’s a summary of what I’ll be covering in 2010. At the moment, some topics have nothing beside them – hopefully they will be filled in later. Feel free to share in the comments how you will be tackling these topics with the laptops.

Trigonometry

Over the summer holidays, I took an online course called GeoGebra: A Dynamic Approach to Yr 9-10 Trigonometry. Whilst a little pricey for an online course, I have attended the presenter’s (Richard Andrew) courses in the past and appreciated the practical nature of them.

Basically, this course suggests a number of ways of using GeoGebra in place of something you might already do in the classroom. For example, using GeoGebra to investigate the ratio of sides in a right-angled triangle and finding the relationship by recording the results in Excel.

Other ways the course suggested using GeoGebra was for demonstration purposes, but also getting the students to create their own files which demonstrate the solution to a problem. I see using the netbooks with my class to be a benefit for problem solving, an aspect of trigonometry which they would normally struggle with. GeoGebra will make it far more visual, and maybe a little bit fun.

Consumer Arithmetic

There’s the obvious spreadsheet work that can be included.
I might try to include a research activity, for example, looking at the Award for various occupations.

Ratios

Rates

I’ll definitely include the World’s Fastest Clapper

Scale

Similarity

Congruence

I’m going to re-read Kate’s post Triangle Congruence Theorems. This is what I like about teacher’s blogging, Kate plainly states “Triangle Congruence Theorems are so boring, and there is no nice way to teach them” and then throws around some ideas and seeks input.

Reasoning in Geometry (Angles)

Data Representation and Analysis

Probability

Graphing Linear Equations

This post will hopefully be updated as I go.

New Laptop wraps from the Centre for Learning Innovation (CLI) provide online and offline tasks to support student investigation, collaboration and creation of content.

Each Laptop Wrap gives a couple of ideas for using the netbooks and their suite of software in the classroom.

At the Staff Development Day (SDD) at the start of term, I encouraged my faculty to review some of these resources. Much like any resources I come across, the ones I looked at will require some modification to use in my classroom.

So, I put together a simple structure for us to use when reviewing these resources:

• Consider some of the ideas given in the Laptop Wraps.
• What activities (even if they require modification) in the wrap would you use?
• Select an activity(s) you’d like to do with your class.
• What modifications to the wrap are required?
• What do you need to learn about in order to use this wrap with your class? (The UCreate and Tools4U resources may be helpful)
• What resources do you need to create to use this wrap?

(I’ve supplied this in a printable form below)

I’m hoping this provides a simple way to encouraging the sharing of found resources and the creation of new resources in our faculty.

Here’s what my classroom currently looks like. Definitely needs a paint though…

Click through to Flickr to see a larger version, and annotations on the photo.

A couple of the activities shown:

• Personality Bar Graphs, from Dan Meyer
• Pie Charts – Movie Posters, also from Dan Meyer
• Brisbane Broncos Number Plane Design

You can read the article over there: Using the Web, but I made a diagram of how I use the web that I think is worth sharing here as well (click for a larger version).

Image caption: Using the Web by Simon Job, shared under a Creative Commons BY NC SA License

That’s how I use the web. How are you using these various tools? Do they have their own place like they do for me, or do you use them more in a mix? Have you done away with RSS or blog reading? Do you still not give a hoot about Twitter?

Ability to learn

I want to continue to better understand the style of learning that works for the kids at my school. Mathematics as a subject that is accessible, meaningful and useful.

I loved using Pie Charts – Movie Posters with my two Year 8 classes in 2009. The end results hang, laminated, on the back wall of my classroom to encourage me to be using rich, meaningful tasks that are accessible to my students (oh, and they look great).

Be Less Helpful

In March 2009, Dan Meyer posted A Fifth-Year Teacher’s Creed in which he said,

And so I tell myself:
Be less helpful.

This rattled around my head in 2009, and started to lock-in at the end of 2009. As it’s my fifth year of teaching this year, I hope it establishes itself as a part of my teaching.

Turn interesting into challenging

A must read for maths teachers: How Do You Turn Something Interesting Into Something Challenging?. I need to be finding, doing and sharing more stuff like: World’s Fastest Clapper.

Create

I want to continue to create some relevant and engaging activities, suitable for my students, and preferably making use of the DER machines.

Share

I want to continue to share resources on this blog. I want to continue to catalogue great online resources in the Maths Links section of this site and I want to make that experience even more useful that more teachers would use it and contribute to keeping the collecting.

I’ll start the year as the acting head teacher of my faculty, so I want to encourage the active sharing of ideas and resources within my faculty and make sharing something that my colleagues find natural, easy and worthwhile.

Problem Solving

The students at my school falter when a question involves more than one concept or skill, also their literacy levels are not great. It’s been easy to ignore ‘problem solving’ type questions because the kids won’t get it, but that is not good enough.

I went to a professional development course during the year on Newman’s Prompts, I probably should revisit that.

Network

Twitter is a great way to network, but I really enjoyed meeting with teacher’s of Year 6 from the local Primary Schools. It’s really helpful for us high school teachers to understand how the students we will see in the following year are learning, but it’s equally as helpful for the primary school teachers to understand where high school is expecting the level of mathematics of incoming students. There are lots of side benefits too: improving the reputation of our high school at the primary schools and encouraging generalist primary school teachers in their teaching of mathematics.

What’s next

Having worked in a 7-10 school for four years, and starting the year as the acting head teacher (and needing to consider whether to apply for the head teacher position when it is advertised), it’s time to consider what’s next. Where I work is a tough school, but the kids there as much or more than any others need good quality teaching.

Have you considered some aims, goals or general ideas for 2010?

Afterword This post started out as one where I considered the challenges that lie ahead in 2010, and quickly spiralled into a navel-gazing rant about the shortfalls of the system and the frustrations created by some people. But, that’s not really where I want to focus in 2010. The one thing that the Digital Education Revolution (DER) has done, at least in NSW DET schools, is to get us all talking about the system, it’s many shortfalls, strengths and weaknesses. For that discussion head to Stu Hasic’s post How many light bulbs does it take to change teaching?. My realm of influence, as a classroom teacher, extends to the students in my classes on a good day. On a bad day, that influence may only be some small percentages of those students. So, I re-wrote the post, and focused on what I can do.

I record, all test marks, report outcomes and comments in Excel, I have a single Excel file for each class. But, there’s still a need for a paper based method for easy recording in the classroom. Lugging even a small netbook from desk to desk, when I’m checking books or homework, is just not practical.

In my Excel file for each class, I have attendance templates, where I put all the lessons for the term in (how I do this is quite nifty, but not easy to explain, another post perhaps) and print to a PDF.

Example of the roll page (click to enlarge):

I also make a page with the student’s name and blank grids.

Example of the grid page (click to enlarge):

For each class, I end up with two PDFs: the roll and the grid. I then combine the PDFs in Adobe Acrobat, but for each class I include 4 of the grid pages.
So, in the end, I have a book with the roll for a class and 4 grid pages, then the next class. This diagram might explain:

Last step, upload online using Officework’s Print & Copy Service. This 20 page booklet, with a coil binding (folds back nicely) and covers cost $8.60 and picked it up the next day. [I will note here, that when submitting online, I have never received the final product in the exact same specification that I submitted. Usually the cover choice is different. I also select a heavier weight paper, but never get it. But, overall, I get what I need.]

Submitted online and getting this done in the holidays, is quicker than trying to get it done at school (and school doesn’t have the nice coil bindings).

I feel my school is struggling in a system which doesn’t recognise the individual and unique needs of schools. One telling observation came from the school counsellor who also works in one of the region’s behaviour schools. She noted that our school has one of the highest proportions of students with mental health issues (which lead to behaviour issues) in the region. That is, when we feel our job is tough and it’s out-of-control, we’re probably right – it is very tough, and unfortunately, the system and processes created by the system cannot keep up.

In my own classroom, however, the woes of the school were not an issue. A productive year, a year in which I realised that I now worry more about the next day in terms of how well I communicate the content and provide opportunities for learning, rather than how I will handle behaviour issues. Or, in short, behaviour is now less of an issue than learning. Behaviour issues now are those that effect the learning of others.

There you go, not mathematical, not uplifting, slightly encouraging, just reality. I need to work out how, in my outlook for 2010 post, to explain that being realistic about your situation does not equate to negativity.

I rarely “surf” the web, my interactions with the web are through Google Reader to keep up with blogs (and really any site that offers an RSS feed), Delicious to keep bookmarks and see what my network is bookmarking and Twitter for conversations.

Given that you’re reading this blog, then I figure you’ve got one piece of the equation of creating a “personal learning network” or PLN. It’s a trendy term, and I dislike trendy terms. Nevertheless, it simply describes having connections through the web for discussing and sharing resources and ideas. Sue Waters has a Wiki that explains a PLN really well: PLN Yourself!.

Image: Where to start with a personal learning network shared under a Creative Commons BY NC SA

If you need to get your network started in 2010, here are some folks that Maths teachers looking to build a PLN should start reading and interacting with:

• Dan Meyer (blog), ddmeyer (twitter), delicious bookmarks
• Kate Nowak (blog), k8nowak (twitter), delicious bookmarks
• Dan Greene (blog), dgreenedcp (twitter)

There are many other great maths teachers out there, see my Maths Blogs links in the right-hand column of the homepage of my site for some of them. But, a PLN is truly a network, because as you start to follow and interact with just these three people, you will meet many others.

Also on that page is the Chocolate Pie Chart which I noted earlier.

I think these are great visuals to throw up on the screen to briefly discuss what they represent (questions like: how much white chocolate?). Or, get the students to grab the image on their netbook and annotate.

I asked them to write on a piece of paper the number that I was thinking of, and I used the language of inequalities to give them a range. e.g. the number is greater than 3 and less than 11, the number is greater than or equal to -27 and less than or equal to -20.

This simple game, which I intended to be a little fun and a way to win a lolly, was actually insightful. Mainly, because they had to interpret my verbal clues, I didn’t write anything down. Even more interesting was the struggle for a couple of students with negative numbers – a couple of times, students wrote down an answer that was outside the range. That is, for the example above, they may have written -28.

This is the challenge I keep facing in my classroom… “prior knowledge” keeps getting lost or was never truly achieved.

An extension to the idea – get the kids to give the clues.