The Jings are actually really easy to make. If you create a Jing account you can follow the steps to record what you are doing on the computer and use a mic to record your voice. Then, your content is automatically uploaded to your screencast account. My class then posted these Jings onto our class wiki so that we could view others’ Jings.

During my lesson I was not able to teach everything that I would normally have done in the lesson because I had to condense it to 15 mins. My lesson was supposed to be a hands on activity where students would discover the properties that subtended angles are congruent and that a subtended angle is half the central angle from the same arc. Instead of doing the activity with my classmates I just explained what I would have done and then they moved onto the rest of the lesson which was a worksheet. Although I think some of the lesson was lost without the activity portion I think the class was able to understand how it would have looked and since they already knew the properties they could skip right to solving questions.

Our presentation was to help dispel some of these feelings that our classmates have towards math.  We showed them how math is changing and is becoming more hands on.  We gave them manipulatives that they could work with and solve a problem.  We also stressed how math is going to be more about the process than the result which allows students a variety of ways of thinking and can help the students be creative with their solutions.

I hope that our presentation helped the other students understand more about math.  As a person who enjoyed math in high school I find it very sad to hear that my classmates did not have the same positive experience.  More importantly, I hope that the new teaching approaches that we have in the new curriculum will help my students to enjoy math more so that when they are in university they have positive experiences to share.

One question that I had about the new math curriculum for 10-12 was what we were going to do for students who did not yet know what they wanted to do after high school.  Like many of the people in my class I was still very undecided in grade 9 and I know this will be a difficult decision for my students.  The solution is that most schools are advising their students to take both the joint class of pre-calc and foundations 10 and the workplace and apprenticeship 10.  This will allow the students to make the decision later and if they change their mind later they can take the 20 level and 30 level of another strand both in grade 12 to have them ready to move into their chosen field. 

After this presentation I am starting to feel better about the new program.  I hope that it is able to serve a larger number of students nad allow them to be educated in relevent material.  I believe that this program, like all new programs, will take some time for teachers, students and parents to understand and work though but I am excited to see how it benefits the students that I will be interning with next fall. 

Yesterday I taught an inquiry based lesson in my EMTH 350 class.  We put lines on the floor with electrical tape and then had the class measure angles to find any relationships that  they could find within the diagram.  I found it a little difficult working with a university class trying to get them into the mindset of a grade 10 student.  They were giving answers with the proper names of angle relations which was what the lesson was focusing on.  Other than the difficulty of creating a grade 10 classroom out of a university class I though that the lesson went well.  It was great to collaborate as a group to decide what to teach.  I think the lesson would be a hit in a grade 10 class because they could actually stand up and move around the room and stand over the diagrams.  Plus, with the coloured lines and the labeled angles the students could talk to the other students about what they were seeing.

We also had a presentation in yesterday with some teachers from the Good Spirit School Division.  They showed us what they are doing in their classrooms with inquiry based teaching.  They showed videos of their classrooms which had students talking to each other, arguing their points and moving around the  classroom doing activities.  I think it would be great to teach in this way when I am teaching.  I love the idea of the students working in tables so that they can collaborate their ideas and team teach.  However, I think that I share the same fear that the teachers mentioned yesterday about not knowing if I am doing everything to help them understand the math.

I took some screen shots to show the difference in the outlook. 

Here is a moodle homepage                                                    and here is a blackboard calander

Both programs offer a variety of features including a gradebook program.  Here is what the two different grading programs look like.  The one on the left is a program that is offered to the Pairie South School Division, and the program on the right is the gradebook in blackboard

Here is my podcast created by using the interviews from the three teachers.  Thanks again to all three teachers for doing an interview with me and sharing your knowledge on distance education.

click on this link to listen to my podcast

The forum was hosted by Patric Lewis, and MarcSpooner.  For speakers they had Dean Shareski and Alec Couros.  They started thing off by talking about technology in schools and what this is doing to us as a community.  Then, they opened the room up to discussion in small groups to talk about this.  In my group it was really neat to see what the teachers were thinking about technology.  One question that was brought up in my group was about how technology is doing great things in elementary schools, but high school is still lagging behind.  The high schools are still doing mostly paper and pen notes and lecture type learning.  When the elementary schools are bringing in talking to teachers and classrooms from around the world and creating their own textbooks.  As the youngest person at my table and the only one in secondary ed I really tried to defend us teachers but I can really see their point.  I know that as secondary teachers we are beginning to introduce technology, but it seems to be lots of elementary teachers that are advancing and trying new things. 

After small groups we moved back to the large group to include everyone in some of the discussions that were going on and to get the in sight from their experts that they had brought in.  The relation was pointed out the the network we are creating away from us with technology is similar to the network they used to create with pen pals and writing back and forth only more instant.  The group talked a lot about facebook, but although I can see many of the teachers views that facebook is addicting and not always accurate, I think that if we encourage our students to appreciate it as a network and use it for more of a social learning and a way to connect to their family, friends and other students then facebook doesn’t have to be all bad. 

At the end of the forum, my table got a little off topic and talked about not only using technology in all the classrooms, but creating a more student centred learning to have students pick a project concerning various subjects and working in groups to create this project (such as a french history play etc. ) and then using the teachers in their school and their technology as a reference for the experts.  I really like this idea and I was wondering what other people thought of it. 

There were many more topics that were brought up but this is a sum up of what was covered.  The next forum is going to be on education and the arts and it will be on January 26.  If you have free time I suggest going.  It was great to just hang out, have a drink and get to know some of the teachers that I will soon be working with and see what their views are on some of these topics! I would like to know what anyone thinks about some of the issues I put up here.  I realized just at my own table how many different view point there are on these issues.