Week Five Reflections
Blog reflection question: Reflect about the information that you have encountered this week, the conversations you've had, the learning community you've built, and the progress you've made in this class. Post a reflection post to your blog that outlines your areas of confusion, celebration, and of interest. Be sure to share the link to that post to this assignment.
I am finally seeing my students turn the corner on Google Sheets this week. The unit design I am doing for this class is related to the class I am teaching in personal finance this term. I have been using https://screencast-o-matic.com/ to post videos tutorials on my website (http://www.maximumachievementprogram.org/Business-Math.html). Actually I am using it for my Alaska History class too.
In the Personal Finance class I have a lot of the kids who struggle with math and I am using Google Sheets to show them how to use fairly simple concepts in Algebra. I have been trying to get them to engage with the program and finally just got them to do the simple entry for the projects the last couple days. Once they had the data entry part done and formatting, I showed them how to do the first assignment - a simple application of one algebraic concept. Once they saw that I could apply this to several problems without all the pencil and calculator work, their interest was piqued.
Today I had one of the "problem" kids (Actually he is a great kid with a rough background) helping a couple other kids with the formulas. It was one of those moments that keep most of us in teaching. Most of the kids are now engaging with the program so I am hoping we can make some fairly big jumps in the coming weeks.
Stealing is the best form of flattery (or sometimes it is just cheating)
As is best practice among teachers, I stole a couple ideas from our discussion on Wednesday. My favorite was that Catherine mentioned that she sometimes has kids curate websites for her. So I made an extra credit assignment for today for kids to share with me some websites that they find helpful with their school work. I got a few I was expecting, Google Docs, Quizlet, Khan Academy but then one student turned me on to slader.com. I went there to see what it is, and it turns out it is basically a crowd sourcing website for homework. He was using it to find the answers from his various textbooks. SO... I contacted our tech department to try to block that website. I still gave him the points, but hopefully that is one "resource" that will be shut down (not that they will not find eighteen others).
So this is another example of the flip side of technology in the classroom. We need to teach how to use it correctly as well as ethically. I know that over the past ten or fifteen years there have been multiple studies that have shown that this kind of cheating is considered 'normal' and acceptable by this generation of students.
I am finally seeing my students turn the corner on Google Sheets this week. The unit design I am doing for this class is related to the class I am teaching in personal finance this term. I have been using https://screencast-o-matic.com/ to post videos tutorials on my website (http://www.maximumachievementprogram.org/Business-Math.html). Actually I am using it for my Alaska History class too.
In the Personal Finance class I have a lot of the kids who struggle with math and I am using Google Sheets to show them how to use fairly simple concepts in Algebra. I have been trying to get them to engage with the program and finally just got them to do the simple entry for the projects the last couple days. Once they had the data entry part done and formatting, I showed them how to do the first assignment - a simple application of one algebraic concept. Once they saw that I could apply this to several problems without all the pencil and calculator work, their interest was piqued.
Today I had one of the "problem" kids (Actually he is a great kid with a rough background) helping a couple other kids with the formulas. It was one of those moments that keep most of us in teaching. Most of the kids are now engaging with the program so I am hoping we can make some fairly big jumps in the coming weeks.
Stealing is the best form of flattery (or sometimes it is just cheating)
As is best practice among teachers, I stole a couple ideas from our discussion on Wednesday. My favorite was that Catherine mentioned that she sometimes has kids curate websites for her. So I made an extra credit assignment for today for kids to share with me some websites that they find helpful with their school work. I got a few I was expecting, Google Docs, Quizlet, Khan Academy but then one student turned me on to slader.com. I went there to see what it is, and it turns out it is basically a crowd sourcing website for homework. He was using it to find the answers from his various textbooks. SO... I contacted our tech department to try to block that website. I still gave him the points, but hopefully that is one "resource" that will be shut down (not that they will not find eighteen others).
So this is another example of the flip side of technology in the classroom. We need to teach how to use it correctly as well as ethically. I know that over the past ten or fifteen years there have been multiple studies that have shown that this kind of cheating is considered 'normal' and acceptable by this generation of students.
Bill that is an interesting idea. I enjoyed discussing how your class went and achievements with some of your students on Google docs and on the website announcement. I think I will use that also. Good idea.
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