This post is part of an ongoing “Wot-I-Got” series. This series acts as a way for me to share Wot-I-Got out of a book or presentation, and to whet your appetite for enquiry. It also forces me to finish books that I start, and to review and summarise my conference notes! 

These are my notes (and annotations)  from Day 1 of the Mathematics Association of Tasmania conference, 2014. MAT Website.

Tradeshow

  • mathspathway. Software for differentiation. Richard Wilson. richard@mathspathway.com, 0403787349, www.mathspathway.com . These guys have developed differentiation software that assesses a child's ability, finds their knowledge gaps, then designs a personalised learning plan and delivers the associated content. Worth having a chat to!

Day 1, Friday, 4pm. Matt Skoss: Becoming a ‘Top Draw Teacher'… What might that look like? See Matt's Wiki , Maths-no-fear, here.


  • #lessonstarter

    #lessonstarter as a twitter hashtag-Matt created this as a hashtag as a place for people to share inspiring lesson/conversation starting pictures.

  • Vi Hart on youtube, 3 to 8 minute doodles on maths ideas.

  • “It’s ok to re-visit a similar lesson several times.”-if the content is interesting/complicated enough, follow up lessons can lead to deeper learning.

  • http://danah.org, danah boyd, book: I’ts complicated, the social lives of networked teens.

  • ipad triple click function, locks students onto the current app that they’re working on.-find Matt and ask him how to do this.

  • Sorting Mat: Demonstrates how a simple operation can lead to complicated and ordered results-image to come

  • discovr people app–Use it for social networking. Find good connections through people that you trust. 

  • Tech: todaysmeet.com. A great  backchannel that can substitute for twitter.-The idea with this is that it's a feed that you can use to promote discussion in your class. Set up a virtual classroom on this website and have your students make comments on a current task. Other benefits:

    • More simple than twitter with less distractions

    • Can be a great way to get students to respond to a question, or to brain dump everything they already know about a concept

    • Keep in mind, your backchannel dissappears when the time runs out, so ensure that you back it up if you want to keep the content (copy paste all to a word doc for example)

    • Don’t just give up if it doesn’t work the first time. When Matt first used it some kids put up some really inappropriate stuff. So push through it.

  • “I want to try something out with you so I can try it on younger kids and I need your feedback”-a great feedback prompter!

  • Great task: “Think of a fraction between ½ and ¾ . Try to think of one that no-one else can”–engages students in a more active rather than passive way

  • Evernote: A great tool-Matt uses it to keep students work ordered and can quickly draw on images and comment associated with different tags (a particular student, a particular class, a particular learning module) in situations such as teacher meetings. 

  • A great question Genre: “Always true? Sometimes true?  or Never true?-Put up a sentence like “Squaring a number always makes it larger” or “Dividing one number by another makes it smaller” and get students to discuss whether it's always, sometimes or never true and to come up with examples and counter examples.

    • … What are some other good questions that suit this genre???

  • Two questions that Dan Meyer leads with: “What would be an answer that’s way too big?, What’s an answer that would be way too small?”

  • Dan Meyer’s questions: at http://101qs.com. Coke bottle pic, what questions can it launch? (See today’s meet)

  • Find inspiration everywhere. Take a pic (eg: hexagonal plughole) and ask your students “what’s the mathematics behind this?

    • Eventually you hope to get to the point where you only have to ask “what’s my next question going to be?”

  • John Mason: “Mathematics hasn’t been done in a Mathematics lesson unless it has involved generalising.”-Encourage students to make predictions based on patterns that they've noticed from which they can make generalisations.

  • Key take home message from Matt: …Get a key take home!!! – ie: Choose 1 thing from the conference that you've liked and put it into action in your classroom in the next 12 days. If you don't enact it in the next 12 days you never will. 

  • #lessonstarter as a twitter hashtag. Matt created this as a hashtag as a place for people to share inspiring lesson/conversation starting pictures.

  • Vi Hart on youtube, 3 to 8 minute doodles on maths ideas.

  • “It’s ok to re-visit a similar lesson several times.”-if the content is interesting/complicated enough, follow up lessons can lead to deeper learning.

  • http://danah.org, danah boyd, book: I’ts complicated, the social lives of networked teens.

  • ipad triple click function, locks students onto the current app that they’re working on.-find Matt and ask him how to do this.

  • Sorting Mat: Demonstrates how a simple operation can lead to complicated and ordered results-image to come

  • discovr people app-Use it for social networking. Find good connections through people that you trust.

  • Tech: todaysmeet.com. A great  backchannel that can substitute for twitter.-The idea with this is that it's a feed that you can use to promote discussion in your class. Set up a virtual classroom on this website and have your students make comments on a current task. Other benefits:

    • More simple than twitter with less distractions

    • Can be a great way to get students to respond to a question, or to brain dump everything they already know about a concept

    • Keep in mind, your backchannel dissappears when the time runs out, so ensure that you back it up if you want to keep the content (copy paste all to a word doc for example)

    • Don’t just give up if it doesn’t work the first time. When Matt first used it some kids put up some really inappropriate stuff. So push through it.

  • “I want to try something out with you so I can try it on younger kids and I need your feedback”-a great feedback prompter!

  • Great task: “Think of a fraction between ½ and ¾ . Try to think of one that no-one else can”–engages students in a more active rather than passive way

  • Evernote: A great tool-Matt uses it to keep students work ordered and can quickly draw on images and comment associated with different tags (a particular student, a particular class, a particular learning module) in situations such as teacher meetings.

  • A great question Genre: “Always true? Sometimes true?  or Never true?-Put up a sentence like “Squaring a number always makes it larger” or “Dividing one number by another makes it smaller” and get students to discuss whether it's always, sometimes or never true and to come up with examples and counter examples.

    • … What are some other good questions that suit this genre???

  • Two questions that Dan Meyer leads with: “What would be an answer that’s way too big?, What’s an answer that would be way too small?”

  • Dan Meyer’s questions: at http://101qs.com. Coke bottle pic, what questions can it launch? (See today’s meet)

  • Find inspiration everywhere. Take a pic (eg: hexagonal plughole) and ask your students “what’s the mathematics behind this?

    • Eventually you hope to get to the point where you only have to ask “what’s my next question going to be?”

  • John Mason: “Mathematics hasn’t been done in a Mathematics lesson unless it has involved generalising.”-Encourage students to make predictions based on patterns that they've noticed from which they can make generalisations.

Key take home message from Matt: …Get a key take home!!! – ie: Choose 1 thing from the conference that you've liked and put it into action in your classroom in the next 12 days. If you don't enact it in the next 12 days you never will.-I'm going to use the ‘Always, Sometimes, Never true” question genre in class on Wednesday!

Dinner conversation…

  • Computer Science Unplugged conference, July 2nd 2014. Campbelltown. Introducing digital technologies to the curriculum. More info here.
  • Creative Mathematical Sciences Conference, Chennai, Dec 9-14 2014.
  • Site sucker: An excellent app to suck a site onto your computer for use offline (or after a subscription expires!)
  • Scratch: Drag-and-drop programming to get students (and teachers) familiar with programming processes
  • Hour of Code: A 1 hour introduction to coding. Over 36 million people have tried this!

 

 

Related