Year 2009

Getting the word out on GeoGebra

Maria Droujkova has done some great work putting together some Elluminate sessions on Math 2.0… and she has more to come. On Saturday the 26th she had Markus Hohenwarter, the father of GeoGebra and the chief developer Michael Borcherds on…

Coaching

As I mentioned in an earlier blog I was at the September meeting of the Math Forum; the theme for the meeting was coaching.There was considerable disapproval of the term coaching; that it set up a hierarchy of ability or…

Respect. It’s not what you think…

I’m an occasional participant at the Math Forum at the Fields Institute in Toronto. It’s a meeting of folks interested in math education research held monthly; I’d get there more but academic and other responsibilities often overlap. Even today I…

Setting up Ning

School for us doesn’t start until September 14th but I’ve completed all my computer changes for the year (dual monitor, 1Tb hard drive & 500Gb network hard drive, N-router & card, new headphone-mic) and my nephew has gone back home…

Math Video Markup

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my students will often be required to submit Jing videos of their worked solutions to a variety of problems. Basically it’s the modern alternative to handing in paper copies of their homework but…

I think I want to SMAK my kids

I’ve been thinking about how to assess my Grade 9 and 10 students this year … I did a lot of experimentation last year with my accelerated Grade 8 students;they were open to trying things out since acquisition of skills…

Working Groups

Before I start dealing with reflecting on the content of the classes, I’ve got two more aspects of PCMI to mention.The first is the most productive: The working group. Each of the teachers is assigned a working group in a…

Reflecting on Practice

Once we’re done the morning of math (with a brief coffee break) the teachers all get back together for an hour of math education pedagogy. Like the mathematics we cover, each year is something a little different. For example, in…

The 830 at PCMI

PCMI is a 3 week program; each day from about 830 to 1040 we have what can best be described as a math class. But it’s unlike any math class most people have ever had.Each day starts with its own…

Precursor to PCMI

I’ve had the opportunity to come early to Park City and help set things up: there’s actually a lot of infrastructure to put in to place. With (at least) 7 different groups running simultaneously around the conference centre, there’s the…