Mark Liddell's Blog

This week in Year 9 Mathematics we were learning about the different circle geometry theorems. Students were asked to get into pairs and they were given a particular circle geometry theorem.

They were asked to create a story which would explain their theorem using photos, videos, text and music. Next, they sent their work in an email to post@posterous.com and their work was blogged.

The instructions to students were:

Choose a team name

Your team will be given a theorem

Prepare a story with pictures that helps to understand how the theorem works

Email this story with photos, music and text attached to post@ posterous.com

At the end of the lesson each group of students presented their story and it was a lot of fun.

Check out posterous.com

This is a fantastic resource for teaching kids about the issues of privacy as they use the internet. The game is about a group of pigs who are wanting to explore online.

Lil’, Mo and Les are some cyber pigs who run into a number of situations. Students can assist them as they make decisions regarding  the sites that they visit and the types of information that they provide.

Visit the Media Awareness Network and help your students to learn about online safety.

Yesterday was the first time that students sat part of their formative assessment in our school’s Second Life island. We have been learning about surds and the first three questions for the test took place on a dark brown platform right next to the art gallery.

I would state a question to the students and they would each respond using local chat. This meant that it wasn’t an authentic assessment given that students could see other student reponses. In order to improve the assessment process I could build a private booth for students where they can sit a test. This would be with the help of a sloodle tutorial. The beauty of sloodle is that it links Second Life with the Moodle at my school so that the student marks are automatically uploaded.

Some other teachers at my school have been able to assist students with their qualitative feedback by using this response square.

There are loads of great Mathematics outcomes that can be taught with the help of Google Earth.

Whether students are learning about scientific notation or estimating distances there are some great lesson ideas to develop student understanding.

The following topics are available:

• Exchange rates;
• Scientific notation;
• Volumes of solids;
• Estimations, graphs;
• Estimating distances;
• Fractals;
• Areas of composite shapes; and,
• Spherical geometry.

These resources are relevant for Year 7 through to Year 12 students so check out this link.

My year 10 students were asked to teach a Year 7  Maths concept.

They could choose between a variety of concepts to do with positive and negative numbers.

Each team was given a digital camera and then asked to take ten photos that would help a Year 7 student to understand a concept. They first visited animoto.com where they signed up for an account.

The cameras default to a photo file size of 3 MB so the students needed to edit their photo file size using paint. They could then upload the photos and choose music to sync with their presentation.

Good times.

A team of nine teachers from my school visited Mordialloc College in Melbourne last week.

Our objective was to investigate the teaching and learning methods that they have been using and then to see which aspects would be applicable in our school.

The Year 7 students of Mordialloc were all located in the school’s ‘Learning Centre’. It was a large, colourful warehouse where 130 students took part in a student directed learning program where teachers were facilitating learning in a variety of areas.  A student would decide on a particular area of study and then the facilitator would guide them in how they could meet the set learning outcomes. One particular student wanted to complete an assessment task on skate boarding. His guide was able to point to the history, geography, mathematics and science outcomes that the student could use as he devised the task.

The students were trained in the 4 levels of self help. This meant that during a learning experience the students had the skills to deal with ‘getting stuck’. Each student was also trained in how to plan out their learning for the week and how to re plan if there were changes with their schedule. It really was amazing.

The highlights from this school visit were:

- How excited and positive the students were about their learning;

- How the school had researched and developed their pedagogy to ensure that all students were given the tools to learn;

- How the school had designed spaces that aid student learning.

I asked myself the following questions after our visit.

How are you using learning spaces to aid student learning? You really should read this.

Are your students equipped with the 4 levels of self help?

Are you constantly researching pedagogy so that you are better informed to enhance student learning?

If you want to help students with their mini golf and assist their abilities in trigonometry then this is the learning resource for you.

Students have to answer questions relating to trig in order to progress their golf ball through the course.

Try is out here.

My Year 9 Mathematics students have just completed a topic on measurement.

In order to confirm each of the new words that we learned they were asked to present a terminology sheet.

We used wordle and you can see how interesting the student designs are…

Math teachers - join this network for teaching strategies, resources and ideas.

http://mathematics24×7.ning.com/

It has been set up by a guy called Rashmi Kathuria and you can check his blog out here.

I attended my first ever Second Life (SL) conference last week.

It was organised by the friendly folks at Rez Ed.

I was part of discussion regarding the issues of mixed ages in virtual worlds.

I am glad that my school has purchased a Second Life (SL) private island so that we can track what happens with our students ( hopefully offering them a safer place to learn).

It was good to meet a variety of people (below) and I have since starting following their blogs/tweets.

Lisa Dawley http://onlineeducators.blogspot.com/

SL official http://twitter.com/SecondLife

In particuluar, it was great to come into contact with MathBear.

Smitty checking out the Math Bear Education Initiative

I am hoping to learn a great deal about teaching mathematics in virtual worlds from him.

It will be great for more maths teachers to get involved in developing these types of environments.

MathBear says that ‘Teaching mathematics in Second Life can be made into a more meaningful and engaging learning experience for students than is generally possible in real life schools.‘