Web-filtering....Arrrrgh!

The system in which I work now is rife with over-zealous web filters that will sometimes go as far as to block the Department of Education's website. Teachers are frustrated. I'm frustrated. Students are frustrated...to a degree. They seem to be the only ones who know how to get around it. The county will often unblock sites, but embedded videos, pictures, etc., are still blocked. Put in another work order, and the same results come out. It's a vicious cycle.

I'm contemplating sending this article, Do Internet Filters Undermine the Teaching of 21st Century Citizenship?, to the Super. I think every teacher has been in this situation before.

Someone posted this, which I thought was a great connection: "I'll leave you with Tom Hoffman’s analogy where he writes about web filtering, “We’ve got a situation akin to letting the clerks in the purchasing department decide whether or not the books ordered by teachers and librarians are acceptable"

Math Needs a Make Over

Only seldom do I find a video that so succinctly resonates with my ideas about teaching that I want to share it with everyone I know (inside and outside of the educational field). This is one of those videos. Since watching Dan's video, I've visited his blog a few times and am enthralled by the manner and use of technology in which he engages his students. I wish all educators could be filled with that talent and desire to build a classroom of learners.

Edmodo

During summer school this year, students accessed our Edmodo page to post assignments. Part of the fun (for them) was that Edmodo incorporates a social networking function where students can chat. All comments, though, were visible to everyone, including and especially, the teacher.

This forum for student-teacher interaction gave students lots of practice with communicating in a math language. As students work through math problems, they often skim the surface of learning, completing each task at a superficial level, but through extended exercises of writing and thinking about the processes necessary for solving problems (metacognition), they often begin to realize the deeper aspects of the task and how to apply them (Brutlag & Maples, 1992).

Above is a snapshot of one of the responses to a question, one from the student's early experience with math writing. One drawback--on the assignment page, students could not respond to any comments that I made about their work. However, the social networking side of it allows for you to have an ongoing discourse about math.

Check it out at www.edmodo.com

Brutlag, D., & Maples, C. (1992). Making connections: Beyond the surface. Mathematics Teacher, 85(3), 230-235.