Online Participation at NCTM Conference? Let's make it happen!

Collaborating or simply communicating at conferences can be a powerful motivator for teachers. But I wonder how much better it could be if teachers could also interact with each other online in real-time at the conference?  NCTM is supporting the move in this direction. They now have a conference blog and are active on Facebook and Twitter (#nctm).

But based on Sean Sweeney's take on the Baltimore NCTM regional conference last fall we still have a long way to go. Here is an excerpt:

I went to NCTM last week, where I met up with [math bloggers] Kate, Jessica, Nick and Jackie.  I had a good time, and as I don't have a lot of real life high school math teacher friends, it was a lot of fun to have people that can completely relate to everything I do for my job everyday. […]  Anyway if I had to choose one thing that stood out that I learned from NCTM it's that a ridiculous number of math teachers are completely unaware of the online math teacher community. Let me repeat that:

Wi-fi Detector hat

Spreading the word. At the NCTM annual meeting CLIME will once again be promoting their Math 2.0 initiative in the exhibit area spreading the word about how participation in online math communities can make a difference in teacher's lives. One hurdle for us to overcome is the the major lubricant for online or Cloud collaboration - Wifi - will once again not be free at the convention center. I just found out that you can get Wifi at the convention center for $14.95 a day outside of the exhibit area. That’s cheaper than it was in San Diego last year, but anything more than free is still too expensive. Someday Wi-fi will be taken for granted (like the availability of oxygen for breathing) as it is now at ISTE and other Tech Ed conferences. Oh yes, exhibitors will pay $99.95 per day to "breathe."

So for all of you who are planning to attend NCTM Indianapolis in April or if you are interested in following virtually, let’s work together to make the Indy conference more  "cloud collaborative" friendly. Here’s a list of things that you will need to know before heading to Indianapolis or if you plan to participate virtually.

Should I carry a laptop with me at the conference? 

Yes, if you want to maximize your engagement with other like minded educators in the online conversations that will be going on - many of them in real time. Of course, smart phones can be used for that as well.

Locations of Wifi hotspots at the convention center and at the conference hotels. As folks discover good places please share them. If you are wandering in downtown Indianapolis anytime during the conference, here’s a list of free Wifi sites. 

To correspond by Twitter use hashtags #nctm11 and #climemath to share your experiences, ideas, and what you are learning. If you are new to Twitter this conference would be a good time for you to experience how Twitter can effectively help interested folks to share their experiences. (I'm tweetable at @climeguy.) Email still works! Try me at ihor@clime.org if you prefer.

 

Stop by the CLIME 2.0 booth #326 in the Exhibit hall to say hello and show your solidarity with the Math 2.0 vision by picking up and wearing a Math 2.0 button and tell others about the power of Web 2.0* to enhance math teaching and learning.

If you are interested in our initiative, I encourage you to share a comment. Also you can post a reply to my blog entry at the NCTM conference blog site. http://nctmconference.blogspot.com/

*Collaboration can be a powerful experience that goes beyond just simple communication of ideas. It is a process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals. Web 2.0 provides tools that can make that happen.


-You can subscribe to CLIME updates on the Indy Math 2.0 Initiative here.
-My latest tweet: If Egypt can do it, we can do the same for Math. Support Math 2.0 virtually or in person at @NCTM Indy http://bit.ly/9zwZl #mathchat

Saturday's Math Strand @ Educon-Takeaways

Though there wasn't an announced math strand for those interested in math education, it turned out that most of the sessions that had math as a key word in their titles or descriptions were on Friday. Here's the three that I attended:

• Project-Based Learning in a Math Classroom (session 1)
• Getting in to the (mathematical) conversation (session 2)
• Innovative Roles of Mathematics in STEM Education, Entrepreneurship, and Workforce Development in 21st Century (session 3)

Session 1 - SLA students and teachers presented examples of math projects students worked on. They are just in the beginning stages. Worth following their goals. Chris Lehman's blog about math inversion is worth noting here.

Then, [math] class, rather than being a time when all kids sat and received the instruction, could be the time when they reinforce skills by doing problem sets, worked on real-world application projects, collaborated with teachers to reinforce concepts, etc... in some ways, it's an inversion of what we traditionally think of as a math class. Right now, in traditional classrooms, class is where the teacher demonstrates concepts (often with some time for individual reinforcement and work), but the bulk of application / practice / etc... is done at home where there isn't much chance for help. If we use technology to invert that idea, so that kids could watch the teacher's demonstration of the skills and concepts at home (and with the ability to rewind when necessary,) we could allow kids the opportunity to apply and practice their knowledge in the space where they can get help, collaborate, etc... doesn't that make more sense? -blog entry

Projects could be something that students can plan, review, and revise with classmates and teachers in the classroom. The bulk of work could be done outside of school hours. This is doable if the project development is well coached.


To be continued...

Educon Math 2.0 Takeaways-Part 1

Chris Lehmann talks about the future of SLA at Educon.

Math 2.0 is alive and well at SLA where students, teachers and their linchpin leader are carving out a more powerful way to teach and learn math. Though they are only at the beginning of their journey in creating a project based learning curriculum for math, but the trip looks promising for significant student centered learning of math. Here are some of my takeaways.

"And friends, they may call it a movement." - Jon Becker
For me this movement will empower students and teachers to carve pathways so they can follow their passion for teaching and learning.

Teachers and students should be partners in the learning enterprise. That's a critical paradigm shift.

We need teachers & students who will take interesting ideas, questions, neat phenomenon to ask this Dan Meyer inspired question: What can You do with this (WCYDWT)? For example, today's massive storm over most of the country produced mostly ice, sleet and even rain in the northeast while the temperature was below 32º. How is that possible? (Watch Eliot Abrams explain it.) The details of his graphs are difficult to interpret. Have your class recreate the graphs with your guidance so that everyone including the teacher understand it better. Then share it to the world on the Web! (Sounds like an assignment for me.)

Teachers should encourage students to create math videos where students share their findings and takeaways from answering interesting questions that have surprise answers. How about this one I shared with my students as part of a unit on probability? Newspaper headline: British Hunter is Shot By a Fox in Its Burrow. Really? See details. WCYDWT. How likely is this event? For starters.

Educon 2.3 Begins Today

Friday morning - I'm off to the Educon 2.3 conference in Philadelphia. Will be tweeting "math stuff" @climeguy #educonmath #educon while I'm there.
Arrived at 12:30 in snow covered Philly at the SLA (Science Leadership Academy.) Since it was a snow day for the school students came to school voluntarily to participate in the unconference that was created since the scheduled classroom visits were not possible. More to come...


Follow my latest comments on Twitter #educonmath

Math 2.0 Live! Great Math Activities-Lawrence Hall of Science

Tonight's Math 2.0 session (details) should be terrific. The Lawrence Hall of Science is a pioneer in developing and/or sharing some of the coolest math/science activities ever.

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Previous Math 2.0 sessions (recordings available):
January 22nd, 2011. Bootstrap World programming environment. Host: Emmanuel Schanzer
January 12th, 2011. MoMath: Museum of Mathematics Hosts: Cindy Lawrence, Glen Whitney, George Hart

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I'll be sharing my highlights of the session in my next blog entry. See comments below.

My upcoming talk and Indy Highlights Update

I'm speaking at the winter math conference of AMTNJ in Somerset, NJ tomorrow. Here's a description of the talk:

The Internet, Web 2.0, and dynamic math software make possible new venues for teaching and learning math that incorporate powerful ways of collaborating, exploring, and sharing of ideas. Much of this spirit is not included in the latest version of the CCSS. This session will highlight some examples of how this can be corrected. 

I'm working on a article that will be a companion piece to this talk that I'll post here when it is finished. 

CLIME Indy Conference update:

• There is now a clickable version of the listing of the technology sessions at the Indianapolis NCTM conference. It includes updates of the descriptions that are listed in the conference program guide. If you are speaking at the conference and would like to update your description send me an email with your changes. 
• Also take a look at NCTMonline.ning.com. We will be including more descriptions of sessions there as well. In fact, it's a Ning site so you can do it yourself!

CLIME Math 2.0 NCTM meeting Heads Up: Where are the bloggers?

Update: NCTM 2011 Annual Meeting Conference Preview is now available at their website. Included is a description of the sessions. I have created a subset which contains all sessions that have technology-related key words in the titles and descriptions. (See below for an analysis.)

Since CLIME always tries to bang the technology principle drum loudly enough so that the NCTM movers and shakers (i.e. the Board of Directors, conference planners, etc.) don't take it for granted, every year I do an analysis of the technology related sessions at the annual meeting to see if there is evidence of groundswell for the use of emerging technologies and in particular Web 2.0.

To get a preview of what might be happening next April, I first investigated the goings on at the Baltimore Regional meeting via a cool, web 2.0-like online program book. (In Baltimore there were 226 sessions compared with 672 in Indianapolis.) But before I got a chance to plunge into it, I was red-flagged by a blog entry written by Sean Sweeney - a math teacher and blogger from Philadelphia - who shared his experience of the conference at Sweeney Math. Here’s a snippet from his October 23rd 2010 post.

"I went to NCTM last week, where I met up with [math bloggers] Kate, Jessica, Nick and Jackie.  I had a good time, and as I don't have a lot of real life high school math teacher friends, it was a lot of fun to have people that can completely relate to everything I do for my job everyday. […]  Anyway if I had to choose one thing that stood out that I learned from NCTM it's that a ridiculous number of math teachers are completely unaware of the online math teacher community." Let me repeat that:

"If I had to choose one thing that stood out that I learned from NCTM it's that a ridiculous number of math teachers are completely unaware of the online math teacher community."

Sean and Kate are not standing idly by. They are collaborating to produce a welcome page for folks new to the world of math teacher blogging. For details and how you might be able to help, see Sean’s blog post that includes a link to a survey he is doing. I hope you will support Sean’s effort to compile some great examples of the collaborative world of Web 2.0 and how it informs and inspires participants to be more creative, effective teachers.

I too am interested in upping the ante on awareness of the online math educator world. For that reason CLIME will once again be evangelizing the merits of Math 2.0* from our booth in the Exhibit Hall in Indianapolis.  One of the perks of being an affiliate group is that NCTM makes it possible for CLIME to have a booth at a discount.

Last year I helped Dan Meyer attend the conference and he energized our effort with some great blog entries. (As I'm writing this I noticed that he added a new one yesterday!)  We hope to do even more at the big show conference next year.

PDF  Word

As promised here is my list of technology sessions. There are 158 sessions listed (out of 672) that means that 20% of the
sessions referred to some form of digital technology in the title or in
it's description. This is an increase from 17% in San Diego this past April. In 2009 it was 14.5% and in 2008 16%. (link)

What does the increase mean? Is there now more of an awareness of technology? Probably. Each year the comfort zone for technology grows
particularly with the math educators who get to speak at this conference. Unfortunately, these speakers get very little support tech-wise from NCTM. (See Dan's blog link above and my report on the failed tech initiative proposed to the Board of Directors in 2008.)

Here’s my wordle and chart of key technology related tags.

Wordle-PDF Chart-PDF Excel-xls

What story does it tell?
Since technology is an umbrella term for all things related to digital
technological use in math education it makes sense that that the key word technology dominates. I thought about downsizing the proportional scale to make it more readable. Instead I removed the word technology to get a better sense of the types of technologies that will be discussed.

=>TI’s calculators continue to dominate the field.

=>Geometer’s Sketchpad leads the pack of software programs that are specifically mentioned.

=>Geogebra - the open-source competitor of GSP - is catching up.

=>There’s definitely more mention of relevant websites and online references than in previous years.

What about Web 2.0?
As far as Web 2.0 is concerned, there are only three sessions that mention it. Here are the titles with links to their descriptions.

#669 Communicating about Geometry in a Web 2.0 World
Facebook and other Web 2.0 tools give students and teachers a new,
exciting way to communicate about geometry. Learn how the speaker uses
Facebook groups to get students sharing ideas about quadrilaterals,
right triangles, circles, surface area, and volume. She will also share
creative projects using free Web 2.0 tools.

#77 Make Math Count: Financial Literacy for a Technological World
Address NCTM strands of problem solving, communication, and connections
while fully engaging students with Excel, Web 2.0 technologies, and
games created by Robert Kyosaki. Resources are available online that
address income, careers, retirement, and linear and exponential growth,
along with assessments differentiated by learning styles.

#578 Space Math@NASA and NASA eClips™ : Real-World Algebra Connections
Do your students ask why they should learn algebra and when they might
use it? Space Math@NASA, paired with NASA eClips™ video segments,
answers these questions by building real-world connections and
relevance to algebra content. In addition to these free NASA resources,
you will learn how to “power up” your lessons through the use of other
Web 2.0 tools such as online models and simulations.

What's missing?
No mention of math blogging at all in any of the 672 session titles or descriptions. Though I do know that Karim Logue (Session #551) is a blogger who recently participated in a recent Math 2.0 Elluminate session.

Assignment for those planning to be in Indy next April in person or
online
Please let me know if you are planning to attend and/or present at the
conference by commenting below or sending me an email.  If you are presenting and wish to share more info about your session and make it available online we can post that for you on a website I will be creating. Currently NCTM's session listings do not offer you a way to post resources.

You can also create your own more dynamic description on our Wiki site (NCTM Online - The Unofficial NCTM Member Network).

Our goal is to get more math teachers aware of how Web 2.0 and in particular math blogging is changing the face of math education. The campaign begins now. Stay tuned to this blog for more updates.
*Math 2.0 - Using Web 2.0 as a platform for teaching and learning math