I started my Undergraduate work, at Saint Vincent College, in Computer Science and Business to teach high school students about computers. After a round with C+ Programming, I decided that it was not for me, I did, however, enjoy my Calculus class immensely and decided to change to Mathematics Education as my Major. Upon college graduation, I started teaching at an urban high school in 2007 and taught all Algebra 1 courses during my first three years, then Geometry, then Algebra again, Algebra 2, and now Geometry for the past 4 years. While creating course material that I felt was relevant for my students I came upon some teaching material involving Scratch Coding. From there I have found a love for computers and computer education again.
Saint Vincent College,
Latrobe, PA
I recently just finished coursework to complete my Plus 30 to advance the tier placement in my career, I had my Masters in 21st Century Teaching and Learning, through Wilkes University, completed in 2011, and did not realize the potential to having more credits under my belt. I have been working hard to update my learning, and personal style to teaching, through courses in multiple ways, first through Learner's Edge where I completed a set of courses that gave me a certification (from their own personal certifications, not a PA State Cert.) in the area of Information Technology Specialist. Through this set of courses, I decided it would be wise to get the state certification work on my Plus 30 and my eventual Plus 60 while adding more weight to my own personal learning with a second Masters in Informational Technology Specialist.
Bearcat in College
I am currently re-enrolled and going through Wilkes University where I have found the professors and learning modules very inspirational in my own teaching. I have taken lesson plans and re-created them through use of more online and computer-based learning. I have used Desmos, Geogebra and even Google Apps to enhance the learning in my classroom. Through my journey, I have figured out that Computer Science is definitely going to take my own teaching and my students farther than I could have imagined.
Bearcat Teacher
I am starting this school year teaching AP Computer Science Principles and went through a training to learn how to process through the new course. This will be a big step for me to take towards my goal of implementing more computer science in my school and will make for a huge learning opportunity for not only my students but myself. In our building, we also created another new course using the text, Where Will I Ever Use This? Volume 1: Algebraic Modeling, using Excel to teach Algebraic Concepts. The overall goal for our high school is to start creating learning academies within our building. We have a Freshmen Academy, Performing Arts Academy and a Safety (First Responders) Academy, the academy I would like to start, you guessed it, Computer Science.
I would like to incorporate more courses in gaming, video game development, (since I am one of the Video Game Club advisors for my school) coding language, and possibly the AP Computer Science A one day. I never thought that switching majors in 2004, would afford me the opportunity to still end up teaching and learning more about the passions I have in my life, computers and technology.
I am a teacher by day, and an adjunct by night. One evening, while looking out into the sea of college freshmen, during one of my "lectures" I noticed that their faces all had that glazed over look, they were not as engaged and all around looking miserable. The college students humor me by laughing at my horrible jokes, and will even ask questions when they need, but I did not feel the room at all that night. Later that week I was on Twitter scrolling through, and found an interesting Tweet by Robert Kaplinsky, "Who ever felt that lecture was the pinnacle of education?! If anything, we should be giving them our best instruction to prepare them." Although lecturing is sometimes necessary to convey content, it should not be the sole way students of any age are taught.
Who ever felt that lecture was the pinnacle of education?! If anything, we should be giving them our best instruction to prepare them.
With that in mind, I also remembered that last year while teaching the same topic on curve sketching. I was so excited by my examples and how to do the problems, that after I was done with the class I quickly assigned the odd problems from the text book. Not thinking that each problem took about 15 minutes to complete, and giving 15 problems at 15 minutes a piece meant almost 4 hours worth of homework. I did a complete disservice to those students with the assignment, and quickly had to apologize. After reflecting on the previous year, and thinking about how I wanted this current semester to go, I figured out a new way of teaching the problem set and I feel I came up with a more interesting and collaborative way to practice the skill of curve sketching using derivatives.
Group 4's Project and Discussion were both great!
Read below for more on the interactions of the group and the language used.
Students were randomly assigned into 6 groups of 4. I created a Google Drive Folder for each group and then made some adjustments to the problems from the text and my unit review. Each group was assigned two functions to use the first and second derivative test, creating the curve sketching information that they needed. Groups were to find the relative maxima, relative minima, any inflection points, where there was concavity up or down, and where the function was decreasing and increasing. The groups added comments and edits, gave each other feedback and created a great collaborative final answer for their functions. They also were to sketch the curve with Desmos, and find all of the points that they solved for mathematically on the picture instead of all by hand. I had each group member turn in their perspective rough draft to have students show more than just participation in the online document, but the collaboration piece was key. A lot of the discussions were really powerful with well thought out questions, leading to deeper understanding of the tables and sign charts groups created. They learned from each other how to successfully apply the derivative tests to the function and what pieces would ultimately help them sketch the graph. the groups also made their sign charts each in different modes through technology or taking a picture of their hand drawn chart.
Student Sign Charts were interesting and creatively made.
Another Group's Sign Chart
After everyone had turned in their Google Doc, I also wanted to get a feel for the students' outlook from completing their group project. I created a Google Form and asked several questions about how they felt the project went. A majority of the feedback that came back said the group project was enjoyable, and it helped that students with understanding the process. I also saw a lot of good computational thinking in the form of their summative assessment following our fourth unit, and I think that I will use this project in years to come. My new goal is to create one collaborative or group project for each unit of my course to engage my college learners in a more enriching fashion. Next year I plan to facilitate another learning experience that will enhance my college course, and make the course even more engaging.
After finishing two graduate courses on utilizing technology in the classroom, I was tasked with one for a collaborative research project. The project consisted of classmates and I researching a technology trend in education and we chose coding in the classroom. I was very impressed with the Code.org website and all of the resources that are available for free on the site, including their One Hour of Code Initiative. I had students watch the five minute video from Code.org to get them excited to investigate coding. Students then created a free Code.org account and started the process of completing the One Hour of Code initiative from December 4th through December 8th this year.
Following the One Hour of Code program, students were then given a set of Scratch coding activities that progressively increased in difficulty. Students were tasked with creating an easy set of code that drew four different polygons. Then they were given a second task to code a random polygon generator using some more complex coding pieces, which also had students create a block (their own code piece) to name the polygon that was generated. For the final project students were tasked with creating coding blocks to draw a Sierpinski Triangle. (My code is attached below.) I used these projects in my Saturday STEM Mathematics program last spring, and found that they would be great for school this year as well.
The whole program took students about 5 days and an average of 5 hours to complete all of the coding projects. Students were given a great opportunity to investigate coding. To celebrate and reward their accomplishments with more than just a grade, I created a certificate of completion. Students who successfully completed all of the projects and showed that they ran were awarded the certificate that they could then use in any resume. My district is trying to increase the amount of experiences students are given for job and college readiness for PA State Act 339. So the experiences in coding and computer science will give them more confidence in working on computers, and some confidence with job readiness skills.
Once students finalized the projects, they began to investigate the math and history of fractal geometry, a mathematical definition of the patterns seen in nature. Computer science has used fractals to create more and more realistic computer generated imagery in video games and movies. Students got to investigate logarithms to define the fractal dimension and took in-depth looks at how the math has changed how we look at the similarities in nature. For the last four years, I have been implementing and developing this two week unit before Christmas break. Leading up to students creating a holiday Sierpinski Tree. I hope to one day inspire my students to investigate fractals even more, because the math behind it is very interesting.
Ever read the story, "If You Give a Mouse A Cookie" by Laura Numeroff? I had not until I married an elementary school teacher, and read the book she had in her classroom. Several years ago after reading the book I had an idea that was going to allow me to use the story for my students as well. What could a Geometry Teacher do with a children's book you may ask? Well it's simple, the entire book is written as conditional statements, if p then q. In my second unit in the school year, Reasoning and Proofs, we delve into the mechanics of writing conditional statements, their converses, inverses, even contrapositives, and using the symbols to write these statements. The statements are used throughout my course to write and prove postulates, properties, theorems and corollaries. Students immerse themselves in the logic of the statements and decide whether or not there is a truth value to a given statement.
6th Period Starting the Project
When I originally designed my project I had students write their own book and draw illustrations in it. But now as I am becoming more tech savvy and more digitally in-tuned with my students needs. I figured why not adapt the use of computers to make a PowerPoint of the book? The end goal is to make Google Slides the tool we use. But until students can log-in to a true Google Account and collaborate with students on the use of Google Apps, I am stuck with what little true collaboration my students and I have now. Students are going to have to write their own Conditional Statement Story Project, much like "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." The requirements are that the story has 10 conditional statements, 4 original statements, 2 converses, 2 inverses and 2 contrapositives that flow together much like the story I read to them Tuesday. Students will then work in pairs to write their story and illustrate it with pictures from the web. I have a Google Slide set up to show them the proper uses of a Google Image Search to utilize photos for their presentation that have permission to reuse and distribute the image. I added this component of Digital Citizenship to promote the Creative Commons that many other students already know about.
Since students could not access Google Slides from the network computers we were utilizing, I then had to change gears in my planning and have all students create their stories using Microsoft PowerPoint. They then uploaded their typed rough draft and final PowerPoint presentation to my Dropbox account. My Wiki page linked here allowed them access to the links I provided for my Dropbox, where I could then add the presentations to my Google Drive and convert them to Google Slides to easily share online. One key characteristic of being an educator is that I am very flexible and while I would like to continue my journey in learning and utilizing Google Apps, I know that there are tools out there already that help me with technically updating my craft.
7th Period Starting the Project
Wednesday I was observed by my administrator while students were working on this project and so I am using this post as my reflection piece. (Lesson Plan Here) Some thoughts I had while thinking back on my activity are; I would like to change my requirements for the rough draft for next year by making students label their statements, and also have them put the labels in the notes section of their PowerPoint or Google Slide. Although most students completed a nice cover page some needed to be asked to do so, so next year I am going to add a cover page section into the rubric. I feel students worked really hard on their stories, had good questions about the project, and I chose some of the best ones to share below.
Please read and enjoy the great things these students accomplished while writing, creating and learning online.
