CAHOKIA MOUNDS FIELD TRIP

We had a great time on our field trip last Friday. The weather was perfect, and the students showed wonderful behavior. We appreciated being serenaded by Hannah Burns' grandfather and friend who work there. They played Native American music while we ate lunch. Enjoy these pictures! 

Students with Personal Device Activity

We had a day recently where the students were able to use their cell phone in my math class.  I wanted them to use their cell phone as a calculator for a few things we were doing in class.  I also had them look up formulas's to help them find the areas of three shapes  (Trapezoid, Circle, and a Parallelogram) .  About 3/4 of them had their cell phones with them.  The beginning of class went fine.  Toward the middle of class, I could tell that several were either texting or e-mailing.  When this was happening, two different students got behind on our conversation and wanted me to repeat what we just did for them.  Those without devices were content early to use a calculator and a textbook to look things up.  Halfway through class, those without devices were looking off a device of someone close to them.  a few groups sharing a device got side tracked a few times looking at things other than what we were looking at. 
     Overall, I liked the use of devices.  I think the more a teacher uses them, the easier the expectations are for the students to grasp.  This was the first time I used devices this year, so my students were not sure what they could and could not do.  This will naturally improve the more you make devices part of your classroom.

Unconference Thoughts

Although I didn't get the classes that I originally signed up for, I did enjoy the Unconference.  Somehow, I thought I was signing up for classes and they didn't take.  I found out two day before Unconference that I had zero classes selected.  I really enjoyed the classes I went to.  I think I will use several things that I learned, such as the website which allows you to conduct class polls with students using their cell phones.  I also found out how to make a QR code reader.  I thought that it would be a rather lengthy process making it unattractive, but it was pretty easy.  I look forward to having this again in the future.  Hopefully by then I will be able to correctly save my classes that I want to attend.

Unconference takeaways

Each of the the last 2 years have have enjoyed and learned from my unconference experience.  I always enjoy the camaraderie of the Lindbergh staff and information shared within.  This year I attended an Intro to Pinterest as it has been the topic of lots of lunchroom banter over the last year.  While I was impressed with the visual ease of viewing and pinning things, I realized I could easily get lost in it all and therefore had previously resisted.   The other course I attended was a Moodle course, as I had not yet created a Moodle since the new version was implemented.  Moodle is always an enlightening experience, as the potential for and uses of are limitless.  I want to use it initially as yearly planbook of materials, especially as the Math department enters a curriculum writing year.  I figure this would be an ideal year to create a new moodle as we shift to new curriculum and new  CCSS standards.  I can simply drop lesson plans notes, videos, powerpoints, and all other resources in there as I find and use them.  I feel with Moodle I can finally have all resources combined in a single location.

Elite 3 - Tic-Tac-Toe (Join Twitter)

I joined Twitter recently.  The process was easy enough.  Since setting up, I have 19 followers and following about 160 others.  I have a good mix of personal interest things combined with school / work related accounts.  I have enjoyed the ease of getting news and seeing other interesting articles that I normally would not be able to find.  I also like the up to date sports information that I get.  I have several school/work related accounts that have some good information on it.  I would like to find some other accounts to follow that have good school information on it.