Tabletop Twitter

Today was the first day of class with my Math 9 class.  I have been agonizing over what to do to open the year with them.  The last three years, I have started the first day with the question: Why do we learn math? We go from individual brainstrorming to partners to groups to whole class.  Since the content starts to get fairly abstract this year, I want kids to start to add to their reasons for learning math (not just to cook and balance the checkbooks, but also about modelling, making sense of the world and making good arguments, etc). 

The activity has gone really well each year--so well in fact that as I've shared it in the department other teachers have started using it as well.  Sounds like a great thing, until you realize that most of these ninth graders did the "Why do we learn math?" activity in both seventh and eighth grades.

But it's such a good question to get them thinking about!  What could I do? 

I don't remember where I read about "Silent Conversations" as a classroom participation tool--possibly on a blog or in the NCTM magazine.  Please comment if you know who coined the term!  The idea is that each student has a colored marker, there are several pieces of butcher paper around with questions or prompts on them and students have conversations about the topic just through writing to each other.  I've wanted to do it for awhile, but hadn't found a good topic yet.

As a new Twitter user, I'm still learning about #'s and @'s, but I assumed that many of the students use Twitter.  So, I framed our Silent Conversations as Twitter conversations.  I encouraged #s and @s and let them go wild responding to each other.  I had students write their name on a piece of butcher paper with their color so that I could track who wrote what, and I reminded them that nothing on social media is anonymous, so this wouldn't be either.  They moved around the room in groups of 4.  I set a timer for 3 mins and had them rotate each time it went off.

We had four prompts:
-Why do we learn math?
-What makes a good teacher?
-What will make class a good learning environment?
-How to be a good math student.

 At the end of the activity I had students take photos of the poster they started with.  Each of those four students are to summarize the content.  They can do their summary in any format they want (paragraph, mind map, wordle, prezi...).  One student asked if she could summarize it with Twitter and take screen shots.  Another asked if he could make a clay sculpture.  I gave them both emphatic yes's, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes in tomorrow!

The students were super engaged through the whole activity and left feeling really excited about the class.  When a student teacher came by she said, "oh, is this Tabletop Twitter?"  So, I guess it's a thing!

How I Organize this Vast World

Before going to TMC, the workshop that I was most looking forward to was on how other people organize the vast stream of information coming in.  And that was before I started to use Twitter.  Yikes!  Tina (@crstn85) and Anna (@Borschtwithanna) both had some great ideas with their DropBox and EverNote solutions.  I'm fortunate that I've used some of these tools already, so the learning curve isn't quite as steep as it is for some other folks.  My task now is to figure out HOW I will use these tools and incorporate them into a smooth work flow that helps to alleviate the overwhelm.  Even if I can't read everything and research everything and learn everything all at the same time, at least I can find ways to store some of the most interesting things so that I can find them when I'm ready to investigate them later.

There are so many options for organizing, which is amazing, but also overwhelming in its own right.  I think I've gotten it narrowed down to about eight apps/programs that I'm considering using/patching together in some way.  I want a system that flows for me, is not too complicated, and does not try to force an app or program to do something that it is not really designed for (like, you could use EverNote for everything, but it doesn't do everything well, sort of like trying to use inductive reasoning for every proof).

Here are the tools that are likely in my toolkit:
Gmail
I have been using it for seven years, is super easy for me to just archive everything that comes through my box.  I work at a Google school, so my school e-mail has the same interface and I can toggle between them.  I have kept a "reading/watching" tag in gmail that I use to store things that I want to read or watch in the future.  I'm hoping to convert that to Pocket and not use Gmail for that purpose anymore.  Gmail is good at email and at storing correspondence in a searchable way; I want to use it for that

Evernote
I have dabbled in Evernote over the past year or so.  I know that it's super powerful in its search capabilities and will work to store all different types of media.  I'm planning to use a web clipper to store things that I read that I want to access later (lesson ideas, really inspiring posts, etc).   I also plan to use Evernote to keep track of lists of future ideas that I have, not things that have active action items, but future ideas (like: explore formative assessment, read a book about symbolic logic, play with Blockly, etc), sort of like a list of things to play with when I have time.  Evernote is good at collecting web content and thoughts that I can access when I need them; I want to use it for that.

Pocket
When I come across content that I want to read later (through Twitter or Feedly or e-mails or Facebook) I'll store it here.  Pocket can send full articles (with cabinets and tags selected) to Evernote, so items that I want to save after reading are easy to file. Pocket is good at saving things to read later; I want to use if for that.

Twitter
I'm still learning about this medium as I've been using it for less than a week.  My sense is that I will use it to find content, to interact with people in real time in a public space, and I'll use it to participate more fully in the MTBoS.  So far I have starred tweets that seem clever to me.  I don't want to use the star system to store things that I want to read later as I want it all in one place (Pocket).  I don't know yet exactly what Twitter is good at, but I want to use it for that.  :-)
11/10/13 Update: I find that I use Twitter to crowdsource ideas and to share the small day to day things that happen in my classroom.

Remember the Milk
My boyfriend introduced me to this incredible task management software about a year ago.  I use it on my phone, iPad and on the computer.  I pay the $25/year to have automatic syncing; it's the only app that I pay for.  I loosely use David Allen's Getting Things Done philosophy to keep lists of things that I need/want to do.  I recently made a "Global Math Department" list to keep track of all of the ideas that I'm having of things that I want to explore.  Since many of these are not actionable yet (I don't know what the next thing that I'll do on them is), I think it would probably be better to store these lists of ideas in EverNote.  We'll see.  RTM is good at helping me remember to do things and to prioritize what I need to do; I want to use it for that.

Dropbox
Just signed up for an account.  After Tina presented her system, I think that this would be the best way for me to collect both my personal and my school files all in one place that's accessible from anywhere.  It will take a bit of work to organize everything, but I think it will be worth it.  Dropbox is good at storing files; I want to use it for that.

Feedly
Started using when gReader quit on us.  I don't love it, but it seems to do the job alright.  I'm considering checking out the Newsify app as some folks seem to like that for other devices.  I hope to not use starring too much in Feedly as I'll feel fractured between different systems.  If I want to read something later, it should go in Pocket.  If I want to keep something because I think I'll use it later, I should clip it into EverNote.  Unfortunately you have to pay for Feedly to send directly to Evernote.  I send to Pocket and then to EverNote as a work-around.  Feedly is good at aggregating blog content; I want to use it for that.

GoodReads 
I made a GoodReads account years ago for personal use, but mostly have not used it.  Several TMC folks are talking about using it for math-y books.  I'm considering using it, but at the moment I use Remember the Milk to keep track of my "books to read" list.  GoodReads is good at helping to connect people who want to share what they're reading and find other interesting things to read.  I need to decide if the interactive quality is worth the hassle of adding another app/program to the list here.  If I decide to do it, GoodReads is good for tracking lists of books to read and finding out what others are reading; I want to use it for that.

I really love thinking about this stuff and talking about it, so please ask questions and make suggestions in the comments!

Twitter Math Joy

This past week I spent four days with the most inspiring, innovative, welcoming, joyful, intelligent, hard working group of teachers (well, people in general) ever.  I had the distinct privilege of attending Twitter Math Camp '13, a gathering of about 115 math teachers who use Twitter and blogs to connect, collaborate and support each other. 

I have been reading math teacher blogs for about four years.  I met a friend (Ben Blum Smith http://researchinpractice.wordpress.com/) of a math teacher co-worker at a picnic who gave me his business card, with his blog listed.  I saw that many of his posts included links to other bloggers.  I read several of Sam Shah's posts and quickly thought, "wow, this world has some good stuff to offer!"  So, I set up a Google Reader and started some hard-core lurking. 

In recent years I keep hearing people say "the action is all on Twitter."  I'm a late adopter in general...I got my first smart phone less than a year ago, I waited until 2009 to get Facebook, etc.  I like to wait until an app has a ton of reviews before I consider trying it out.  I also have quite a few friends (and I often feel this way too) who try hard to have less technology in their life.  I have mostly stopped using Facebook recently as I don't want the time suck of browsing things without fully engaging and I don't like having so much screen time.

And then in walks this whole MTBoS (Math Twitter Blog 'o Sphere).  I arrived at Twitter Math Camp with a handle (the word for your name on Twitter) created, but having never tweeted and not yet following anyone.  I figured that if I enjoyed the gathering, then I would consider trying it out.  By Friday morning, I was tweeting and trying to find how to follow this glorious community. 

Much of what the general public dislikes about Twitter does not seem to be how people are using it in the MTBoS.  The medium and the community allows me to connect with several hundred like-minded, helpful, passionate, intelligent math teachers.  Wow!  I work at an incredibly small school (80 kids in grades 7-12, one full time math teacher, two part time math teachers), so finding this world where I can share ideas with a Global Math Department is so liberating and fascinating!

I would like to write more about all of the sessions that I participated in at TMC13, both so that I can remember what I learned, and also to share with other folks.  At the moment, that is feeling somewhat overwhelming, so I decided to just write about why I feel so much joy in joining this splendid community.

Throughout much of my adolescence, I was frustrated that I didn't have peers who wanted to talk about ideas, theories and connections (about everything, really) on the same level that I was excited and ready to converse at.  I went to a small rural high school, and there were only a few of us in each grade level who really cared about academics.  The summer between my sophomore and junior years, I attended a weekend-long women's leadership conference at Wells College.  I met all of these young women, and incredible counselors, who all wanted to talk about ideas with me.  Oh my gosh!  Oh my gosh!  These people were as excited as I was to geek out about so many things and to use a large vocabulary!  I had my first all-nighter, I couldn't sleep as my mind was expanding so quickly!  When I came home, I decided to get out of high school as quickly as possible and applied to attend college a year early and didn't do my senior year of high school.

I say all of this because I feel like that was the last time that I remember being this inspired and having my mind opened that radically, 14 years ago at age sixteen!  This is major!  One of the other attendees described it as entering puberty to come to TMC; it's appealing to get to finally be an adult, but gosh is it overwhelming to learn how everything works!

So, now I'm trying to integrate this amazing experience into my day to day life.  It's summer, so my schedule is somewhat more flexible, and I want to follow this passion and foster these incredible connections, but I also worry about how I will be able to maintain my participation once the school year starts.

I also have a notebook full...like we're talking twenty-five pages of single spaced writing...of ideas and leads on things that I want to study, people I want to connect with, programs I want to try, puzzles to explore.  It's remarkably exciting and also cripplingly overwhelming.  So, today, I'm spending my time thinking about how I will process this influx of information and inspiration.  I know that when I have places to put things, I feel more comfortable and able to sink into newness; I like order.

"I Was Never Good At Math Either"

Next Tuesday night is Parents Night.  We set up as departments around the school and parents move as grade level groups to each room (so we'll get all of the ninth grade parents together for instance).  We get ten minutes with each group of parents.  A lot of other departments hand out syllabi and describe their courses.  I wouldn't want to just hand out syllabi on my first day of class with my students, so I don't do it with their parents either.

I run a class.  I have a warm up on the board followed by a list of what I plan to get accomplished that day and then their "homework" (to read the syllabus and e-mail me with any questions).  My warm-up is usually something that their children did in the past week, preferably something without a lot of prior knowledge necessary.  I want them to experience the fast-paced energetic focused energy that their kids see every day (or at least I hope is what the kiddos experience).  Most of them appreciate the shift from being talked at, but some are definitely uncomfortable.

"I don't know how to do math," "I don't remember any of this stuff," "We weren't here for the lesson."  These are all common comments that I hear as parents wrestle with algebra and calculus.  I give them lots of encouragement, don't let them give up, suggest that they help each other, but make sure that they each understand the concepts.  It gives the parents a sense of how I help their student when they are struggling in class.

After our warm up, the "In Class" schedule usually includes a section on "Your attitudes about math."  I remind parents that their attitude and feeling toward math and how they talk about it will influence their children.  I implore them to please be careful to give messages of encouragement and not an "I never got this either."

I'm sure that I will have more questions about SBG for the ninth grade and about our connection to UVM for calculus, but I want to keep the focus on how we deal with discomfort and what we want to model for our children. 

First Day

We all know the days...the, "who am I to think I could be a teacher?" "why did I go into this anyway?" "how can I get through another day like this one?" 

At the beginning of the year when everything is new and shiny and exciting, we can ride the wave of adrenaline and forget about those days when we feel particularly challenged and exhausted and incapable. 

Yesterday was my first day of school with kids.  I had the ninth grade in the morning, and gosh were they doing their best to impress me.  I work at a tiny school (80 students in grades 7-12 this year) and the 7/8 grade math teacher speaks of me as a legend that students are preparing for.  "You need to be ready for Jasmine next year"  "Jasmine wouldn't stand for not showing your work like that" etc.  I certainly hold high expectations for my students and launch right into academics on day one, but I'm not sure that I have quite the intensity that my reputation brings. 

I started Math9 (a combo of algebra & geometry) with the question "Why do we learn math?"  I have obviously thought quite deeply about this question myself and I always look forward to hearing what the students have to say about it as well.  The best response this year was "to keep the world organized."  Many of them also spoke about it being powerful to lean a universal language.  I start the year with this activity to encourage students to think of math as more than "when am I going to use THIS."  I want to encourage them to see math as more than for cooking and careers and sports scores (though these things are also important of course), and I hope that they will appreciate the deeper problem solving and pattern seeking that is the beauty of math. I left class feeling energized, encouraged and excited for the school year!

In Calculus we started with the question "What is Calculus?"  They had a few minutes to write their own thoughts and then we shared as a class (the class has only 8 students this year).  Every student had some great ideas to share; they had clearly heard about this forboding subject for years!  The problem was not in their responses to the prompt, but in the way that they responded to one another.  This class has a reputation for snarkiness and sarcasm and they lived right up to it on day one, laughing at one anothers contributions and making comments.  I am clearly going to have to lay out some more clear expectations tomorrow.

Yesterday was not one of those days where I question my qualifications to teach, but calculus class reminded me of those times.  It got me thinking about how I cope when I'm feeling particularly down. I work at a school with a really incredible faculty who care for each other deeply.  My first line of defense yesterday was to seek out teachers I admire to ask how they have worked with this class in the past, and get some empathy and help with problem solving.  Coming home I did some writing for myself to process the day and then got engrossed in cleaning and organizing tasks at home.  For me, finding order out of chaos at home (a closet or shelf) helps to remind me that I can be in control and the craziness is not taking over everywhere.

When I have those hard days, I want to be able to draw on the memories of "keeping the world organized" and other insightful moments to remind myself of the important work that I'm doing.

Out of Lurking

I am a lurker.  Almost three years ago, I fell into the world of math teacher bloggers.  A previous co-worker sent me a link to a friend's blog (I wish I could remember who that gateway blogger was).  I was mesmerized by his ideas and then I saw his list of favorite blogs, and figured, "if he has great ideas he probably reads interesting people."  So, I started a literature crawl of sorts and stayed up until 3am exploring the great world of passionate, innovative, creative math teachers all over the globe.  I had done more professional development in that six hours than in the last two years combined.  My friends laugh lovingly when I tell them that I read math teacher blogs to rejuvenate in the evening, and I'm looking forward to telling them that I'm not only reading them, but that I have one of my own.

Ten years ago I studied aboard in England and in order to keep up with my family and friends in the US, I kept a LiveJournal, basically a primitive blog.  I loved to keep lists of things that I would write about in the computer lab...long lists of stories and moments that I wanted to make sure that I captured to share with my loved ones.  Although I have always loved to keep a personal journal, something about the accountability of the public record helped me to experience my life in a richer fashion...making notes to flesh out later.  As life has become more busy and I have had more people to process my thoughts with, the written record of my experience has been missing.

I took this summer off from direct service with students for the first time since I was 14, and part of that was that I also took a break from reading blogs.  Last week as I was working on fueling my fledgling excitement for the beginning of the school year, I remembered that blogs would be a great way to get back into the groove.  When I'm just going to read one or two blogs, Sam Shah is on my A1 list, so up came this blogging challenge.  For three years I have been lurking and peering in, snatching some great ideas and using this community to help me up when I was feeling down on teaching.  Bowman in Arabia helped me to take that last step to dive into SBG last year.  [I plan to dedicate a whole post to how I use it in my classroom on this blog soon.]  I feel so grateful to all of these people who I have never met.  And although I'm not sure what I'll write about or if it will feel useful to others, it will allow me to process my experience with more intentionality and give me a space to keep a written record of my ideas and thoughts. 

Thank you for joining me on this journey of coming out of the lurking closet and becoming incredible math teachers!