Google Day #1

So I introduced the Google Days project in my Precalc class last Friday.  I tried my best to get the students excited without telling them what we were doing on Friday.  I posted signs up around the entire school that said "I know what Mr. Doudican did last summer!!" I even teased them and asked them if they had asked him and figured out what the big deal was all about. Of course he didn't give anything away because on Friday during class he presented to the class what he did this summer.  He worked with a friend of his from Google on a project that is to be released soon.  (I can't actually say what he did until it goes live in a couple weeks.) Let me just say that I think we're off to a great start with the project.  The students shared their ideas for a project, or a topic they were interested in, and I think that there is definite potential here.  I think after Friday the students had a better idea of the type of things that would be appropriate for this project. I also gave them this after we introduced what we are going to try to do in this class.

I'm still really excited about this project.  Next we need to have the students officially submit their topic/idea and we will assign project advisors after that.

As always, your comments are welcomed!

Helping Students Become Problem Solvers...

The question that we’ve been thinking hard about all summer is “How do we get kids to become better learners”?  Our students are pretty successful at solving problems, but many don’t even know where to begin the process of problem solving.  If you have an easy solution to this, send it our way!  Until then, here’s what we have been discussing…

• My guess is that since this is only our second entry, you’ve read our first one which means you’ve read about our “Google Days” implementation in an honors Precalc course.  Since then we have done a lot of decision making about how we want to implement this well.  Here’s what we’ve got so far:

• Students will be introduced to the topic by reading the abstracts and introductions of various research papers we find out there in cyberspace.  We are trying to compile papers written by staff (not necessarily math teachers) to help students connect, even if only by a little, with the content.  Our goal is that this will trigger curiosity in students and they will begin to wonder and research for themselves.
• Students will work with and advisor to write an abstract on a topic of their choosing (yes, total freedom!), due mid-fall.
• At the end of semester 1 we will host a “Math Fair” where students will display their research/projects/constructions/whatever they choose to do for family, students, and other teachers.
  More to come on the “Google Days” later…

• What about students not in honors Precalc, you ask?  Sometimes I think that recalling things you’ve learned is like recalling a memory – we are trying to get students to be able to put themselves back into the moment they learned a specific skill or idea.

How are we doing this?  High stakes projects!  Many have done “Barbie Bungee” in their classes where students create a linear model for the number of rubber bands needed to drop Barbie from a certain height.  When we did this our kids were graded on how close their Barbie got to the ground.  If a Barbie died the students simply received an F.  The day of the “drop” students were checking and double-checking their work, all afraid that their dolls would die.  We actually had students in tears when their Barbie hit the ground because the kids were so invested in the project.  My guess is students will always remember this project and the process they went through to solve the problem.

We’ve got lots of other ideas for classes other than Algebra.  This year in Algebra 2/Trig we did an Illuminations activity for rational functions that also had the same affect.

Ideally we’d like to do one of these types of projects in each class each quarter.

Our goal is that throughout the year students will become invested in the process of solving problems.  We’ll see how that goes…!

Why We Started This...

I have been a so called "lurker" for a few years now.  I've enjoyed the benefits of reading other math teachers' blogs and borrowing their ideas.  Through reading the blogs, I decided to open a twitter account and have enjoyed where that has taken me as well.  For some time I have wanted to start a blog, but never thought I could contribute anything of value to the mathblogosphere.  Well three things changed that thinking for me:

1. I'm not doing this alone.  Another teacher and I will be tag-teaming this endeavor and hopefully between the two of us you'll be able to get something halfway decent out of this blog.   
2. Sam gave us the kick in the pants we needed with his call for new bloggers.  My colleague and I were talking about starting a blog all summer so I guess this is what we needed.  
3. In my Precalc class we're starting a new project-based learning idea that was inspired by Sam's MV Calculus projects, and also by a TED talk on motivation.  I definitely wanted to record how this idea pans out, and I'm hoping that a blog will be the best way to do that.

I guess I'll try to give a very brief description of what we're going to try to do in Precalc, but I'm sure this will be a work in progress all year.  First off, the class is a Junior level course, and it's the only section in the school.  (There are other Precalc courses, but those are mostly seniors.)  For the first time this year we are going to track these students to go into an AP Calc BC course the following year and they'll be the only students in this course.  Thus our thinking is that we can make this course different.  If you watched the TED talk I linked above it talks about how Google has "20% days"where their employees have to spend 20% of their working time not working on work! Ha!  I should have went and worked for them.  Actually another teacher in my school spent this summer working with a friend who works for Google on one of his 20% projects.  So through all of this we decided to implement "Google Days" in my Precalc class.  (Google, please don't sue us!)  I don't think that we'll be able to do a Google Day every Friday, so maybe we'll do 10% and do every other Friday or something.  The students will have all year to work on one project or more depending on how this all plays out.  Each student will have an Advisor, a math teacher who will help oversee the project, and I'm envisioning total freedom (fingers crossed) on what they turn in for a grade.  It's going to be a a big undertaking but we're all very excited about this.  If it works well this year, we're going to try to implement it in other classes next year.

There are some things that we need to think about as we begin:

• How do we introduce this?  What is the structure going to be like? We need to have this down soon!  School starts in just over 3 weeks.
• How do we create a common rubric that is flexible enough to adapt to many different types of projects (i.e. skits, papers, physical constructions, etc.)
• How do we get the students excited about a topic?  There's so much out there that they probably don't know (and that we as teachers don't know either!) so how do we create the desire to always dig deeper and keep learning about their topic even when the going gets tough?  Also, how do we incorporate challenging math topics when these students haven't had Calculus yet?

It feels great to get this blog going.  Thanks Sam for initiating this!