Mr. Ball

Micro Societies

2006-11-26T10:35:00.000-08:00

This is sort of a shout out to anyone who might have been thinking about this or who has read up on these ideas else where. I'm happy to say that chances to do research and read are few and far between since Madeline is taking up most of my time (waking and sleeping). If anyone knows of any research in the area of micro societies/values in the classroom and in the video games give me a shout out. Yeah pretty vague request I know.

I've been thinking a bit lately about the artificial society I create in my classroom. The rules that I have established with my students and the freedoms they enjoy when they respect the rules. My micro-society is not a good representation of the community outside my classroom (heck school's) doors but I feel that it is a good start based on the needs of the students and the expectations placed on me by parents.

I haven't used the games the I listed way back in June to teach with but have instead started giving them out to the grade five students at my school for two weeks at a time. They have to promise to come in and talk with me about the game once they have played it and if they get bored they need to discuss that as well.

I've been questioning them on their perceptions on the games 'realness' and how close the game is to what it is meant to represent. A few have had troubles with the lines of reality and fantasy in games like SimCity and Civilizations. They assume that the thin layer of control and perception they have is all that they need when they play the game. Many of these views are artificial and that is easy enough to see with many fantasy games but with the simulation games students seem to trust the content more and aren't as likely to question it. Without feeding them the answer I have been trying to draw out that these are just someone's artificial representations which (like the rules in my classroom) are flawwed. I'm hoping that they can learn things fom the mechanics of the game. More than just the old story in Sim City about Raising Taxes= Angry Citizens. I want them to learn that raising taxes means more in the game but even more still in real life.

I guess that's how the rules work in my classroom. They teach students what is important in class and hopefully those same things transfer out to real life. Especially the no running in the halls rule!

Long Time no Post and Baby Ball

2006-11-13T19:52:00.000-08:00

Things are going very well at St. Leo lately and even better at the Ball house hold. Mrs. Ball and I are now the proud parents of a baby girl. She is a great blessing to our lives and the main reason I have not posted in a long time. I made the choice to sleep rather than post.

The other reason that I have not posted for a while is that I've been preparing the grade threes to use literacy centers in the morning. The class takes great joy in the freedom of expression that this offers them in their reading and writing. I've even worked in a videogame center for them to use. Most of the games are Edutainment stlye but the games are varied and open ended enough that no one is getting bored. I have wanted to do centers since my first year of teaching but I didn't have the resources. Now that I have built up my personal library to 940 books and I've started taking inservicing on Lit. centers I figured now is the time.

While I'm typing I thought I should post up this link to a paper that Mr. MacKenty has linked to.

Procrastinating and Prenatal

2006-09-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

I've been putting off my capping project as the Mrs. and I prepare for the arrival of our baby in November. I think that this is the first blog post about the baby that I have made. Mrs. Ball is starting to prepare the nest which really means that I get to move things around. I've very excited about the baby. Every morning I get to feel it kicking and it is amazing! We are very thankful that we have been blessed with a child. There is an ultrasound picture from June below. I can't tell if it is a boy or a girl. Post if you have a guess or a name.

I am still thinking and writing notes about the game but I haven't done any coding since I left the U of A in August. The start of the new school is more than a full time job. I'm thankful for Raj over at http://www.boora.ca/blog/ (formerly of http://idarknight.blogspot.com/) for his comments and suggestions. He always has good insights into topics and great book suggestions!

Youth Choir

2006-08-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Here are the sites that the Youth choir are going to be exploring. If they have more they would like added they can leave the link in the comment box for others to find.

Opsound.org - Search through this open source music catalog for tunes that have an African sound.

Music Notes: Interactive

LostSounds.com Interesting use of everyday instruments to make some pretty cool music. Check out the html Sounds page to see and hear some of the cool instruments they are using.

Musical Mysteries: BBC Schools This is a fun musical mystery game where you need to find musical clues so you can solve the (you guessed it!) mystery.

ArtsAlive - The National Arts Center

DSO Kids (Dallas Symphony Orchestra)
SFS Kids - San Francisco Kid's Site

Instruments
Games - Check out the interval game. Can you name a Major Six?

Teacher Session

2006-08-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

This afternoon at Singspiration I worked with some music teachers and choir conductors on different ways they could infuse technology into their daily practice. The topics we covered are included on the PowerPoint slide that is linked here.

Gerhard's Music Links

http://choralnet.org/indexen.shtml
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.rideaumusic.com/
http://www.jwpepper.com/catalog/welcome.jsp
http://www.handlo-music.com/
http://www.halleonard.com/
http://www.gladdemusic.com/
http://www.festival-singers.org.nz/download.htm
http://www.cypresschoral.com/
http://www.choralnet.org/
http://www.sbmp.com/
http://www.canasg.com/canasgnew2catalogue.htm
http://www.earthsongsmus.com/
http://www.banksmusicpublications.cwc.net/
http://www.albertachoralfederation.ca/

Movie Maker

2006-08-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

Much of the music, activities, and crafts students are doing at Singspiration are based around Africa. Today we're going to start building videos based on the theme of Arica. Here are some sites we will use to get the pictures and movies for our videos.

www.creativecommons.org/image With CreativeCommoons we will primarily be using Flickr.

www.google.com We will use the image search on google.com

Students can explore the regions of Africa courtesy of this PBS website. When we do our searches we'll be using keywords like:
Africa, African, Elephant, Rainforest, Savanna or Lion. There are many other words that relate to Africa. If you can think of any try them out in the search engines.

I would like to see how many students are able to tell a story using the pictures they find. Not an easy task.

Tomorrow we will put music to the images. Hopefully we'll have time to burn the CDs so that we can take the videos home.

Singspiration Music Camp

2006-08-13T06:40:00.000-07:00

This week I'll be at the Singspiration music camp helping the campers to music videos with computers. To start with though we're going to take a tour of some websites I've found that deal with music.

Musical Mysteries: BBC Schools This is a fun musical mystery game where you need to find musical clues so you can solve the (you guessed it!) mystery.

ArtsAlive - The National Arts Center

DSO Kids (Dallas Symphony Orchestra)
SFS Kids - San Francisco Kid's Site

Music Notes: Interactive -
Instruments
Games - Check out the interval game. Can you name a Major Six?

LostSounds.com Interesting use of everyday instruments to make some pretty cool music. Check out the html Sounds page to see and hear some of the cool instruments they are using.

The 'Game' plan

2006-07-31T15:49:00.000-07:00

Things are moving along very quickly today as I prepare to move into the Computing Sciences building at the U of A. I've started looking at ways I can plan my video game. Prensky's sets out five priorities for teachers and trainers as they begin to build the tools they cannot find.
1. Motivation- I couldn't agree more, the game must be fun!
2. Reflection- This is where the game becomes more than just a skill and drill fact practicer. This is where students personalize their knowledge.
3. Individualization- Planning for the many choices and possibilities that students may seek out will be a challenge. I think my post on gender difference fits into this category. Prensky makes a point of asking "Are there alternatives for those who may choose not to play?"
4. Creation- I need to move on to chapter 15 to learn more about his idea of creation.
5. Content- This should be an educator's number one concern. Does it have a curriculum fit? I am paid by my school board to teach the curriculum. Content must be melded with motivation. So many of the edutainment games I have played with students have loads of content but are a complete snooze-fest! If I wanted my students to nap I would keep them in their desks and talk at them all day.

Educational Computer Game Production (Where to start?)

2006-07-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

I've started the planning process for my capping project.I met yesterday with my program head Mike Carbonaro and Elaine Greidanus who will be helping me with my paper. I'm going to hook up with the Computing Sciences department at the University of Alberta to work on building a computer game using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora tool set.

My biggest worry right now is the engagement level of the game. Will I be able to have my students buy into the characters and situations I'm going to create. I'm trying to focus on the question of "who you hope to become" (Squire & Jenkins, 2003, p. 5) for my students. In this question and its answer I see the best hope for capturing and holding their interest. I also think that this question will be the hardest to answer because I'm dealing with two different gender interests.

When I have played games I'm usually focussed on becoming the strongest/fastest/smartest hero with the coolest weapons and spells. After reading "From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games" I'm feeling a little unsure about being able to reach female players. I'll plug away at it, after all I've got a whole ten months.

I have to say that I became most excited about the game production after reading an article presented at the DIGRa

Not exactly APA but if you need more email or leave me a comment. If you want the Carbonaro article email me.

Carbonaro et al. (2006) Adapting a Commercial Role-Playing Game for Educational Computer Game Production.
Cassell, J. & Jenkins, H., eds., (2005?) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat. Cambridhge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Squire, K, &Jenkins H. (2003) Harnessing the Power of Games in Education: InSight, Volume 3.

Pat Redhead

2006-07-24T09:32:00.000-07:00

Pat Redhead:
Pat offered up her wisdom and experiences in realtion to 7 things:
1. her attempt at defining of technology and how it can be infused- The ICT outcomes are broader then the use of computers. In Pat's work with Alberta Ed. she has tried to make the technology outcomes embrace new technologies, which includes the analog technologies.

2. definition of integration- the ICT curriculum should be infused not treated as a seperate course. ICT should be like a tea bag that infuses itself into the water. Technology should add to the flow of the learning.

As I sit and write this now I wish that I had taken more notes in the classroom. She had lots of experience to share as a classroom teaher, a policy maker and a contractor higher by Alberta Ed.

The Fellowship of the Microchip- Turkle, S. (2004) Here are some of the notes my group made on this article atMaster's Wiki.

Dr. Bette Gray

2006-07-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Dr. Bette Gray the Director, Stakeholder Technology Branch, Alberta Education will be in tomorrow. I'm going to try and think of some questions about how the Stakeholder Technology Branch of Alberta Education can support me in my research around video games and transparency.

Dr. Gray is investing her time in Alberta Education so that she can make changes from the top down. Dr. Gray used the Polo Parable as an introduction to tech integration. I feel that her vision of integration/infusion matched many of my cohort members idea of how we should use ICT. The trouble is that many of us have to deal with leadership who are sometimes just happy that the network is up. We discussed the troubles with assessment of ICT outcomes and the lack of clear examples teachers are given. Apparently Dr. Gray has been working on a paper at Alberta Ed. that has shares ideas on how teachers can better integrate and assess. I'll be watching for it.

Right now I've got two things on my plate. I'm building my rubric for assessing COTS games and their use in the classroom and I'm working on my Contentious issue paper for my Humanities and Tech class: The contentious issue paper is based around:
"The Fellowship of the Microchip." In Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millenium, Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco and Desiree Baolian Qin-Hilliard (eds.). Berkeley:University of California Press/Ross Institute, 2004. (Are there APA guidelines for blogger qoutes, would you trust the qoute?)

There are many aspects of the digital games which would be negatively effected by transparency. I'm going to take three out of the twelve elements from chapter five of Prensky's book Digital Game Based Learning; Rules, Interaction, and Outcomes and feedback. I only have two pages (single spaced) to bring forward my contentious issue.

The Two presenter day

2006-07-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

Dr. Tom Keenan and Dr. Stan Ruecker

Dr. Tom Keenan presented in the morning about Volitional Cecity. The willingness of people to be blind in the things they do with their personal information. I fell badly that he is a little paranoid about giving out information. Not that I would blame him. I think this is mostly because of the roles he has taken with the Calgary police department that he has a bit of an edge to his trust of the users of his information. My step father is a retired police officer who trusts people lass than my mother the teacher. His experience has changed him in that because he had to deal with 10% of the people 90% of the time (not real math). I think that this would change me also.

Dr. Keenan offers up some good ways we can keep our information safe. One was, when asked to supply a name use a fake one. Almost too easy. He also tried to make us cognizant of the fact that the Law will always lag behind in the 'guidance' of technology.

Dr. Ruecker presented in the afternoon. He is an expert of visual arrangement of content in rich-prospecting browsing interfaces.

He has been working to build visual research environments. He keyed in on showing us non-textual search engines (one was the Sort Pills date base). Another visual one focused on the sorting of people by many factors: First name, Last name, Affiliation, Research Group, Gender, Hair colour, Eye colour, Eye glasses, and facial hair. Tools like these would enable business to have their employees recognize frequent customers. By opening up these searching areas we have opportunities to begin sorting and adding your own comments about these visual images. Dr. Ruecker emphasises the importance of information output.

These interfaces would be great tools as long as there are chances for users to rearrange and edit the groups that might reflect a personal understanding. These tools would allow a user of such a system to demonstrate a better context of use by allowing them to sort and create their own definitions.

Wiki idea: Give it to the First years to manage but still allow the 2nd years to be on it.

2006-07-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

Exploring Wikis

2006-07-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

Speaker for the day- Trevor Doerksen 11:00- 11:30
Virtual Field Trips- Mobility in Education. CEO of Mobovivo. Through Mobovivo he is trying to get the rights of educational videos so he can share out a collection of educational videos on iPods. This tool which so many students are accessing

A lot of his comments line up with the ideas presented in "Everything Bad is Good for You"- written by Steve Berlin Johnston. Students are not dumbing down they are ramping up and they want to communicate, collaboration and be engaged.

I am of the opinion that children are not losing attention span they are just becoming better consumers of information. They have been fed digital media that is built, probably not purposefully, on great pedagogical techniques. Students come to school having experienced good scaffolding and they get bored when teachers and adults cannot help them make further connections.

A qoute from Trevor- "There have never been more educational resources and there have never been more excuses not to use them." What's my excuse? I just need to find the resources so that I can use them!

Wiki article-
"Wide Open Spaces Wikis Ready or Not" by Brian Lamb touched on some interesting applications of Wikis. As a class we talked about multiple ways we could use our wiki. The way it is shaping up currently it seems as though we are building it up to share our capping projects. I think that is will be a valuable experience for us all in relating experiences.
When I think of Wikipedia I am often drawn to the book by Simon Winchester titled “The Meaning of Everything”. This book is the history of the Oxford English Dictionary and writes. The O.E.D. was put together by 89 volunteers (originally 147). The end result is what many consider a well respected resource on the history of the English language.
The Wikipedia is a more broadly based tool than the O.E.D. will ever be.

I started my own class wiki today at https://mrball.wikispaces.com/. I'm not sure how I will use it with my students but it has promise. I know I should go for the curriculum goals first but it's just so cool!

Ray Kurzweil Question-

2006-07-20T12:06:00.000-07:00

As a tech-teacher I often think about how ICT adds value to student learning. I spend time walking home from school pondering tech integration when I get frustrated about its use in classrooms. I'm not sure if it stems from teachers; lack of experience, fear of risk taking, or focus from administration. In my school I have tried many tactics to help with these three barriers.

I feel that Education is far behind in the adaptation of technology for the use of learning. Technology is moving so fast while education and government move like mollasas. This morning our Masters class enjoyed a presentation from Ray kurzweil. We were able to ask him a question about the future of education and its relationship to the increased rate of change in technology. As we listened to Ray Kurzweil's presentation today we came up with a question about the future of education delivery.

Elementary and Secondary Education is not adapting to the exponential changes in technology. In the future how will education adapt and change to meet with student and society's fast paced change?

Ray answered the question by touching on some of these points-
-M.I.T. will soon have its course work online.
-The next shift will be towards virtual reality. The intimate feeling of being together will be there. Kids will be able to share ideas around the world.
-We will have the ability to download knowledge, skills, and experiences. We will have the ability to capture human experiences. The role of a teacher will be that of a mentor. Not just to learn skills and accumulatre knowledge but to guide the learning.

Some thoughts that I would like to set aside for future learning...
Primary source expertise and authentic artifacts- how can I deliver the primary expertise in a cost effective way...
Skype can now allow us to contact experts

Take away from Ms. Charmaine Brooks presentation-
How do we measure the integration of technology?
I felt that the ICT outcomes were on very shakey ground. I'm not sure whether

Phil's top three for tech integration in schools-
Need a champion
- must be able to work with the resistors and calm the overly excited teachers.
- they must know the curriculum
- they have to be able to draw people and build themselves out of a job.

The Met Agency

2006-07-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

I have to put a plug in for an Edmonton Advertising company that I had a chance to work with this past year. It just came to my attention that they have a web page so I thought I would post their link here.

http://www.themetagency.com/index.html

I worked with them as they helped Concordia University College Education Department create a fresh and exciting advertising campaign.

If you need an agency I recommend The Met!

Evidence of Digital Immigrancy

2006-07-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

I've been in my tech classes this past week and I've been baffled by the need of our instructors to have paper copies of our assignments and journal entries. I know that the paper copy is handy to write comments back on but the same can be done in the electronic original. My instructors won't be able to use the paper version of my Excel sheet to plunk in numbers on paper so I feel that its a bit of a loss to have a paper copy. A loss for the trees as well!

First Picture Post- Baby Grapes

2006-07-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

So I went out last night and bought an Olympus E-20n (its a digital camera). I got it from McBain camera here in Edmonton. It was the shelf model and it was missing a USB cord. I'm not sure what it would go for today but I felt I got a deal on it for what I wanted. It has all the features I wanted and more. I'm excited to learn how to really use the camera. I didn't want a point and shoot because the Mrs. and I want to eventualy take a camera course.

Here is my first picture from our garden. I had to use the flash because it was quite dark out and, well, because I don't know how to use the other features. I'm especially proud of the grapes. So far out of the three varieties I have this one, called Beta, is doing the best. I'm growing two others Frontenac and Valiant. In our climate we don't get much of the fun and fancy fruit fresh from the vine. I keep making the outrageous claim that I'll be selling bottles of wine off my front step in a few weeks. Anyway here is the picture...

I'm hoping that this is the start of better grapes and better pictures.

Virtual Manipulatives

2006-07-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

Journal Entry for Wednesday July 4th 2006 is inspired by... Moyer, P, Bolyard, J & Spikell, M. Virtual Manipulatives in the K-12 Classroom. In Proceedings of the International Conference on New Ideas in Mathematics Education. Queensland AU August 2001. pp. 184-187.

The Analogy I found for this article was- "Pin Ball Wizard"- The Who
The Pin ball wizard was deaf, dumb, and blind and he did very well with the steel ball. Some students flourish when they interact with real manipulatives. While this article is pro-use of virtual manipulatives I have a hard time stressing the use of virtual manipulative when they are being manipulated with a mouse or keyboard. I can see the use of virtual manipulatives being valuable if a teacher has a smart board or other way that students can interact with the image. Virtual Manip's are far from their 3D cousins but they are still usable. If a teracher is going to use them in the classroom that teacher will have to defend the use to parents and students. While many of the virtual manipulatives are valuable learning tools I'm not sure that they can be slotted into the manipulative definition for their use.

Group Discussion-
Cathy F. made this analogy about Calculators in the classroom being like Birds who find a birdfeeder. They test and keep coming back because they expect to have the feed there. Have you ever seen a bluejay who didn't have his peanuts! Students can be the same way when they find easy tools.

Morning-
We were given coloured squares (yellow, green, and blue). The yellow and blue were both squares. The green was a rectangle that had one side equal to the blue square and the other green side equal to the yellow square. We were then given the equation 3xSquared + 7xy+2ySquared. We had to gather the tiles into groups according to their value. The blue squares were =x, the green were=xy, and the yellow were=y. We picked out the correct number of each tiles (so we gathered 3 blue, seven green, and 2 yellow. Then the tiles were arranged into a rectangular flag (not a difficult task). We then checked the area of the square which turned out to be (3x+y)(x+2y). It was a great visual representation of quadratic equations!

Zoombini Game- This was a cute challenge that I would love to do with my grade threes. There were ten Zoombinis with different attributes related to what they were having for lunch. Example: A Zoombini with messy hair, one eye, roller skates and a green nose would have for lunch; Milk, Apple, Tacos and popcorn.

I'm working on building a rubric for the video games that I'm going to evaluate. I've been spending my spare time with Civ 3. It's lots of fun and I've had a chance to figure out the 'rules' of the game. I'm going to play one of the scenarios soon and do my marking around that.

I'm very excited to go pick up my wood fired stove tonight! The Mrs. and I bid on it at her grandparents farm auction. We got it for 200 which I thought was a steal. I want to put it in the basement of our house when I finish it. The stove is in perfect condition. I'll load up a picture when I get my new digital camera. Any recommendations on a camera type?

Reflections

2006-07-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

During the next four weeks I'll be posting reflections on my Masters courses. This is a required part of my EDU597 class. I'm happy to share the thoughts and ideas out to everyone. If you have a comment or would like me to clarify please feel free to post away.

Day 1 Number and Operation
Day 2 Patterns and Variables- Today's post...
Day 3 Shape and Space
Day 4 Statistics and Probability

Journal Reflections

2006-07-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

For my journal reflections I've decided to use metaphors based around (loosely) song titles.

The article comes from ISTE: (Collaborative Apprenticeships (2006) by Evan M. Glazers and Kathy Page)

Metaphor for the reading- "Anything you can do... you can do better!"

Teachers challenging their instructional practice in a peer supported community is the theme of this paper. This article was like many leadership papers I've read in the past few months. It sets up the familiar framework for peer teaching/sharing. After experiencing this firsthand in my classroom with ECSD's math consultant I felt that the overview filled many of the valuable points of the preparation, execution, and reflective. The peer instruction centered around the "learning teacher"'s engagement of tech learning through their own choice of instructional focus.

Playing (and still learning)

We had some time to play with the TI-73 graphing calculator. The TI-73 has some fun games that deal with different types of graphing skills. This type of calculator would not be something that I would use with my grade threes. I don't think that I would use these in the K-6 grades. The graphical interface was too chunky for some of the pictures. The vast number of instructions needed to lead students through tasks would be a limiting factor in the use of this tool. I can see how, with it's many add ons the TI-73 can be used to create valuable visual and spatial experiences.

After the TI-73 we went and looked over virtual manipulatives at http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html . These exercises became more manipulate-able (real word?) through the use of the ever popluar SMART board. I'm going to go back and look at some of the things they have there and try to see if they will fit into my plans for next school year.

Overall a very positive day. It was great to see the gang again and to scoop a Mac iBook. Raj over at http://www.idarknight.blogspot.com/ is our T.A.. He's a big Mac addict so I keep complaining I can't right click and whining that my Mac crashed. He doesn't deserve it. ;)

the small things (no caps)

2006-06-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

I'm always thinking about the little things that make life more enjoyable. The one I was thinking about today was the mini icons. You know those small icons that appear in the address window of your browser. Like the orange B that Blogger has. I have to say I really like when I find sites that have their original and fresh icon. It's just one of those small (literally and figuratively) things that can perk me up.

Firefox incompatable

2006-06-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why it is happening to me more often now than when I started using Firefox a year ago but I seem to be hitting sites that are not compatible with Firefox. Lately the two biggest culprits have been Shaw.ca bill payment site, U of A’s WebCT, and Edmonton Catholic School District's report card webpage. Sure I can see my students’ report card but I can't edit them. I can understand ECSD not being up to par. It's not like they have a huge budget to throw at such things but seriously Bell Canada. I might start asking for a paper bill if they can't shape up. I eventually paid my bill using Internet Explorer. For those not familiar with Explorer it is an alternative to web browsing. I wouldn't recommend it. ;)

Evaluating Games

2006-06-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Recently I've bought some video games from Scholastic Canada. I want to use them in my classroom instruction but I need to examine them first. Here is the list of games I'm going to be covering. I'll try to relate them to the Alberta Program of Studies as well as give them a ranking out of 4 for the ability to infuse stealth learning. I will also provide more information on each game's publisher andgame play.

I'm more excited about some games than others. The games in this list are ranged from grades 4-6.

SimCity 4

Civilization 3

Majestic Chess

Lift Off

Mathematics Deluxe

Lemonade Tycoon

Oregon Trail 5th Edition

Star Trek StarShip Creator

Astro Algebra

Learn about Physical Science

Great Canadian Adventure

Typing Tutor Jr.

Vet Emergency

Roller Coaster Tycoon

Math for the Real World

Chemical Reaction

Games for Grades K-3 include...

I Love Spelling

I can Spell

Bob the Builder

The Cat in the Hat

Zoboomafoo, Animal Alphabet

Backyard Hockey

I Spy Junior

Clifford Thinking Adventures

Care Bears- Let's have a ball.

Jump Start Explorers

Freddi Fish

Numbers Undercover

Some games are more Edutainment games than others. I've made my position pretty clear on Edutainment style games. They aren't bad if they work but I prefer the sneak attack/ stealth learning.

Process of Streamlining Math Goals

2006-05-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

Lorelie's goal was to increase the P.A.T. test results in our school at both the grade three and six level. She did this by first reviewing the curriculum with us, since that is where we would be setting our goals from. We created visual displays showing the correlation from grade to grade between the similar strands of math. This exercise gave each grade level teacher a stronger idea of the knowledge and skills which were key for students to learn before they could be successful in moving up a grade level.

After Lorelie reviewed the Alberta Program of Studies we discussed set out main concepts our students needed to learn. For example everyone agreed that number sense was very important understanding for students to grasp where as (even though it's in the curriculum) tessellations were not as important.

Once Lorelie helped us to streamlined our goals across the math strands we then began investigating assessment techniques. We moved away from the knowledge measuring multiple choice tests to a larger mixed bag of assessment techniques; Running records, Math Journals, Task based assessment and class conferencing. We were shown how genuine assessment gains greater understanding of student learning and we practiced this in our classrooms with peers watching.

Next year we plan on reviewing the goals and strategies with Lorelie. We will do this with the help of the data collected from this years P.A.T.s. I am confident that through the help of Lorelie's process we continue to improve math scores and more importantly our students' understanding of mathematical concepts.