Integrating Technology in the Secondary Math Classroom

It's been a hot minute since I have written a post, but I am back. As teachers, you know how crazy life can get and it has been exactly that for the past few years. Yes. Years.

My goal this past school year was to integrate technology into my daily lessons as often as possible. This ranged from using the TI Nspire calculators with the Navigator system, to ipads, to just booking the computer lab. We are also a "bring your own device" campus, but with 7th graders that can open up a can of worms that I am just not interested in managing, mmkay?

One of my favorite things that I did this year was dive head in with Schoology as a platform to house all course materials. Students still received paper copies of most things, but files were housed on Schoology in our course materials folder in the event it was lost or students wanted to re-do an assignment. This also saved me a lot of time from standing at the copier since I could load a digital copy of a resource on Schoology and students could access on their ipads. Students were more engaged using technology, and I had an extra 10 minutes to drink HOT coffee before school started. I know, I can't believe it either.

Screenshot of my course from the 1st semester 

It was so easy to navigate for students and parents. I am all about things making my life easier and this was it! By the end of the first month of school, I am able to provide simple instructions about where their activity is located and they can find it. It leaves me more time to go work on on one with students who need it most. 

When you put students in purposeful groups, and provide tools to not get bogged down in the math, real magic can happen. Don't get me wrong, I am all about students having the skills they need in order to solve basic math problems without calculation devices. But, if that is not the main skill that I am assessing, I am going to allow my students to have a calculator available to them. Here, they are working on a Pythagorean Theorem task. While they all have a calculator available to them, they chose NOT to use it. That is powerful. 

Many people think that teaching an accelerated course means that your students are all above grade level. That is simply not the case. In my class, I will have students who range from having barely passed the state test to scoring perfectly. There is a lot of differentiation that needs to occur in order to meet my kiddos where they are and grow them all. I want to be able to extend the learning for my truly GT students but also not leave behind my strugglers. Technology allowed me to do that this year. I am looking forward to incorporating it even more next year!

Math in Real Life - August 2014

It is the first Wednesday in August, so that means it is time to link up for:

A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by

 4mulaFun, The Teacher Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, AND MissMathDork,

I have had this in my drafts for a long time, but just haven't had the time to write it! I don't have any pictures, because this is spur of the moment and totally spontaneous and sometimes you just have to live on the edge. So, here goes. Hopefully my train of thought makes total sense!

As soon as we signed off on the contract to build our new house, I thought to myself that I would have TONS of blog posts about how to use math in real life. Seriously, it is ALL math ALL the time. Even being a math nerd, it gives me headaches sometimes. I don't know how normal people do this.

When we started building our house, we had to start packing. We knew we had to get a storage unit. We would have shopped around for the best rate, but since we already had a small storage unit, we wanted to stay in the same complex. We still needed to decide what size we needed. Since we had already started packing, I was able to find the volume of each box, and keep a running total. Storage units are measured by the area of the floor, but you can't forget about the height! Boxes are meant to be stacked! 

So, long story short, I calculated that we would need about 290 square feet of storage to store everything that was in our 2100 square foot house.  Honestly, it didn't seem like we had that much stuff until we crammed it all into one space! We settled on a 10x30 foot unit, and our stuff was stacked about 10 feet high!

This was about 75% full. This is such a big unit that it has two entrances!

The best part of the whole move? We hired movers to move everything! So, naturally, more math was involved.

There were several factors to consider: hourly rate, number of movers, trip charge, insured/bonded, etc. We ended up with 3 movers for $110 per hour with a $45 trip charge. BEST $675 I EVER spent :)

I promise to be more prepared next month--when we are MOVED IN to our new house. Maybe that post will be all about closing costs? UGH. How do YOU use math in real life?

Three Acts - Dan Meyer

Today I am linking up with 4MulaFun and friends for their Math is Real Life Linkup!

So often, we hear, "when is this EVER going to be useful??" and without missing a beat, a math teacher can respond with 10 different ways. Some things, I will admit, are not necessarily are going to be seen again outside of a middle school math class, but that's a rant for another day. What I like to present in my classroom are real-world math problems, every day. I really feel like if students are able to relate to the information being presented to them, they are much more likely to apply it as if it was them in the problem. 

My very favorite thing to teach is percents (calculating tax, tip, discount, mark-up, etc.) for the sheer value of the unit in everyday life. You have to know how to calculate your total before you pay for something to know if you are being charged appropriately, even if you just estimate. And yes, technology is GREAT and I don't want my students to take out a pencil and paper the next time they are at Macy's, BUT technology is only as good as the person who inputs the information. The person operating the calculator must have an understanding of percents in order to best estimate the price.

Ok, so this was my roundabout way of introducing Dan Meyer to you all. I am sure many of you have heard of him, many may have even heard him speak! I had the privilege of listening to him give the keynote address at CAMT in San Antonio this summer. He is awesome. He discussed perplexing problems in the math classroom. Not giving all of the information. Making the kids work for it. I loved his way of thinking and knew we needed to do more of this. 

At another training this summer, I was introduced to a section of his website called Three Acts. I know, I am probably super late to the party. BUT, if there is anyone who hasn't heard of this, you need to go check it out. right. now.

The one that we had to do in my PD was the "leaky faucet" and can be accessed here. It's ok, go watch it...I'll wait :)

Perplexing, isn't it? Anyhow, it is like a choose your own adventure for math since you can solve this several different ways. Also interesting to point out is the conversion between systems that students aren't going to know the rate for right off the bat. This is where having technology would be helpful, because, isn't that exactly what we as teachers would do?! Yes. Yes, it is. 

I can't wait to look through some of the rest of these. A full list can be accessed here, and he even has which standards it covers! Enjoy :)