Source:  http://durandus.com/phaedrus/2007/11/02/hate-and-discontent/

Phaedrus posted this to his blog this week:

An unnamed but much appreciated member of our class sent me this (slightly edited) email message:

I just feel that during this whole class you give the impression that you have all the answers and many times set in “judgment” of others. I think that you may be interested in knowing that I am not the only one who feels this way in this class and many of your students are setting back wondering “what is this class supposed to be doing” … I think that many of us were under the impression that we would be provided with effective tools for developing on-line teaching environments and the majority of what we have learned is how to “come up” with a bunch of blogs for the purpose of trying to receive a half-way good grade for that week which we have learned is impossible in your class!

The way it was written sounded like it was speaking for most of the class.  I do not feel this way.  This was my response:

In response to the discontent person, I appreciate that this person has expressed their frustration with this course, I think that it will help others who are frustrated as well because Nate gives a good answer to their concerns. I do not share the same opinion as this person, as I have gotten a lot of benefit from this class. I do have tools that I can use with my students, the reading has been very beneficial, I love using the reader to keep track of classmates and OLDaily. I find myself taking several hours to do our weekly assignments because I get sidetracked by following hyperlinks within articles. I measure my success with how much new information I gather instead of my grade. My goal when I set out in this program was not to strive for the A, but to do the best I can. In 72 hours of graduate work to date, I have one B (Research Methods), and I realized that I was putting undue stress on myself by working for the A. At this point, if I got a B, it is not going to adversely affect my GPA, and I am not going to lose my job over it. I was brought up in a society that says A or else, and it is not always a true measure of success. It means that you got a certain number of points. My students get A’s, but some of them, when I have them the following year, have forgotten things I have taught them the year before, they memorized and forgot. Did they really learn? That goes back to last week’s postings on learning. How do we know that students are really learning?

So the bottom line is, are you learning, and if not, what can you do to change it so that you are? Communication is key.

In a student centered classroom, we are responsible for our learning.

Source: http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/ganley/bgblogging/assessment/

First of all, I am in love with the photographs that Barbara Ganley has put on this site. I am a big nature lover and found her pictures captivating. This particular entry is about teaching an online class. She brings up a question that all classroom teachers think about–how do I adapt my teaching style to fit the group dynamics of my new class. She talks about getting to know her students and letting that fit how she evaluates them.

My favorite quote by her is:  “I design assignments and experiences for the collective which the group shapes and revises as they get accustomed to having a real hand in the course design. We read one another’s work and get excited (hopefully) about what it could mean to be a part of this learning collective.”

She definitely has created her class design as student centered.  She uses their input to improve her own teaching.  Her online course design sounds like it is effective because it has created a community of learners who communicate, elaborate, and create.  She uses the blogs to keep them connected.  Yet, she also realizes that not everyone will be as enthusiastic as she is about the class.  I have some classes that seem almost fearful of learning math versus classes that find math exciting, and love learning new topics.

This week’s lesson has brought about the point that to have effective evaluations, we need to have student involvement.   A lady at my math leadership meeting said that she gave her students the opportunity to create their own test questions.  She said that her regular students came up with better questions than her honors group, that they had put more thought into the process.  She said she believed this is true because the regular students invested more time and thought into learning the concept than the honors students.  If anyone tries this, please let me know how it went for you.  I am going to try it next semester.  I have two big projects this upcoming six weeks and don’t want to detract from them.

Source: http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/?p=285

While browsing through the OLDaily articles, I found this interesting article on Celebrating Failure. The point made by this article is that we learn through failure (i.e. video games), and why can’t schools take this approach to help students learn, especially in math? It seems that math teachers tend to use the summative assessment as the guiding force for evaluation, when really, we should be giving lots of formative assessment, letting our students make mistakes, and then using the mistakes they make to help them learn math. If a student is incorrectly solving an equation by not combining like terms on the same side of the equation, then we work on that skill until they get it right. If there is a problem with integers, then we work on integers, or teach them how to use the calculator well so that they overcome the “fear” of not knowing how to do integers.

I love coincidences, and on Friday of this week, I attended a conference for math leadership. In addition to showing us a video on formative vs. summative assessment, they gave us a paper copy of an article by William and Black called “Inside the Black Box.” This article is about how to effectively use formative assessment in teaching. There is a hyperlink to this article about halfway down. I highly recommend everyone read this article because it helps answer the question from last week, “How do we know our students are learning?”

My life lesson for this week has been that I am not doing enough formative assessment in my classrooms, and that by changing the way I teach and adding more formative assessment, I will be better about to know if my students are learning, even if it is only in the short term. By adding more conceptual learning, I hope to increase the retention of student’s math knowledge.