Lifehacker has a map of tax-free shopping deals across the country this month. Many states are having their tax holidays this weekend only, so click through to see if you can take advantage.
For those of your holding off on your back to school shopping, this Thursday 8/13 I'm sharing a guide called The Only Five Things Your High School Student Needs to Go Back to School. Stay tuned!
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Help Us Go "Back To School" with 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons
I'm happy to report that Week 28 is already set for this coming Monday, but there are many weeks left in the year-long 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons project. Since this month's theme is "Back to School", this is a good time to get your advice in.
Find out how to be a part of this project here. You can also read all of the entries so far by clicking the "52 teachers 52 lessons" tag. Thank you!
Find out how to be a part of this project here. You can also read all of the entries so far by clicking the "52 teachers 52 lessons" tag. Thank you!
Free Offer For New Energy and the Environment Teaching Tool
To any school district leaders out there: this is something that could benefit your district financially and academically! Software makers Good Steward Software has created a new, free online service called GreenQuest:
This could help districts cut costs by finding areas of waste, and we all know our classrooms could use all the funding that would be freed up. That sort of indirect benefit is great, but it's the direct one that's even better:
Imagine a science or math teacher being able to access this online and what they could do with it in the classroom! We talk about this stuff all the time, of course, but sometimes you just gotta show your students the real-life data to really get them thinking about it.
Have you tried this software? Do you have ideas for possible uses in the classroom? If so, please share your thoughts in the comments!
GreenQuest is a personal Web-based energy dashboard that enables individuals to track the energy for their home or business for free. Teachers can use GreenQuest in the classroom and also offer it to their community, leading them to a more efficient, less costly, and cleaner future. More than 150 school districts have already signed up for FREE GreenQuest web sites.Click here for more about the GreenQuest School's Out promotion. There's a demo site and lots of answers to questions you might have. I'd also check out the Loudoun County (Virginia) school district's website that details everything they've been doing with GreenQuest as a catalyst.
GreenQuest includes valuable energy benchmarks, carbon footprint, weather analysis, performance charts…even a free ENERGY STAR interface for the business owners in a community! It’s an easy-to-use, informative teaching device…a FREE instructional tool with real-world application across multiple subject areas.
Since school’s out, sign up as a Basic Sponsor before August 31 and the setup fee will be waived. And, as Basic Sponsorship doesn’t cost anything—ever—so you and your community can use GreenQuest for free—forever. Get in while school and the setup fee are still out!
This could help districts cut costs by finding areas of waste, and we all know our classrooms could use all the funding that would be freed up. That sort of indirect benefit is great, but it's the direct one that's even better:
Imagine a science or math teacher being able to access this online and what they could do with it in the classroom! We talk about this stuff all the time, of course, but sometimes you just gotta show your students the real-life data to really get them thinking about it.
Have you tried this software? Do you have ideas for possible uses in the classroom? If so, please share your thoughts in the comments!
Friday, August 7, 2009
Five for Friday: Back To School Edition #1
Tags:
five for friday
All of this month's links will be geared towards getting ready to go back to school. Here's the first batch:
- CONTEST: Free Drawing for $250 in Teacher Supplies - Jim Deeds of American Classroom Supply emailed me this great opportunity to win some much-needed funding for your classroom. No purchase necessary--just sign up for their email list. The drawing is on 8/20, so hurry!
- Most lucrative college majors [@CNNMoney via Consumerist] - Post this on your math (or science) classroom wall before day one, and make reference to it as soon as school starts!
- Myth-Busting: What's Gender Got to Do with It? [@Math Mama Writes] - Fighting gender stereotypes about math (and science) are one of the battles you'll need to fight. Read this for help debunking these ideas when they come up this year.
- The Best Sources For Advice On Using Flip Video Cameras [@Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day] - The Flip, if you haven't heard about it, is exactly the kind of technology we should be getting into students' hands as soon as possible. This should help you either plan for using it or introduce it to those of you that are wondering what all the fuss is about.
- If You Make Only One Change This Year... RELAX!!!!!! [@So You Want to Teach?] - Joel may have written this last year, but some of us need annual reminders (if not more)!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Are You a Teacherpreneur?
In my own attempts to make ends meet, I've been doing just about anything and everything I can think of to save money or make money. Spending the last year in Boston made this not so much a lifestyle choice as a necessity. First, I had to make my money go farther:
What's really been intriguing me, however, is the other side of this issue: making money beyond our regular teacher pay. I think I've become what some have termed a teacherpreneur and I feel like I'm not alone. Throughout my career, I've taken advantage of nearly every extra pay position I was offered. How many of these have you done?
Yet when I think about this idea of teacherpreneurship, I'm wondering about how many of us start our own business on the side in order to make more money.
I think there are two distinct camps. The first group applies their teaching/education knowledge directly: private tutoring, consulting, teaching college courses, creating and selling all types of teacher resources. The second group has a hobby or skill unrelated to the classroom that they turn into extra money.
Personally, when I created this blog I was not expecting to make any money. Two years later, I make a few dollars a month from advertising and referrals. I wrote Ten Cheap Lessons last year and have just about broke even on that. Now I find myself doing things like taking $0.05 jobs on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service and trying to parlay my blogging abilities into freelance writing gigs on other topics.
If we assume most teachers take extra jobs in and around school and/or become an entrepreneur in their spare time, the big question that looms over all of this for me is: Why do we have to do this? Why are we not paid enough that we don't have to?
I'm really interested in your feedback on the many questions surrounding this issue, especially with a new school year on the horizon. Am I right? Dead wrong? Let me know in the comments.
- Moved back to south Texas to cut rent and most other expenses
- Cut down or eliminated monthly expenses (cell phone, cable, Netflix, etc)
- Sold/traded/donated almost all of my books, DVDs, and CDs (and stopped buying new or used ones altogether) online
- Sold an electric guitar and amp and just about anything else that had any value whatsoever through Craigslist
- Switched from buying daily iced coffee at a coffee shop to making a delicious homemade version
- Learned to enjoy eating, drinking and entertaining myself at home
- Read blogs about saving money and getting more out of less on a daily basis and applying what I've learned
- Stopped traveling for the most part; I saw my family about the same amount of times that I did when I lived roughly 2000 miles away, and despite all logic, I didn't travel to visit my friends in New York the entire time I lived in Boston!
What's really been intriguing me, however, is the other side of this issue: making money beyond our regular teacher pay. I think I've become what some have termed a teacherpreneur and I feel like I'm not alone. Throughout my career, I've taken advantage of nearly every extra pay position I was offered. How many of these have you done?
- Taught after school and/or Saturday tutorials
- Took a leadership position (department chair, team/cluster leader, committee chair)
- Became a coach/club sponsor
- Participated in voluntary, extra professional development workshops
- Taught summer school classes
- Participated in curriculum writing
Yet when I think about this idea of teacherpreneurship, I'm wondering about how many of us start our own business on the side in order to make more money.
I think there are two distinct camps. The first group applies their teaching/education knowledge directly: private tutoring, consulting, teaching college courses, creating and selling all types of teacher resources. The second group has a hobby or skill unrelated to the classroom that they turn into extra money.
Personally, when I created this blog I was not expecting to make any money. Two years later, I make a few dollars a month from advertising and referrals. I wrote Ten Cheap Lessons last year and have just about broke even on that. Now I find myself doing things like taking $0.05 jobs on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service and trying to parlay my blogging abilities into freelance writing gigs on other topics.
If we assume most teachers take extra jobs in and around school and/or become an entrepreneur in their spare time, the big question that looms over all of this for me is: Why do we have to do this? Why are we not paid enough that we don't have to?
I'm really interested in your feedback on the many questions surrounding this issue, especially with a new school year on the horizon. Am I right? Dead wrong? Let me know in the comments.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Discrete Math for the High School Classroom, Part 2
Tags:
advanced math,
curriculum ideas
In addition to the topology problems included in Part 1, my experience this spring showed me a lot of ways that we could approach many other higher level, discrete mathematics topics in high school math courses.
Cellular Automata and Conway's Game of Life
Using examples from Professor Stewart's book, this Wikipedia entry, and in this Math.com article, I made a simple graphic organizer which showed students what to make on Conway's site.
Before starting, review the “rules of life,” make sure to show them the interface, and push them to test out the shapes on the pull-down menu. Also, ask them to experiment with changing the speed and size. Finally, I had them try out a shape of their own, like their name or something like that. The results are always interesting.
(PS: this example of breeders is just really cool.)
Chaos Theory
I used this Discovery Education lesson plan as a basis for a lesson on chaos theory. To start, students play the “Chaos Game” with dice, a ruler and three different colored markers. As they follow the rules on the game handouts, they should start to see a Sierpinski Triangle start to take shape. They do need to measure very carefully, as the students who were eyeballing it were getting a much more crude shape that wasn't as easy to distinguish. Then, students played on the online Chaos Game, where they apply the rules of the earlier game in order to land inside the highlighted part of a Sierpinski Triangle.
Knot Theory
I showed the students Foldit, the protein-folding game that's helping scientists solve difficult problems. We discussed the importance of knot theory, an area of math that was once thought of as pointless, and how playing the game could eventually help cure diseases. Here's a YouTube video introducing how the game works.
You would need to be able to install the game on the computers for students to use, which limits it's usefulness in the classroom (unless you have that kind of access). I think that if you sell this to your students, however, those with computers and Internet access at home will almost surely try it out.
Logic
We also spent a lot of time on logic games. There are a few good ones in Professor Stewart's book, but I used mostly offline resources similar to these logic puzzle books on Amazon.com.
I hope you see the possibilities of these as I do! If you have similar resources on other advanced math or logic topics, please share them in the comments.
Cellular Automata and Conway's Game of Life
Using examples from Professor Stewart's book, this Wikipedia entry, and in this Math.com article, I made a simple graphic organizer which showed students what to make on Conway's site.
, this Before starting, review the “rules of life,” make sure to show them the interface, and push them to test out the shapes on the pull-down menu. Also, ask them to experiment with changing the speed and size. Finally, I had them try out a shape of their own, like their name or something like that. The results are always interesting.
(PS: this example of breeders is just really cool.)
Chaos Theory
I used this Discovery Education lesson plan as a basis for a lesson on chaos theory. To start, students play the “Chaos Game” with dice, a ruler and three different colored markers. As they follow the rules on the game handouts, they should start to see a Sierpinski Triangle start to take shape. They do need to measure very carefully, as the students who were eyeballing it were getting a much more crude shape that wasn't as easy to distinguish. Then, students played on the online Chaos Game, where they apply the rules of the earlier game in order to land inside the highlighted part of a Sierpinski Triangle.
Knot Theory
I showed the students Foldit, the protein-folding game that's helping scientists solve difficult problems. We discussed the importance of knot theory, an area of math that was once thought of as pointless, and how playing the game could eventually help cure diseases. Here's a YouTube video introducing how the game works.
You would need to be able to install the game on the computers for students to use, which limits it's usefulness in the classroom (unless you have that kind of access). I think that if you sell this to your students, however, those with computers and Internet access at home will almost surely try it out.
Logic
We also spent a lot of time on logic games. There are a few good ones in Professor Stewart's book, but I used mostly offline resources similar to these logic puzzle books on Amazon.com.
.I hope you see the possibilities of these as I do! If you have similar resources on other advanced math or logic topics, please share them in the comments.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
You're Reading One of the "100 Best Blogs for Teachers of the Future"
Tags:
teacher resources
Clear View Education, a site specializing in online degrees and colleges, just posted a list of the 100 Best Blogs for Teachers of the Future. I Want to Teach Forever is listed at #28.
This is a great time of year to seek out some blogs that will inspire you or provide great lesson ideas throughout the year. Many of my favorite blogs are on the list, as well as a wealth of other resources I urge you to check out.
This is a great time of year to seek out some blogs that will inspire you or provide great lesson ideas throughout the year. Many of my favorite blogs are on the list, as well as a wealth of other resources I urge you to check out.
Discrete Math for the High School Classroom, Part 1
Tags:
advanced math,
curriculum ideas
In the Advanced Math & Logic elective I co-taught this spring, we talked about a lot of math concepts that often never seem to fit into the rigid state standards for Algebra, Geometry and beyond. Yet after finding so many great resources and ideas, I think any of these activities could and should be done in your regular high school math classrooms.
Some of them will be good at getting students interested when things seem boring, some would make great extra credit or challenge problems for your brightest students, and most of them have a place in your classroom no matter what.
This first part is all about topology.
Four Color Theorem
One of the first concepts we explored was this simple theorem. First, we did this simple Map Coloring activity. Then, I challenged students to try to see if they could follow the Four Color Theorem by filling in this blank U.S. Map. These activities could help hook students into a unit about proofs.
DIY Topology Puzzles
These are puzzles where you take various shapes and combine them into one larger shape (similar to tangrams). There's a lot of these puzzles in Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart, the brilliant book that helped inspire these ideas. I think something like this would be a great way to kick off the year in Geometry, or a challenging project for a student who needs it.
Torus and Klein Bottle Games
There's six different types of online, Java-based games utilizing these concepts here, but the one that we played in class was the maze where you direct a mouse to cheese. The kids really enjoyed these. If you can find printable versions of this, in a book or otherwise, please let me know (after months of searching, I still can't find the site I was able to print from when I used this in class).
Seven classic topology problems
The Konigsburg Bridge problem (there's more good stuff about that one here) is included here among others. These should be printed out for student use.
Click here for Part 2, which features resources for other discrete math topics.
Some of them will be good at getting students interested when things seem boring, some would make great extra credit or challenge problems for your brightest students, and most of them have a place in your classroom no matter what.
This first part is all about topology.
Four Color Theorem
One of the first concepts we explored was this simple theorem. First, we did this simple Map Coloring activity. Then, I challenged students to try to see if they could follow the Four Color Theorem by filling in this blank U.S. Map. These activities could help hook students into a unit about proofs.
DIY Topology Puzzles
These are puzzles where you take various shapes and combine them into one larger shape (similar to tangrams). There's a lot of these puzzles in Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart, the brilliant book that helped inspire these ideas. I think something like this would be a great way to kick off the year in Geometry, or a challenging project for a student who needs it.
Torus and Klein Bottle Games
There's six different types of online, Java-based games utilizing these concepts here, but the one that we played in class was the maze where you direct a mouse to cheese. The kids really enjoyed these. If you can find printable versions of this, in a book or otherwise, please let me know (after months of searching, I still can't find the site I was able to print from when I used this in class).
Seven classic topology problems
The Konigsburg Bridge problem (there's more good stuff about that one here) is included here among others. These should be printed out for student use.
Click here for Part 2, which features resources for other discrete math topics.
Monday, August 3, 2009
52 Teachers, 52 Lessons #27: Most Critical Ideas & Skills
Tags:
52 teachers 52 lessons
This week's entry comes from Alison, a math teacher in Massachusetts.
One of the most important questions for any teacher to ask themselves while planning units and especially whole courses is, "What are the three to five most critical ideas or skills students must learn in my unit or course?" Obviously, we want students to understand many concepts and be able to do lots of things, and hopefully a large percentage of those we teach will achieve this kind of broad mastery. However, we all have students, who for a variety of reasons, won't fully understand everything we would like them to. With these struggling students, I always try to keep my "short list" of critical ideas/skills in mind, and make sure that even if nothing else sticks, they leave the course with these three to five things. I introduce these concepts and techniques early in a course and revisit them periodically through the year. This type of prioritization also helps our students who excel in our course content.
When we are clear about what the most critical ideas in our courses and fields of study are, it helps kids who are great at learning all of the minutiae to see the broader terrain of a subject. And I've found that it makes me a better teacher, able to design more coherent units and courses and make better day-to-day instructional decisions!
Read more about this project here or add the 52 teachers 52 lessons tag to your favorites. Email your entries to teachforever AT gmail DOT com. Week 28 will be posted next Monday, August 10th.
One of the most important questions for any teacher to ask themselves while planning units and especially whole courses is, "What are the three to five most critical ideas or skills students must learn in my unit or course?" Obviously, we want students to understand many concepts and be able to do lots of things, and hopefully a large percentage of those we teach will achieve this kind of broad mastery. However, we all have students, who for a variety of reasons, won't fully understand everything we would like them to. With these struggling students, I always try to keep my "short list" of critical ideas/skills in mind, and make sure that even if nothing else sticks, they leave the course with these three to five things. I introduce these concepts and techniques early in a course and revisit them periodically through the year. This type of prioritization also helps our students who excel in our course content.
When we are clear about what the most critical ideas in our courses and fields of study are, it helps kids who are great at learning all of the minutiae to see the broader terrain of a subject. And I've found that it makes me a better teacher, able to design more coherent units and courses and make better day-to-day instructional decisions!
Read more about this project here or add the 52 teachers 52 lessons tag to your favorites. Email your entries to teachforever AT gmail DOT com. Week 28 will be posted next Monday, August 10th.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
August is Back To School Month!
Everything that you'll see hear at I Want to Teach Forever this month will be focused on getting ready to go back to school (even if I will likely not be going back myself any time soon). Here's what you can look forward to:
- New math lesson plans, projects and ideas. I have a huge backlog of resources I never got around to posting, but I'll get them to you before school starts.
- US history lesson ideas! I don't know how many of you know this, but I started my career as an 8th grade US History teacher. It was there that many of my best math ideas were born, but this is also my chance to expand the scope of this blog a little bit.
- Back to school guides for new teachers, veterans, parents and students.
- New contests, projects, and reviews!
- ...and so much more!
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Monday's 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons Still Up For Grabs
I know it's becoming a weekly tradition at this point, but once again, we're left with no entry for this Monday's 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons community project.
I think a lot of it has to do with it being the very heart of the summer, and if you haven't noticed, I'm just as guilty of taking a lot of time off from writing as well. So although I don't blame you, I do need you! (Don't make me beg, please!)
Email me your entry at teachforever AT gmail DOT com. Thank you!
I think a lot of it has to do with it being the very heart of the summer, and if you haven't noticed, I'm just as guilty of taking a lot of time off from writing as well. So although I don't blame you, I do need you! (Don't make me beg, please!)
Email me your entry at teachforever AT gmail DOT com. Thank you!
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