"Just tell me!"

Today some of my students left my Precalculus class unhappy. Some were uncomfortable. Some were frustrated. They didn't like what I did - to them.

For the last several days they had been solving systems of linear and nonlinear equations and inequalities. When isolated, these aren't complicated topics.Today they needed to apply what they had been practicing into a single problem. This is called linear programming, a technique of combining several constraints or restrictions to (usually) find a maximum profit or a minimum cost in business.

Sounds interesting? It is! This is one of my favorite topics because it makes connections for students between what they are learning and how it applies in the "real" world. Today I decided to present the material differently.

Using SMART amp (a digital whiteboard called a workspace that allows students to collaborate in the same workspace from their own device), I gave them the problem, defined key terms, which lead them step-by-step through the solution of the problem.

Each pair of students shared one workspace. Whatever one wrote, the other could see. By request, I let two pairs work together. 

The students were quickly intimidated by the problem. Too many words, too many numbers, and no obvious way to connect all the information. To compound the difficulty, the teacher wasn't telling them what to do or how to do this. How did I expect them to solve a problem they had never seen before? Students were calling me to come help them and to answer all their questions. 

I walked around the room to listen to the discussions. It seemed when I stopped to listen, the questions and conversation would be aimed at me. Rather than answer, I asked more questions to guide their discussion. As the end of the period neared, there were anxious shouts to "just tell us how to do this!" 

As one student was ready to give up, I told him that one day his boss will give him a project to work on but the step-by-step instructions wouldn't be included. That would be his job - to figure out the problem then come up with the best solution. I assured him 

• He wouldn't be done after one attempt.
• He wouldn't be able to figure it out on his own. 
• He would need to collaborate and brainstorm with others. 
• He would need to ask questions to better understand the problem. 
• He would need to listen to others even if their ideas were different from his.
• He would need to work hard only to find after hours of work that he and his team were way off.
• He would need to refocus, and try again using the last solution to help find a better solution. . 
• And the most important thing is he couldn't quit just because the problem seemed impossible.

I have bright, motivated students who want to do well. If I tell them how to do a problem, they will solve that problem well. They rely on their notes or text to help them with the tough homework problems. There's always a solution with a little bit of effort. Today was different.

Today my students were upset because I wouldn't "help" them. Oh, but I was helping them . . . not only helping them with today's problem but for the ones to come . . . later. Today I realized I need to do this more often.

Tomorrow they will share their ideas and solutions and be reassured that they were close. Some figured it out: seven 6-ton and two 10-ton trucks.

Next day's follow up

I thought about how my students left the room yesterday. They weren't all happy and some were super frustrated. I knew we had to have a conversation.

As soon as she walked into class, a girl who had been especially frustrated (and almost rude) came up to me and apologized for her behavior the previous day. That was a great way to start class.

I let my students know that I realized there was frustration and confusion and that it was ok to feel that way. I gave them my reasons for doing what I did (listed above) and I began to see heads nodding.

This really shows how important communication is. I don't believe I have to explain everything that I do and reasons why with my students but there are days when it is necessary. Now that my students have a better understanding, we can move on.

Why I teach

Preparing students for life after graduation is more challenging yet more critical than ever before because technology is affecting our lives every day. Jobs are becoming automated and people are being replaced by robots who can do the work more efficiently and at a lower cost.

I teach at a K-12 independent school where 100% of our students attend post-secondary schools. Our students are no different than other teenagers: they link attending good colleges with good grades; and good grades mean studying and performing well on assessments.

Just today in my Precalculus class, I exclaimed, “Isn’t this so cool?!” as we had just found the solutions of a 5^th degree polynomial using the Rational Roots Theorem. Then one student said, “Yeah, but when are we ever going to have to use this in the real world?” (I LOVE when someone asks that question!)

I proceeded to say they would probably never again need any of the concepts I teach them except if they become a high school math teacher – and I hope some of them do. The class smiled and nodded as I continued, “BUT what I’m teaching you will teach you

·        to pay attention to detail.

·        to persist when the material becomes challenging.

·        to stay motivated and focused when there are other distractions.

·        to work in a group to problem solve.

·        to think critically.

·        to critique someone else’s work in a productive way.

·        to accept suggestions to improve your own work.

·        to communicate your thoughts, ideas and questions effectively.

I had only gotten part way through my list and the student said, “Oh, I guess you’re right.”

The “real world” is changing and our students need to graduate from high school with more than a ton of memorized facts. Through my teaching, I hope my students learn the soft-skills that will make them more competitive in that “real world.”

2016 Global SEE Summit - July 17-22

I am privileged to have been invited to the SMART Global SEE (SMART Exemplary Educators) Summit in Calgary again this year. It is an honor to be able to spend a week listening to, exchanging ideas, learning from, and getting to know others who love SMART products as much as I do. With senior executives, program managers, developers and other SMART employees, and, of course, my distinguished SEE colleagues from across the world, we spend the week discussing ways to help students learn more effectively and gain 21st century skills.  The week is all about empowering teachers to do our job.

It's hard to describe this incredible week so I'll use a few quotes to help relive the experience:

• Feedback is a gift whether it's positive or negative. - Greg Estell, President
• Creative chaos is not what it looks like. [There is engagement, excitement, and interest.] - Gretchen Monahan, SEE (USA, PA)
• SMART's social responsibility - not purchasing materials from countries that support social conflicts, i.e. minerals from Africa. - Stephen Yao, Product Marketing
• When a teacher gives up power and control, doors are opened for students. - Allen Brooks, SEE (USA, CA)
• I am grateful SMART appreciates and values teachers. - SEE during a closing reflection.
• Teachers are who SMART is. Technology is not changing education. Great teaching is changing education. - Greg Estell, President
• SMART has the largest advocacy program because we believe in teacher and student outcomes. ... equip people to be valuable contributors in the world. - Jeff Lowe, VP Corporate Marketing
• PD is not for training but for pedagogy. - Warren Barkley, CTO
• Twitter is a way to learn about pedagogy. - Tim Toyoshima, VP Software Development

We were welcomed, honored, and celebrated as valued educators. In our white Smithbilt cowboy hats with red trim, we took a pledge and became official Calgarians. No detail was left out to ensure we felt appreciated. Many thanks to Ainhoa Marcos, Kelly Miksch, Kelly Davis and Karen McKibben who worked tirelessly.

Team Photo

As amazing as the week already sounded, my biggest takeaway was the connections I made with others. Reuniting with SEEs I met last year who have become more than just friends on social media, meeting new SEEs, getting to know SMARTees who get to spend their time at HQ everyday, and, especially, forming my global collaboration (GC) partnership with Kristin Skage. (I hope to do another with calculus teachers too!)  We were inspired by a GC project that was led by Lotta Ramqvist (Sweden) and Jorgen Holmberg (Finland) with their special needs students.

Kristin is from Norway and I live in Hawaii. We both teach math to 12-13 year olds. What we hope to accomplish in this GC project is to

• connect our students who live halfway around the world from each other.
• give our students an experience where they can celebrate their differences, recognize their similarities, and appreciate their uniqueness.
• provide an opportunity for our students to learn about each other's country and school systems.
• use math in our communications and exchanges but our focus will be on a cultural exchange to help make our world smaller through personal connections.

Though this was my second Summit, I must say, this experience has, once again, had a huge impact on me as a teacher and as a citizen of this world. This is a professional development experience like no other.

Mahalo SMART for all you do for teachers and students.

ISTE 2016 - Denver, CO

ISTE 2016 opened on Sunday, June 26 in Denver, CO.  Each year the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) holds it's annual three and a half day conference in a different U.S. city.  There are hundreds of sessions and thousands of attendees from all 50 states and 70 countries so the convention center is infiltrated for the week with techie educators looking for ways to use technology to inspire, engage, and help their students collaborate.
Having been fortunate to have attended ISTE in Philadelphia, Denver, and San Diego in previous years, this year there were 13 administrators, teachers, and tech support specialists from 'Iolani who made the trip.

A big takeaway for the week was "ask the right questions."  These are the questions that can't be answered with a single google search.  I was reminded about the Google a Day questions.

The conference started off with an Ignite presentation by Kerry Gallagher in her quick session on how to (really) go paperless.  Great ideas right from the get-go!

The opening keynote was by Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, from City University of NY.  Phew! It was 45 minutes of mind-blowing predictions and breakthroughs in neuroscience. His newest book The Future of the Mind (YouTube short from Dr. Kaku about why he wrote this book) is a NY Times best seller.

 I went this year with a goal to learn more about integrating coding into my curriculum and to learn more about the tools in Microsoft for Education.  There were plenty of sessions covering both those areas.

About Microsoft

• Office 365 has monthly updates now, not every 3 years.
• O365@microsoft.edu - weekly webcasts Tues - Thurs, support specialists - all free
• Office online - mobile version, not as robust but can edit on the go
• MC Classroom is not an LMS
• Class Notebooks in OneNote (my all-time favorite productivity app) for classes and staff
• Forms based on Excel survey feedback - use for formative assessment. Quickly create custom quizzes, surveys and questionaires. Built in analytics.
• Office Lens (add-on for PC or iOS) is the BOMB! for taking pics, especially of a screen, and importing into doc

Without Office Lens images are angled - not pretty.

Office Lens straightens out the image without any glare.

• Combine textboxes in One Note by selecting gray arrow and dragging - easy to reorder
• Skype for conferencing, chatting/IM, host a meeting, teach a webinar
• Skype in the Classroom - mystery skype with another class.  By asking questions, students figure out where the other classroom is (in the world).
• Sway - digital storytelling, simple to share, easy to modify, add content from variety of sources
• Mix - I want to learn more about this PowerPoint add-in

About coding in the classroom:

• Ozobots in exhibit hall - show price not special, it's the regular education price . . . =( Got on their email list and attended a webinar post-conference. It was excellent and hope to do more.
• Most of what I saw and learned was from the playgrounds - an area where groups displayed student work or had computers to try out their programs. Learned a lot from talking to teachers.
• Little Bits - saw great student projects. It's all about posing the right problem (i.e. asking questions that allow students to interpret, think, discover, and innovate. Questions like "build the perfect amusement park ride," or "make the Olympics more safe" which allow students to define the problem and come up with their own solutions.

There were over 500 exhibitors: 

• Quizizz - saw this for the first time at GenCyber camp in June. Met the creators. Great formative assessment tool - easy to create, competitive or not, analytics. Will definitely be using this.
  
• Fluid Math - software for pen-enabled tablets and PCs to easily create, draw, graph, create tables from handwritten equations on SMART Board
• Tango Teach - software for interactive whiteboards; dynamic, intuitive . . .

Of course a hightlight of the conference was seeing SEE friends at the SMART booth. I was shocked to see the HUGE picture wall on the backside of the booth. Got a few laughs from it.

The SMART booth

Ran into Heather Lamb. Staci Gelbaum had a great presentation on their global collaboration project with special needs students.

More SEEs Amy Sterckx, Jackie Patanio, and Liane Dattilo

John Howe and Tracey Winey shared their STEM project. Pictured with Tim Toyoshima (VP Software Development)

Stefan Schwarz and Staci Gelbaum presenting in SMART booth.

Fellow math SEE Dan Bohn. It was fun hanging out again!

The SMART Exemplary Educators (SEEs) in attendance were invited to a SEE Mixer at the Embassy Suites. It was an intimate gathering with people from SMART. I was surprised to be recognized, on behalf of 'Iolani School, with a certificate and a Kapp IQ (interactive flat panel) for having the second largest number of SMART amp activations last year. 

Wow that we had that many active users! I teach with many who are open to new teaching strategies and are willing to step outside of their comfort zones to help increase student learning and engagement. This high number of activations is a result of so many different teachers (who teach math, biology, chemistry, physics, English, history, Chinese language, health, and religion) at so many different levels (grades 3-12) who gave SMART amp a try.

Wow that we got a beautiful piece of hardware! Mahalo, SMART!

What more could I ask for with so many people in a humongous facility? Yup, I ran into a fellow Presidential Awardee Melissa Colonis. 

It was an inspiring week. It was, no doubt, information overload. There are things I'll be able to use right away. There are others that will be the "mustard seed" - small now but with the potential to bloom into something bigger.

Coding for All @ GenCyber

As a past Presidential Awardee, I was invited to attend a 3 day GenCyber "camp." I agreed knowing very little about coding, how to integrate coding into the classroom, and nothing about cyber security. Reading the homepage of the website caught my attention in several ways:

The GenCyber program provides summer cybersecurity camp experiences for students and teachers at the K-12 level. The goals of the program are to help all students understand correct and safe on-line behavior, increase diversity and interest in cybersecurity and careers in the cybersecurity workforce of the Nation, and improve teaching methods for delivering cybersecurity content in K-12 computer science curricula.

Our vision is for the GenCyber program to be part of the solution to the Nation's shortfall of skilled cybersecurity professionals. Ensuring that enough young people are inspired to direct their talents in this area is critical to the future of our country’s national and economic security as we become even more reliant on cyber-based technology in every aspect of our daily lives.

To ensure a level playing field, GenCyber camps are open to all student and teacher participants at no cost. Funding is provided jointly by the National Security Agency and the National Science Foundation.

We started with a presentation by Captain Cliff Bean, Commander of NSA Hawaii (in Wahiawa). My takeaways from his talk:

• need to create computer capacity in HI; 20% vacancy in the civilian force re. technical talent
• need to start with younger students
• "keys to the network are the keys to the kingdom" - key is not having a criminal record
• information age is not a fad - impacts all aspects of our lives
• technology is vast, fast, and decaying - YouTube Did You Know?
• 7 bill people on planet, 2 bill online every day
• in 1991 would have taken 16 days to download Lib of Cong; 0.0004 sec today
• amt of technical data is doubling every two years - outdated every two years
• to get technical companies to invest in HI, need to build workforce

The focus of the presentations to the PAEMST awardees last summer was on Big Data and STEM education, which includes computer science.

President Obama recognizes the value of GenCyber as the 4th R (computer science just as important as reading and writing.  CS is core to every occupation.  GenCyber is an investment by NSA.  There are 64,000 jobs in cybersecurity and IT in the US.

Ojective of cybersecurity - prevent, deter, detect, and react to keep the world (phone, computer, clasroom) safe.

Most dangerous sites to visit: frequented by students

1. porn
2. song lyrics - generally not legal
3. game cheats
4. celebrity sites - info about

Activities and Resources

• Snap Circuits 
  
• Little Bits
• Common Sense Media - online safety guide; great for use in health classes (mental/emotional health and well-being)
• Copyright and fair use animation
• full lesson plans
• Kahoot
• Quizizz
• Ozobots
  
• Computer Science unplugged
• Engineering Design Process from NASA
  
• Cubelets
• Code.org
• Code Combat 
• game programmed using Python
• no need to sign in/create an account

AP Calculus Reading '16

Unless you've been there, it's probably hard to imagine the excitement of arriving in Kansas City, MO (MCI) along with 900 other calculus teachers for the annual AP Calculus Reading.

The airport in KC is small and each plane that arrives is unloading more teachers excited for the week. Some are returning, while others are "acorns," or first timers. Reuniting with friends, recognizing old faces, and even eavesdropping on ebullient conversations about the past year reminds us why we're there.

There are 6 free response questions that must be read in 7 days. The work day starts at 8am and ends promptly at 5pm. There is a 15 minute morning break, an hour lunch, and another 15 minute afternoon break.  Each has FREE unlimited food and drink available. AFter sitting for a couple of hours, I choose to take a sparkling water from the cooler and walk until break is over.

Question Leaders (QL) and Table Leaders (TL) arrive several days before the Readers to finalize the rubric for each question. The briefing for each question (worth 9 points) takes 90 minutes. The QLs go over every possible scenario/solution and explain how points (if any) will be distributed.  I return to my pod of 16 Readers and two TLs to begin work on the first question. With my table partner, we run through the first few questions together before we begin chipping away at the 4 million questions ahead of us.

Being a Reader

• reassured me that each student's paper would be read the same by every Reader.
• convinced me that it's nearly impossible to read your own students' papers.
• helped me understand better which concepts students might have difficulty with.
• has given me an opportunity to spend 8 days with others just as passionate as I am about calculus.  We talk about teaching calculus, learning calculus, trying to understand what students are trying to communicate, and even raving about the "perfect" solutions, even when we aren't "working."
• has connected me on social media with calculus teachers who have become "friends."
• has made me really appreciate and respect my students' discipline and motivation.
• has given me more tools for teaching calculus. At any time, I can ask a question and get so many different teaching strategies and ideas.
• is an opportunity and privilege.
• satisfies my annual craving for BBQ.
• reunites me with my PAEMST classmates - Patrick Flynn (KS) and Allysen Lovstuen (IA).

Every calculus teacher should apply to be a College Board Reader.  It's hard to describe unless you've been there.

bring your math t's

KC Convention Center

my fave shuttlebus

Patrick and Allysen

HI colleagues

Arthur Bryant's this year

The Benefits of Implementing Ed Tech

Change in education is not often welcomed with open arms. Change is not comfortable, however, when change happens, it is up to us as educators - as professionals - to adapt for the sake of our students.

I teach at a K-12 coeducational independent school. After using our former schedule for more than 40 years, we adopted a new daily schedule this year. The new routine has forced us to reexamine our curriculum and teaching practices. Fewer class meetings - with the same number of total minutes -required a new approach to teaching and learning.

No longer could I stand in front of the room and be the "sage on the stage." My students don't have that kind of attention span. In fact, most adults wouldn't be able to handle a 55-minute lecture every day either; not to mention how exhausted I would be if I tried to do this.

Knowing this change was coming, last spring (2015) I learned everything I could about SMART amp. I read every document available. I signed up for webinars. I consulted and collaborated with other teachers who were already using this software. I watched every YouTube video on this new SMART product because I knew it would help me be a more effective and efficient teacher with the longer class periods.

I couldn’t keep SMART amp to myself so I shared it with other teachers who are early-adopters. They got excited and used it in the last few months of the year. By the summer, word had gotten around.

There was significant interest from teachers in grades 3-12 who wanted to learn more about SMART amp and how they could apply it in their classrooms. With the overwhelming support of our administration and educational technology specialists (EIL), several workshops were held over the summer (15). Teacher learned about this simple tool that has an infinite number of uses and applications. By learning and working side-by-side, here is what we learned:

• We don’t have to be an expert to try something new in class. It’s ok not to have all the answers.We should let our students help us problem solve. If students can help us learn and understand something, we are modeling the importance of being lifelong learners.
• SMART amp takes the teacher away from the center of learning and gives students the opportunity to become authors, creators, collaborators, critical thinkers, teachers, and learners. Learning this way is natural. Unlike in traditional settings, students have a worksheet and work independently to master new content. Students are natural collaborators. What they share, discuss, and explain to each other is sometimes more meaningful than what the teacher says.
• SMART amp helps make lessons more efficient because basic, but foundational information, can be included in a workspace for students to read and refer to, leaving more time in class for discussion, application, and synthesizing the content – leading to a deeper understanding.
• As we learned together over the summer, unintentionally, we created a learning community.We have continued to meet monthly during lunch or after school throughout the year to share the workspaces we have used, to solicit suggestions and feedback, and to continue to brainstorm other uses of SMART amp. Though I teach high school math, I have learned so much from my colleagues who teach in the Lower School and from those who teach English, history, science, and world languages.

Without a doubt, SMART amp has helped me become a better teacher. I have a more student-centered classroom. Students are actively engaged in learning. The biggest compliment is a student who said, "I actually understand what I'm doing!" This is the heart of what I do: helping students understand what they are learning and not simply become "doers" of mathematics.