YouTube channel

I now have a YouTube channel!  I am posting the lessons from class to the channel.  There likely won't be anything really innovative since I am simply recording the audio and desktop, but it is a start.  I am working on an overall tech plan for our school as a part of my Master's Degree, so expect more in the near future.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHAtvRfwp4wtNdYRSqlGWUw

In the past, I have written the lesson on a Smart Board and emailed the notes, if there were any, to the students as a PDF.  This will open it up for them greatly, and so far the reviews from them are good.

A new idea!

I am in Colorado right now with my brother in law and father in law at a location near Ignacio, CO. We are at a drilling rig location looking for natural gas in the coal seams. I have learned several new ways to apply math so far and hope to be able to build them into a teaching project someday. It is a really near process and one that I think people could benefit from knowing.

Harvested a moose!

Ok, I just spent two days hauling a
Moose out of the woods and I am cold and tired! I am sure though that there is something I can teach the kids through this.

Thinking about a possible project...

So here I sit in a tent in Healy, Alaska in the dark and cold on a moose hunt, and I can't help but want to teach other about it in a mathematical way. Any ideas?

Combat Fishin'!

I have had a great time developing many projects.  By far, my most successful has been Combat Fishin'!  I saw scores on every aspect of the project at 80% or above classwide, and I was able to teach the students about something I really enjoy, fishing!  If you want more information about the project, please contact me and we can talk!

Awards for this Project:
Alaska Society for Technology in Education Winner, 2011 ($3000 stipend plus $10,000 grant)
Microsoft US Innovative Educator's Forum, First Place, Extended Learning, 2011

Project Summary:

·       Every year, salmon return to Alaskan rivers from the ocean to spawn.  The Alaska Department of Fish and Game maintains sonar weirs that count each individual fish (and the particular subspecies it belongs to) in order to make sure that we have sustainable numbers of fish returning.  This count data is stored online, and we accessed and analyzed it using Excel and Graphing Calculators to develop a general mathematical model for each run over the course of several years.  These general models took the form of parabolas, and we generated quadratic equations in order to solve for the x-intercepts and vertices of the parabolas.  This information gave us the average start and end dates of each run and the average date that the largest number of fish enter the river.  Armed with this information, we invited two Fish and Game Biologists to our school and presented them with our conclusions.

We also discussed many other aspects of the salmon runs as well, including the Biology behind the spawn, having a sustainable and clean harvest of salmon, the history of the use of salmon in Alaska (including the Native Alaskans), enhancing your diet with salmon and wild game meat, and using the Alaska Department of Fish and Game fishing regulations in order to legally and ethically harvest salmon on your own.

Students were paired with a partner and were expected to maintain task lists and hold each other accountable for not completing work using a tool called the Decision and Action Record.  The class in general posted their positives, questions, suggested changes, and bright ideas to a tool called the Parking Lot.