I really enjoyed making this website and I think many of my students would also enjoy making a website. However, I think it could be very frustrating for some of them, especially if it was a take-home project and their parents weren't very technology savvy. The most frustrating part of this project for me was getting the videos' volume to be loud enough and that problem was not math related at all.If I were to require my students to make a website page, the purpose of the project would be for them to learn to express mathematics in a clear and interesting way. My main intent would not be for them to learn to make a website, although that is a fun side benefit. Because learning to create a website is not one of my main objectives and for some students the technology frustrations could subsume the math objectives, I wouldn't REQUIRE them to make a website. Rather, I would let the students choose between making a website and a couple of other options.
I do think that creating a video would be a great activity for students to participate in if my school had video cameras/webcams available for student use. Even if there were only a few available, it would not be difficult to schedule students to take turns going to a small study room and record their videos. I think it would be fun to assign each student (or maybe pairs of students) a math topic for the unit and have them create a 5 minute video on that topic. Then I would merge all the videos together and have a class period where they watched their own videos.
I think this would be good learning activity because the students would be verbalizing their math, which is very important. They would also be practicing how to present mathematical ideas in a clear and concise way. They would be actively thinking about how they could make math interesting and how they could apply it to the real world. And finally, they would be enjoying the expression of other mathematical ideas presented by their peers.
When I require my students to make a digital text, I think I will award 20% of the points based on how polished their project is, (appearance, clearness of speech, etc) and 80% of the points based on the presentation of the mathematical content (accuracy, clarity and conciseness of explanations, etc). This would put most of the focus on the mathematical content but also ensure that the projects were of good quality.
Gorgeous website! I had never heard of "How to Teach Your Baby Math" before but now that will be on my list of must-haves.
ReplyDeleteI also liked how your website included many features, such as a colorful image and videos. You have a really nice way of explaining complex concepts to students, as evidenced in your videos. Many parents will appreciate having the quiz to give their students extra practice and immediate feedback on complex concepts.
If, in an interview, a principal ever asks you about your use of technology, I hope you are able to share what you did with him/her. It's a great start to a website that you could share with your students. I know that some schools now are requiring all teachers to have a website, so if you are hired in one of those schools, you will be "ahead of the game."
I agree with you that it may not be worth your time to ask students to make a website; you should only choose instructional activities that will engage them deeply in math. But some schools have had successes in increasing enjoyment in mathematics through making YouTube videos, which I think are fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFSrINhfNsQ
Lastly, I really liked the text you used in the SuperChallenge. I think texts such as that one would be good for "during reading" annotation activities, such as the one we did in class with the poem. Although you would have to modify the activity to meet your discipline (e.g.,students could summarize in words what was going on). I once saw a teacher who wrote out a proof, but who included an error in it, and her students had to annotate the proof by looking for the error.
Just brainstorming here, but if you did have a "main page" on your website, it might also be fun to include a lot of "fun facts" or jokes about math, such as fractals or maybe links to other high-interest websites which you will find in your text set. :)
In sum, beautiful project! Thank you for your enjoyable work.