Blackboard Notes

I admit it, I did not formally force whole classes of students, most of whom aren't 11th graders, to go through weeks of MCA testing practice. In fact, the bulk of what I did in the 3 weeks prior, to focus in, was to introduce/revisit vocabulary, walk through the math test sampler, including 1st 2 pages of problems, what constitutes a good problem (6) vs. a poor one (1). Outside of that, I emphasized problem solving, attention to form, and basically what I do with every lesson I teach, organization and processing. (I also made a special entry of my school teacher page devoted to MCA) As a teacher who's on a maiden voyage with the district I serve this year, I hope to really discover with my department how to fairly handle those 11th graders (considering the classes I teach are not traditionally 11th grade math), and did receive a parent's frustration of the fairness of preparation. Outside of that, I did receive positive feedback from other students who took advantage of...

Now that I realized that I have a whole command of technology apps, from buying a license for a video converter last year, I now have a slew of new "toys" to work with. This of course may have to be put somewhat on hold, as I am working on 2 projects for my graduate classes, but will utilize some to benefit the students also. Nevertheless, I promised (at least the intermediate algebra) students, a vodcast of one or more lessons, which may turn up anytime between now and May. I am exploring editing techniques on my first "draft" video clip, and try to whittle it down, as the raw data reaches a size of 208 megabytes! My first podcasts are in the notes section of my school site's Intermediate Algebra class, http://www.usc.k12.mn.us/uschs/csheldahl/ This week was broken up with MCA II testing, so perhaps next week I'll some more projects completed!