Blackboard Notes

To those who I've shared my goals and visions, I have NOT made any headway to make any lessons for rCampus.  The fact that there are 1000's of online videos already have discouraged me from this amibition, yet if I were to do as PatrickJMT of Youtube.com, charge 99 cents a download for the videos produced. In reality, I have been making unseen advances with my downstairs office/video production area.  My backroom is cleaned up (finally!) and ready for work/recording.  This brings me to another passage in the plan to produce electronic curriculum,  "How should I deliver it?"  There are several choices. Pen and paper method. (w/cam) Presenter in front of the board (w/cam) Jing it Use online whiteboards (such as vyew.com) Doing live sessions. I like how easy option 1 makes for doing a tutor or lesson session;  the presenter just writes down the concepts in almost a notation form you could copy and use for your own notes.   However, the only way ...

Thanks to the new enhancements through Blogger, I now have a somewhat different look to my blog.  In addition, I have been working on rCampus, but not yet ready to publish any curriculum, because I've been sidetracked with other projects, though I did take the summer "off" from my master's program. So far, I have registered and set up a tutor account through rCampus, and going by a handle appropriately named "MrShel" which I also have a code to find me quickly, which is T4763864. That's all I have, as I keep diligently working at "finding" students to tutor this summer and fall. Til I chalk again, Mr. Shel

 I hope you've enjoyed the change in scenery (if you're a student OR a teacher).  Now that my status has been changed, I have now more freedom to create my little snippets of lessons...not that there isn't a plethora already of Math and Reading.  I've found after being let go of one job, that I do better motivating myself as the boss. (make or break).  The comments I've followed from the blogs I'm subscribed to have been helpful to my mental appetite; however have been anorexically rejected in practice by the district I formally worked in.  This gives me new light and new motivation...specially to encourage those in the regular (math) education, to follow dan's link (see links at bottom) of his latest comments...to make the students "struggle-think," drop the concept as if in the middle of a cliffhanger movie, then when they ask for a conclusion, and if there's time, supplement the concept.  I like that kind inquiry and curiosity.  It really ...

Since I've been working feverishly on finding relevant work, I've neglected my post (pun intended). With the freedom of no new contract, I may seek to develop my tutor center with more withall, for lack of a better word. Likewise, I will be changing my Wiki space page name to CSES-Int-Algebra.wikispaces.com (the one I've been working on since last fall). It is my intention to make it more standards-friendly and less text dependent. This transition will have to be over the summer, after I come back from Disney World. Til I chalk again, Mr. Shel

Forgive me for not blogging in the last month! I realize there are interested people out there that do come across my blog, and parents who would like to see how my efforts could further their children's education, but I still have yet to convince the students to pour some (notice I didn't say all) of their unscrupulous energy to use their thumbtop abilities to benefit their own education (and grades). For example, my wikispaces math setup at www.isd2134.wikispaces.com Though we have a district wide ban on electronic device use during school hours, it simply amazes me the number of PARENTS who text/try to call their students DURING school hours, to give them messages of what to do, what siblings to care for, oh, and to turn the dishwasher on and take out the trash when they come home. Are these the same parents that tell "us" teachers to make sure they don't text Johnny or Suzy during the day?? Since this is the homestretch, I will not force the issue to try to...

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!