May 3rd 2011

Baby it's cold outside, or in class.  We made it to our halfway freeze mark tonight.  Amy was quite nice by advancing some of us our points to be sure we get to where we need to be.  I am feeling a little bad because I don't think that I contribute as much to the bulletin board discussions as other people.  However I am a self admitted bulletin board stalker (don't worry not the crazy kind.)  I just get great ideas from people and I have some good feedback to add but I don't think that I have contributed as many useful tools as other people have.  I think part of the problem is that the type of tools that I look for are different from my peers.  NCTM math illuminations for example is a site that I use frequently with a lot of virtual manipulatives.  I did a jing on vertex edge graphing that I had used in my classes.  It is not a tool that really anyone else in the class would use but it is important to me and my curriculum.  I really do enjoy exploring all of the different tools that we find but some I feel would be more useful to me then others.  I think that we all find ones that we gravitate towards more than others.  I really liked proprofs.com but I am again concerned about how it would translate into a math classroom.  Math is very difficult to type in an essay format so it would work if I created all multiple choice tests and then had students show all of the work on an additional paper.  I really like the fact that there are test statistics.  I like to be able to tell if the tests that I am creating are fair and really testing what it is that I taught, that is the point after all.

I was interested in the possibility of being able to continue as a cohort and also being able to take additional classes on my own.  It is a very different way of learning being in a cohort, you really do get to know the people that you are in class with and rely on their opinions and skills.  I think that it would be nice if we could continue on as a group.