Let the "Flipped" Classroom Begin!!!

Tomorrow is the first day for students at Cold Lake HS (CLHS). Teachers will be excited. Students will be excited. The 2011-12 school year will get underway. I will be rolling out the "flipped" classroom model in my Math 20-1 class. For those of you who do not know what the "flipped" classroom is here is a short explanation.

• Lectures/Direct instruction ars recorded in a video format and delivered on demand via the Internet
• Each night the students “homework” is to watch the video lesson for the next topic to be studied and take notes.
• Class time is reserved for student questions, guided practice, or group activities designed to help students more deeply understand the math they are learning.
• Because the instructor is not tied up with lecture, he/she can assist students in mastering content.
• This arrangement "flips" the traditional model by assigning lectures as homework and doing practice exercises in class.

I am excited about implementing this model in my Math 20-1 class but I am also nervous. How will the students react to this new way of running my Math class? How will parents react? Will "flipped" classroom work or will it fail?

Luckily, I have the full support of my administration. My fellow Math dept. colleagues are curious to see how this method works. They are intrigued. However, they are willing to let me be the guinea pig. None of them are joining me in "flipping" their math class.

Stay tuned. I will be blogging about my journey in "flipping" my math classroom.

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

How to Have Students E-Mail Assignments to Folder in Box.net

Thanks to Wes Fryer @wfryer for tweeting out that students can e-mail assignments to folders in box.net. This feature will make a lot of teachers lives easier.

Here is how it works:
1. Sign up for an account on Box.net.
2. Create a folder in Box.net that you want your students to e-mail there assignments to.

3. Find the folder you want your students to e-mail their assignment to. You now need to open the "Options" menu. This is located to the right of the word "Share" which is located to the right of the folder.

4. Select "Upload to This Folder" and then in the sub menu select "Email Files to this Folder"


A window then opens that gives you an e-mail address to use to e-mail files to that folder. Share this e-mail address with your students and they can then e-mail you their assignments.

Online Tutorial and Collaboration

Recently I came across an awesome site called BigMarker. It is a lot like Elluminate but it is FREE. You can create a virtual room, upload files to share and view with others. View each other using your webcam. Share your desktop. And the best part of all for me, write on the screen. Being a high school Math teacher I need to be able to write when I discuss problems with my students.

After finding BigMarker and playing around with it, I had an idea. It is the end of the semester for my students and they are beginning to prepare for final exams. I can help answer my students questions while they are at school but when they go home they are really on their own.

So, I created an "Online Tutorial and Collaboration Room" for my students. I will be online in the room in the evening to help them with any questions they have and students can also enter the room and help each other.

I am really excited about the possibilities for this virtual room. I hope my students are as excited when I tell them about it tomorrow!!!

A Picture a Week for 52 Weeks

So, I have decided to take the plung. I am going to try to document every week of the year of 2011 in pictures. (Yeah I know I am starting a couple of weeks late!!) I tried to do a picture a day last year but that just did not work. I missed a few days then just stopped doing it. So, I am going to try to do a picture per week this year.

AI few different people tweeted out a blogposting of themes for each week. Here is the list. I am going to try to use these themes as my starting point each week.

Here is one of the better pictures that I took last year while in Denver for the ISTE conference.

The 12 Days of Christmas - WCYDWT

During this festive season we all get the opportunity to listen to Christmas carols. The 12 Day of Christmas was playing in a store today.

Here is version of it that you can listen to.


My mathematical brain kicked in and WCYDWT came to mind. The following are questions I came up with.

1. How many presents would a person receive over the entire 12 days of Christmas?

2. Could you write an equation or formula to predict the total number of presents received on any given day?

If you can think of any other ideas for using this song please share them in the comments section.

If you really want to see some cool math behind the 12 Days of Christmas, click here

Pictures of Lunar Eclipse

Even with a partially broken tripod I managed to get some decent pictures of the lunar eclipse tonight.

Chrome OS Netbook is a Throw Back to Mainframes

I was in high school back in the early 80s when personal computers first came out. I knew what a mainframe was and even got to tour the Credit Union Central facility in Regina and see their mainframe set up. The computers hooked to the mainframe were called "dummy" terminals. The terminal did not do much but allow you to enter commands and send them to the mainframe. All of software and data resided on the mainframe.

I have been reflecting on the Google Chrome OS netbook that was announced recently. It runs apps and is more powerful than a dummy terminal but operates on the same principle as a mainframe. All of your data is stored on a server in the clouds. Very much like in the days of the mainframe.

Google seems to have gone back in time and taken the mainframe idea and applied it to todays computers. Google has figured out that what most people want is a cheap computer that allows them to surf the net and access their data anywhere and anytime. How do you achieve this model? Store everything on a server and only access what you need when you want it.

I have to chuckle that we have come full circle. The personal computer allowed us to unchain ourselves from the mainframe mentality. However, it appears that the most cost effective way of computing is the centralized server with a bunch of "dummy" terminals connected to it.