Math Symposium

I went to my first symposium today. If I had known I what sort of awesome stuff I could learn, I would have gone last year.
The first session I went to involved putting lessons on something we have in TX called ProjectShare. The details are sketchy at the moment (I have a PowerPoint so its something I'll have to go and play with before I share what I've learned in detail) but I really enjoyed the fact that it allows the student to access lessons online and not miss work. This is a big deal in my district as our kids are involved in a lot of sports, FFA and UIL competitions. I'm excited to start doing this online posting thing so that my students have no excuse to fall behind. My ultimate hope is that it will help keep us on track better. Those EOCs will wait for no one.
The next session I went to was like an enhancement to the previous session. I learned how to integrate media, etc. into lessons and what is available online to use in class. Our servers do not let us access YouTube but I learned today that almost any educational video that is on YouTube, is probably on iTunes U and since iTunes U is based on podcasts, you can now play those videos at school. Nice. I'm sure there are those of you out there that are scratching your heads, thinking, "You can't get YouTube? That's silly!" and it is. I can understand why you might limit access to the students but the teachers themselves? Hello? Educational stuff is on YouTube and the teacher is only occasionally (if at all) viewing non-educational videos. I'll get off my soap box for now, but in my opinion, its silly that my school admin. assistant can access YouTube and Facebook and yet the actual instructors in the school cannot. Argh.
Moving on. The next session was about Journaling in math classes. I was very excited about this because it seems as though we forget that high school students still need fun stuff like Journaling. I see TONS of stuff about younger math helps but once you get to high school, finding cool/fun math helps is like finding the little slivers of sunlight on a cloudy day. They are few and far in between.  Math in high school is tough, why not find a way to make it a little more enjoyable/memorable? Journaling seems to be very helpful in helping kids retain information and from what I've seen, I'm very much interested in doing this on a regular basis. Kudos to the ladies who did the presentation. I will be hitting them up soon for ideas on Journaling and once I start creating my own stuff, I'll post them. :)
The next session was on using CBR data to help Algebra 1 (and Alg 2) students learn about linear relationships and all the wonderful things you can learn from analyzing the graphs. I went to this session as a filler class (and because I knew the presenter) and I walked away with a better attitude towards using the CBR and excited to use the device later on. I guess that will be its own post when I do that again.
The last session was about AQR (Advance Quantitative Research) for high schoolers. Not all our students will go on to do college or if they do, having a background in statistics and finance will help them be better equipped rather than Precalculus. I'm not saying that its the answer for everyone, but its a viable option to prepare students for business, etc. Who knows, you might get a student excited about continuing down the QR road that would have never gone that direction in the first place and they might change their mind about what they will do later in life.
Overall, it was a great day and I walked away feeling a little more motivated to do work. I am excited about the journaling thing and providing my students better resources online. As always, as I come up with or find HS math journaling ideas (or any other helpful HS math idea), I will do my best to post them. Have a great week!

P.S. here's the link for Project Share in Texas if you aren't already signed up:
www.projectsharetexas.org