Month: February 2009

A crucible of emotion: A college board envelope

I’ve accidentally came across a few videos on youtube of students getting their College Board AP Scores letter and opening it live on video camera.

I know I’ve posted a bit about this, but it’s so interesting how little I remember about the emotional heights that high school brought. And that time when you know those scores are on their way, those anxious, expectant moments after you see the College Board envelope and before you open it, the rush of emotion when you see the scores inside —

wow.

It’s hard to capture it in words. But watching these videos, I got a rush of those feelings back. Words don’t do it justice, but seeing these kids’ facial expressions, their inability to comprehend, the tone of their voice changing… it’s drama at it’s purest because its a lot of emotion boiled down to a few seconds.

I wonder if people do this for SAT scores too?

What is True Love? Winplot.

I am in love. Absolutely in love…

…

with Winplot (download it here – don’t be deceived by the ugly page). I discovered it on my hunt for a great program to make visuals for my Multivariable Calculus class. But now I’ve started using it when preparing lessons and graphs for all my classes.

The bad news: it has a pretty high learning curve. Some things are intuitive, many things aren’t. You have to, for example, type: y=root(3,x) to graph the cube root of x. But once you get the hang of it, it’s easy, breezy, beautiful.

The good news: what can’t it do?

I decided that either this weekend or next I’m going to spend 60 minutes going through
this comprehensive guide and learn all the features of this program in one go. Since the start of the year, I’ve been learning it piecemeal. I need to graph an inequality, I figure it out by looking around on the program. I need to get gridlines on my graph, I putz around until I figure it out. And in fact I thought I had a pretty good grasp on things without ever reading any documentation. However, it turns out that this program is way, way, way more powerful than I thought — because I only found out today that I can create pictures of volumes of revolution with the short click of a button! And so much more, apparently, after looking at the guide. So in my excited state, I felt compelled to write this post.
I know you’re dying for some screenshots, so I’m going to post screenshots cribbed from the guide linked to above here:

winplot1

winplot2

winplot3

A few more pictures after the jump…

(more…)

Juggling a ton of things

Read below for a challenge!

Tasks accomplished today:

1. Sent info to all high school students regarding the upcoming AMC competition.
2. Organized my advising conferences on Thursday and sent all my advisees this info.
3. Learned that I have to re-organize my advising conferences because of an administrative snafu.
4. Had someone proofread comments written for students who got a C- or below this quarter, and edited them, and gave the appropriate people copies.
5. Scanned and emailed a letter of recommendation for a student.
6. Planned tomorrow’s Multivariable Calculus class.
7. Did homework that I assigned the Multivariable Calculus class tonight.
8. Wrote an Algebra II exam and sent it to the other Algebra II teacher.
9. Put some copies of the Algebra II exam in the Learning Center for students who need to take it in a “distraction free setting”
10. Met with a number of students who had questions about math.
11. Met with administrator and student about a sensitive matter.
12. Talked with administrator about a sensitive matter.
13. Uploaded PDF of Smartboard for students to access in Algebra II, Calculus, and Multivariable Calculus.
14. Sent students homework in Algebra II, Calculus, and Multivariable Calculus.
15. Photocopied my Multivariable Calculus Quarter 2 students exams for my own personal records.
16. Emailed a lot of students about math — and setting up meeting times for individual help for tomorrow.
17. Met with administrator who observed my class last Thursday for him to debrief me.
18. Tried (and failed) to find out if my advisees were supposed to get their metro cards soon.
19. Reminded department head about upcoming Mu Alpha Theta induction.
20. Dealt with late homework.
21. Created a sign out sheet for students who are going to use the restroom in my classes.
22. Printed out my new seating chart for my Algebra II and Calculus classes.
23. Assisted the AP calculus teacher with a sticky math problem.
24. Read an email from a teacher friend at another school who wants to shadow a Biology teacher at my school next week; tried to set that up.

I was thinking today, with all my tasks large and small, about what I spend my time doing. Being a teacher is so much more than just planning classes and writing and grading exams. Such little time, proportionally, goes to those things. I know most teachers wish that we had more time to devote to lesson planning! At all points during the day, I am juggling a number of various responsibilities, small and large.

Challenge: Make a list of the things you did today. I’m curious what tasks, large and small, consume your attention. I think it’ll speak volumes about teaching in general, about your school culture and your teaching style in specific.