Math on the Rocks: Skyping with Professor Garibaldi

Sometime this summer someone tweeted out this video from Emory University.


It features Professor Skip Garibaldi talking about the mathematics of rock climbing and I immediately tagged it to use when teaching proportion. But then as I thought about it, I thought this might be the perfect guy to be my first Skype connection into my class. I searched and found his email address at Emory, then contacted him with the basic pitch. We traded a few emails and we'll be Skyping on Wednesday, September 1st.

You can read a little bit more about Professor Garibaldi on this post on the class blog, where I gave my students some background information to help them develop some questions for him. The basic structure is that he's going to talk for five to ten minutes about rock climbing, or the lottery, or mathematics, or learning in general, then we'll ask him a few questions. Students submitted questions via a Google Form, and I was going to try to use Google Moderator to have them vote on them, but I had trouble getting it to work the way I wanted it to, so I ended up selecting the questions myself.

1. How do you define “math?” How would you describe what “math” is to non-mathematicians? -Me
2. Does learning about things that interest you, like rock climbing and the lottery help you learn/teach better? -Kara
3. Can you recall an analysis/equation that was particularly frustrating for you to work on and what did you do to work through it. -Gabby
4. If you dropped out of high school as a sophomore, how could you go on and graduate and get a bachelor's degree and a PhD? -Ashley
5. What made you realize the connection between algebra and rock climbing? -Mackenzie
6. If you were playing the lottery with, say, 5-10 tickets, what effect would that have on the risk? -Caleb

We're keeping it to about twenty minutes for several reasons, not the least of which is that he has to teach a class twenty-four minutes after we start. We'll see how it goes, but I'm hopeful the students will find it interesting and meaningful.

Here's part of the email I sent Professor Garibaldi describing what I hoped we get out of this:

I'm hoping to accomplish three main things by inviting folks such as yourself to skype in:

   1. Give them an idea of "when are we ever going to use this?"

   2. Have someone who is passionate about math (and learning) talk about how they use/think about math/learning. (And hopefully get them more excited about math and learning.)

   3. Expose them to professionals from a variety of backgrounds (and geographic areas) to expand their view of the world and what's possible.

If we touch on one or all of these, I'll consider it a success. Depending on a few things, I'm hoping to ustream it out for parents to view as well, so you're welcome to tune in on our ustream channel. We'll be skyping from approximately 9:21 - 9:41 am Mountain Time (PLC day for us, so late start) on Wednesday, September 1st.

Oh, I also have to say that I think this (see the entry for September 1st) is kinda cool.

Transparent Algebra: First Week

So my Algebra blogging has been taking up what little "extra" blogging time I have, but here's the summary of the first week of Algebra: I'm rusty. So far I've over-planned (or underestimated the amount of time things take, depending on your perspective) every day. I guess the good news is that I don't think I've done any irreparable harm to my students. (I think.)

Day 1 - Saw them for 10 minutes before the Freshmen class meeting. Pointed them to the blog to get them started.

Day 2 - Mandatory Math Department Skills Assessment

Day 3 - First real day of teaching. Probably had about 130 minutes of material for a 59 minute class. Oops.

Day 4 - Did better on the timing, but still too much material.

My class only meets four days a week (MWRF), so that was the first week. Feel free to follow along on Transparent Algebra if you're interested.

Transparent Algebra: The Blog

So I've been writing about my planning and thought processes as I get ready to teach Algebra for the first time in a long time. With students starting on Monday, I thought it was time to move that over to Transparent Algebra. I hope to find time to regularly reflect there, but we'll see. No promises. If you're interested in that part of what I'm doing, please consider heading over and subscribing.

While I'll probably cross-post here occasionally, this blog will return to its usual content. Well, assuming I have any time to blog here as well.

Transparent Algebra: Parent Communication

As is hopefully pretty obvious by the titles of many of my recent posts, I want my Algebra class to be transparent: transparent to students, transparent to parents, transparent to everyone. While I think I did an okay job with parent communication during my first stint in the classroom, the communication was generally after the fact, dealing with a behavior problem or an academic issue. I did communicate positive information as well, but this time I want to not only communicate those pieces of information, but I also want to share more of what we're doing, as well as why we're doing it. As I plan for this, I'm primarily struggling with two things: how much is too much information and how involved should parents be.

I generally like information. Lots of information. And, as the staff at my school will attest, I'm not adverse to sending out fairly long, involved emails that try to communicate important information in (sometimes excruciating) detail. At times folks have let me know that those emails are not always helpful, because they contain so much information that they often end up going unread. So as I contemplate how to communicate with the parents of the students in my class, I worry that I will bombard them with so much information that they'll end up ignoring it. How to strike the balance between being informative but not overwhelming?

My other concern is that high school is a time for parents to step back a little and students to step up. My philosophy has always been that I want the important conversations to typically be between me and the student, not me trying to get the student to comply by going through his or her parents. Yet I also think that parents should still be involved, and usually want to be involved, just not as a referee. If I communicate too much with parents, will I undermine the students' investment in my class?

With those concerns as backdrop, here are the various ways I'm currently planning on communicating with parents.

1. I've already called all the parents to confirm their student has broadband access from home. When I did that, I asked for an email address I could use to contact them.
   
   
2. I followed-up that phone call with an initial email message with some general information about the class.
   
   
3. Yesterday I then sent a second email message, which had information for both the parents and the students.
   
   
4. As you can see from that second message, I'm encouraging them to subscribe to the class blog via RSS or email. If they choose to do that, they'll get a daily glimpse into what we're doing, as that's where I'll post any homework the students have or other important information about the class.
   
   
5. I'll be encouraging them to come to our scheduled parent-teacher conferences, preferably with their student present.
   
   
6. I'm still thinking about how best to do this, but I want to encourage them not to wait until the scheduled parent-teacher conferences, but to come in and visit before that. I want to invite them in to observe/participate in a class, then perhaps stick around after and talk with me a bit about what they saw, as well as about their student. But this is one where I worry about my second concern, is that inviting them too far in, and will that make the students uncomfortable?
   
   
7. I'll be emailing them periodically with good news, such as when their student does well on an assessment or has a great idea in class.
   
   
8. I will, of course, contact parents if students are struggling, either academically or behaviorally, if talking with the student first doesn't seem to be helping.
   
   
9. I'm trying to be pretty available for them to contact me as well, sharing my Google Voice number, my email address, and various other parts of my digital footprint.
   
   
10. I hope to share interesting things that are going on in class, some of which may not be apparent even if they subscribe to the class blog. So, if we Skype someone in, or are doing a particularly interesting activity, I'll share that out.

I have a few more ideas floating around, but I think this is the core of my plan. What do you think? Too much? Not enough? What could I do better?