Training

Over the last couple of days we have been able to see everything that we did this summer go into to play and figure out ways to make it better.  It was very exciting to see our work being used.  It was also a tad bit frustrating to figure out how much stuff we really missed.  It did not take us long to fix our mistakes and our materials now are better then they were before.
The program that we created the trainng material for will be put in its first store tomorrow.  We will be able to find out if we are really had them prepared for the update.
The thing that I noticed between the business world and the teaching world.  In the business world your work is never done.  This update is still being worked on and they are still making big changes and that will be true until they give their next big update.  Not to say that our job as teachers is ever done but once we teach the students a lesson we expect them to understand it.  While the progression with the lesson will continue to grow throughout their careers we expect them to learn something and to not have it change.  Once they learn the material we can not let it change or they will not get anything from our lesson. 
I do not know which process I like better, they are just so different.  I hope to be able to combine the two.

Week 6 Question

This experience has been very educational for me.  While it has not necessaryly been math based I have found a lot of things that are going to make me a better teacher.  I have all of these ideas that I really hope go well this school year.  With the fact that I will be going on maternity leave in the middle of the school year scares me even more then going through the fact that I am teaching two new classes this year.  I have to figure out a way to get my students on task daily so that when I am gone the classes run smoothly.  Enough about my concerns though lets talk about what is going to change this year.
I am going to have the students doing stuff online all of the time.  They will have their own computers so that they can create different projects or activities and will not be able to use the excuse that they do not have a computer.  I am going to have them sign up for blogs and for edmodo so that they can work on writing what they are doing into words.  I also plan on letting them work in groups a lot.  I realized on this experience how important it is for people to get feed back from their peers to gain confidence and reasurance in any process. 
I also learned about the process of reflection and how beneficial it can be to both the teacher and the student.  We have had to create training material throughout this process without really seeing it in practice.  After seeing it the first time it was much easier to see how to make it better.  So I will also be encouraging a lot of reflection not only from the students but of myself also.
I also want to incorporate as many pbl into my classes as possible.  It was a great creating the lesson but I can not wait to see it be done in the classroom.  I want to see how my students react to the lesson and if they are excited about it as I am.

In the office

This week I was able to spend a lot of time on my PBL plan.  I have decided to create a geometry lesson.  Throughout this lesson they will have to end up creating a commercial that has a logo and slogan that they created for an imaginary product.  They are going to research different slogans and create if-then statements to figure out the effectiveness of the slogans.  From there they are going to look at logos and the congruence of the different shapes in the logo.  Based on the reasearch that they find about this will help them to create their logos. 
I am really excited about this lesson plan because it is extremely connected to the business world and I believe that the students will enjoy the creativity that is incuded. 
One of the days this week we went to a store that is going to recieve the first big update.  While there we talked to all of the people that are going to be impacted by the update to make sure that they were not experiencing any problems with their current system and to see if they have any questions.  We also asked them to do a couple of things before the update comes next week.  I felt like we were going over an assignement with them.  They were able to ask questions about something that they have done in the past...this is the review portion.  Then we gave them something to do for the future...the assignment portion.  The training program at HyVee is very much set up like a school setting.  The managers in the stores get a lot of assignments and review to make sure that everything is moving smoothly, just like we do as teachers in our classroom.

Week 5 Question

The question this week is about how we can get our students involved in the "real-world".  The PBL that I have created for this externship has to do with the students creating a logo and slogan for an imaginary product.  Since our school is going 1:1 this year they are then going to have to create a commercial using their logo and slogan.  My initial idea was to have someone from HyVee come and help me "judge" the commercials for most realistic and appealing.  Whatever group was chosen would receive extra credit.  After they watch all the comercials maybe they can give what HyVee does for their marketing and how they approach selling a product.  I have not set this idea in motion yet but it is one idea that I have had that will really get a "real-world" feel to the lesson.
Something that I have been thinking about doing with my classes to get them interested or at least knowledgable of where the material is being used in the "real-world" is to have certain groups of students come up with a list of jobs that will use the material from the chapter.  Eventually every student will have to find a job throughout the year but by spreading out the workload they may become more interested. 
My hope for this next year is to just allow students to see that there are jobs out there that will use everything that we learn throughout the year.  Now it may not be the exact job that they are interested in but it might be close enough to peak their interest.  It may also show a student that is interested in math but does not know what to do with math other then teach other options.

Last Week

Last week we got to do some math.  I was very excited and felt like I was helping the company out with some of our expertise.  Currently Hy-Vee has three different ways that it checks inventory.  Our job for the day was to go through and figure out which way was most accurate and if all three of the ways were giving similar answers.  This was a time consuming process but we were able to give the company numbers that they did not expect.  That was exciting for all of us that worked on the project. 
It did make me realize though that I need to make sure that my students are discovering information like this.  They need to be able to feel like they successfully gave an answer to a problem that they were given.  Now the big thing will be figuring out a way to make this happen.  Maybe this next week I can work on that from time to time :)

Week 4 Question

The question for this week asks about what we feel will change in our classrooms.  I do not even know where to start on this.  I feel like this next year is going to be my first year all over again.  While I am very excited about the fact that I am starting at a new school this fall I am very overwhelmed at the same time.  I will be teaching two classes that I have not taught before or even really looked at for a couple of years.  This will also be the first time that I have worked at a school that is one to one.  One to one means that every single student will have their own laptop and will bring it to class with them daily.  That changes all sorts of things for me.  I got two ideas so far from this externship that I will expect my students to use almost daily.  I am going to have all of them sign up for edmodo and I am going to have them create a blog so that they can answer reflection questions at the end of every chapter.  The reflection questions are something that I have wanted to do for years and I have not been able to figure out a way that I can have them post their answers at one common place where their classmates can read their responses without having to go to a bunch of different places.  Edmodo will allow that to happen and with all of them having a computer they will not have an excuse to not get the assignment done.  As I stated in the previous blog I do have a lot of other basic teaching changes that I want to apply in my classroom next year. 
The students that I have this fall will not be able to compare my previous teaching style to my new teaching style.  August will be the first time that they meet me.  I am hoping though that they are able to tell a difference between me and any of their previous math teachers.  I would like to make a difference in the way that students are learning math since they have no idea what I had done in the past. 
As I stated in my last blog I have so many ideas and I think after this week I am slowly able to seperate what I plan on doing and what I think is a little unrealistic this next school year.