Andrew Busch

It's that time of year--the air turns crisp, the leaves change color, and the online math teacher community has it's annual initiation of new recruits.

If you're new to whole blogging thing or are just now getting on Twitter, you are in for a wonderful surprise: #MTBoS! I know it's not the most catchy of names but it is a wonderful community full of excellent teachers who want to become better at teaching and want to help others do the same.

If you're interested, check out: https://exploremtbos.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/a-new-exploration/. We'd love to help you navigate the vast and plentiful world of online resources and Twitter.

Embracing rich contexts, complex tasks and experiments in Algebra 1 and 2
One teacher's story of moving towards inquiry-based learning and peer collaboration in the math classroom.

Yesterday I presented at the Math In Action conference at Grand Valley State University. Below are my notes on the presentation and a pdf version of my PowerPoint (which means the videos don't show up).

Teacher Cred
I want to start out with some pictures of my classroom from this past year. My goal in showing you these isn’t so that you think I’m some wonderful teacher; it’s to give weight to what I’m saying. If I can do it, you can do it. 

Several years back, I went to Western Michigan to get my Master’s degree in math education. When confronted with the research, it’s not hard to see the value in inquiry-based learning coupled with rich contexts in the math classroom...
                   ___________________ (read more) ______________________

I've been inspired you online math community. Over the past two years, I've borrowed/stolen more ideas than I care to think of. People like Geoff Krall (@emergentmath), Dan Meyer (@dydan) and Fawn Nguyen (@fawnpnguyen) spend more time than I care to think of putting lessons and ideas online to benefit the rest of us. I've taken these ideas, shared them in my department and to whoever else will listen and I've grown as a teacher. As I move towards richer and more engaging problems and tasks, I think it time to share the wealth.

I dig the idea of a virtual filing cabinet--a place where people file away e-resources for personal use but available to all. Instead of filing away every resource I can possibly find on a topic I want to post what I actually use (or plan to use) in my courses.

I started this past summer with my Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 courses. Slow and steady the resources come online. I've already gotten quite a bit of my linear stuff up. Next week we break into quadratics and then to exponential functions, polynomials, rational functions, etc.

http://www.andrewbusch.us/math-tasks.html

Take a gander. Check back in a month or so for new stuff. If you feel like adding some suggestions, please give a holler. I'd love to use them.

For well over a decade I've used the internet to help find resources for lessons in my classroom. More often than not, the resource I find is not timely; I've usually already taught that topic or will teach it several months from when I find it. So, in the past I bookmarked it. The only difficulty was that I never actually went back through my math bookmarks--because I couldn't remember where things were or because I had forgotten I found the resource or because I couldn't remember what I wanted to look at on the webpage I bookmarked.

I just read a bunch of people's MTBoS Mission #6 posts on this and really, it sounds like no one else has it figured out either. Some people use a virtual filing cabinet system to keep stuff organized--putting the resource where they want it to go in their curriculum the moment they find it. That sounds like to much work to me. Plus, that means I always need a computer handy that can either access my curriculum documents or edit my webpage... in a way that doesn't kill the fun I'm having exploring other people's resources.

It's not that my old method was horrid, I just never found stuff or forgot what I wanted in the first place. Here's my current method: Evernote with lots and lots of tags and a text note in Dropbox with all the activities and concepts I do for a particular course.

How I use Evernote:
Because I often stumble across resources, I need a method I can access no matter the device I'm using. Laptop? No problem. School computer? No problem. iPad? Almost no problem. I use the Evernote Web Clipper plugin on whatever browser I happen to be using (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and iOS Safari). The only tweak is that Evernote web clipper can't technically run in iOS Safari. But it does work as a bookmark. It takes a bit of work setting up but works like a charm.

How I use my text document:
Then, either during the summer or whenever I my memory works I take a resource and rework it. Then reason I needed a general course outline with concepts covered and the current activities and tasks I use is because I don't want to keep every possible resource I find; I only want to keep it if it's better than what I currently do. But I don't often remember what I currently do. The text document has also helped me be more focused in my searching for new ideas. You know what? I don't need anything more ever for exponential functions. Ever.
Here's a link to my Aglebra 1 text document so you get an idea of how I've organized it. If you've got any ideas as to how to improve it, I'm all ears.

Last Spring I attended a session at MACUL 2013 by Kevin Honeycutt. The one that impacted me the most was about telling your story to parents and the outside community. Twitter was one of the ways he encouraged us to tell our story. Truth be told, Twitter hasn't been all that helpful (yet) as a story-building tool (my students' parents aren't on it) but it has been tremendously helpful as a professional development tool.

I've grown tremendously in the last six months as a teacher. Through Twitter I've found like-minded educators intent on improving their craft. I started by following people I knew to be involved in the math education world--the rock stars of math education. Quickly, I found looking towards a 'hero' is not the best use of the tool. The beauty of Twitter is the sharing that happens throughout the math community not just through the sages.

#MichEd - Wednesdays at 8pm
A gathering of Michigan Educators who share best practices and encourage each other to grow as teachers.

#MTBoS
The Math Twitter Blog-o-Sphere community. Math teachers from around the world (literaly) who freely share lessons and ask questions. If you're looking for collaboration as a math teacher, this is where it's at!

#Alg2Chat - Mondays at 9m
I devoted my time this last summer to reinventing my Algebra 2 class. It's not that it was a bad course before, it's just that there weren't a lot of engaging activities and experiments. Through the #MTBoS, I found other teachers who were intent on developing their own Algebra 2 courses. Here's an awesome idea for M&M catapults from @HHSmath. Guess what I'm going to do this year when we cover exponential equations.

Once you've gotten your feet wet with Twitter, I suggest using Tweetdeck. Once you do, there is no going back.