Monday, September 24, 2007
Dining Out Math Lesson Plan
Last week I had the pleasure and honor to conduct a guest math lesson at the Arturo Schomberg Bronx facility of Satellite Academy High School. [You can also read more about the Satellite Academies here. Shawn Welcome is the Principal.] The lesson I created is called "Dining Out" and this idea can work well particularly well with older students in a consumer math, personal finance, and/or basic algebra review class. The primary activity involves ordering dinner from a menu and getting as close to $50, without going over, including sales tax & gratuities.
Some envision a curriculum around the topic of EveryDay Math. With my personal experience and background in finance (I worked on Wall Street for a number of years, as a Mortgage Office after that and for a financial planning firm), I really know a lot about this and it is one of those things I really like teaching. Too often our students graduate high school knowing nothing about credit cards, bank accounts or budgeting. There are all kinds of financial decisions we make - from picking a cell phone plan to furnishing an apartment - and a class like this can give students a real jump on dealing successfully with these situations.
At The Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem, NY I taught a similar class, and I really enjoyed the students and their engagement with the subject matter. There were equations, too, of course, but it all fit into Math in Every Day life. The school has a computer lab & mobile laptop carts that can be used, too. Students can learn to use a spreadsheet program, research investments, and tap into an online Mathematical Skills plan to practice and create their portfolios. Dan Stein, college professor and consultant, has developed a spreadsheet that students can use to track their progress and link directly to AAAMath.com for topic reviews and practice.
I published the lesson on the web using google pages and used a calculator widget from Lab Pixies. Widgets are great... and this one cames in handy! Lab Pixies has something new call "moodgets".... I'm sure you'll be seeing this one on myspace ... and it could be great to use with little kids when learning about expressions and feelings..
For more teaching ideas, lesson plans and articles, see my Portfolio page at LynneMBailey.com.
Some envision a curriculum around the topic of EveryDay Math. With my personal experience and background in finance (I worked on Wall Street for a number of years, as a Mortgage Office after that and for a financial planning firm), I really know a lot about this and it is one of those things I really like teaching. Too often our students graduate high school knowing nothing about credit cards, bank accounts or budgeting. There are all kinds of financial decisions we make - from picking a cell phone plan to furnishing an apartment - and a class like this can give students a real jump on dealing successfully with these situations.
At The Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem, NY I taught a similar class, and I really enjoyed the students and their engagement with the subject matter. There were equations, too, of course, but it all fit into Math in Every Day life. The school has a computer lab & mobile laptop carts that can be used, too. Students can learn to use a spreadsheet program, research investments, and tap into an online Mathematical Skills plan to practice and create their portfolios. Dan Stein, college professor and consultant, has developed a spreadsheet that students can use to track their progress and link directly to AAAMath.com for topic reviews and practice.
I published the lesson on the web using google pages and used a calculator widget from Lab Pixies. Widgets are great... and this one cames in handy! Lab Pixies has something new call "moodgets".... I'm sure you'll be seeing this one on myspace ... and it could be great to use with little kids when learning about expressions and feelings..
For more teaching ideas, lesson plans and articles, see my Portfolio page at LynneMBailey.com.
Labels: consumer math, instructional technology, lab pixies, lynne bailey, math lesson plan, numeracy, Prof. Dan Stein, sany hs, satellite hs, teaching, widgets
Blogging Basics
Last week I attended a Blogging Basics workshop given by Nelly Yusupova, the President of the NYC Chapter of Webgrrrls. Nelly did a fabulous job presenting the information and there was a lively, diverse and interesting group of participants.
On Thursday, October 25, 2007 there will be another blog workshop on designing and implementing a blog. You can register for the workshop here. Consider joining Webgrrls while you're at it. Webgrrls is a great resource for anyone interested in tech-related issues and meeting interesting people with very diverse backgrounds in many fields. There are monthly meetings and lots of opportunities for networking.
Blogging can be a bit confusing for the uninitiated. I wrote a paper, A Look at Blogging in December, 2006 about blogging with ideas for using it in the classroom. You can download it here (it's a PDF file for Adobe Acrobat) and check it out. Using blogs for students to post and comment can be very beneficial for learning, and teachers and administrators find them to be a great communications tool.
For more teaching ideas, lesson plans and articles, see my Portfolio page at LynneMBailey.com.
Labels: blog workshop, blogs, education blog, instructional technology, lynne bailey, lynne m. bailey, nelly yusupova, teaching with blogs, webgrrls
Monday, April 09, 2007
Get Out & Play! PodCampNYC Report
What a Great Day! Though I must say, I thought it would be more crowded. I actually ran into a couple of people I know: Sarah McPherson one of my NYIT professors, and Webgrrls I
nternational NYC chapter leader Nelly Yusupova. YOU SHOULD JOIN! I did meet some interesting people, volunteered for 'watching the computer' for an hour, and attended some great sessions. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the after party-ing at Slate. Aside from Podcasting, there were blogging sessions, too, which I was most interested in . I also learned how to use WordPress to support multiple bloggers to a hosted website from one of the participants - I think it was Eric Skiff from clipmarks.com (great tool for clipping parts of web pages and saving/sharing them) who offered a solution for that.
I attended 5 different sessions -
I was very impressed with the organic nature of the event and the presenters. They had great experiences to relay and excellent ideas. Someone I missed was Laura Allen, co-founder of 15secondpitch.com. If you are doing any kind of marketing, this looks like a great tool and you can share your pitch from their site. The event itself was organized very 'organically,' - they used wikis and blogs throughout the website which made it a simple process to register, volunteer, add events, and resources and they will be updating the site.
It's time to get serious about blogging and connectingvia the web with new people. How? comment, link, technorati, stumble upon (and don't forget to stumble upon your own site), maybe twitter, linked-in, ning. Poke around. I've found lots of useful tools by reading other's blog.. like this one-click blogroll tool from blogrolling.com .. what a great timesaver! Investing time, takes time, ... and over the next few weeks I won't have too much to spare. - school work, trip to Arizona and working may keep me away for awhile!
PodCampNYC was a wonderful experience... and people are busy organizing them in other cities.
For some pics, try this link to a flicker search. Check out the NYC Podcamp Wiki for resources .. which are minimal right now, but hopefully many will be added soon. Did you attend PodCampNYC - what did you find most interesting?
The BIG question for teacher, is how do we use these tools and resources in the classroom for learning. Many are using blogs, but the social network phenomena is frowned upon. You might want to connect your students in a Ning network .. or encourage online portfolio development. What are your thoughts?
All the Best,
Lynne
teaching portfolio at lynnembailey.com
studio portfolio at PresentsByDesign.com
body art/face painting at FunMasters.biz
podcampnyc, podcasting, podcast for teahers, blogging tips, blog rolling, internet brand building, amy domestico, blogtalkradio, wayne turmel, cranky middle manager, cc-chapman, valerie luther, creative concepts, chris penn, edvisors, eric skiff, clipmarks, financial aid podcast, blogrolling, sara mcpherson, nyit, nelly yusupova, webgrrls, bigelow tea, lynne bailey.
nternational NYC chapter leader Nelly Yusupova. YOU SHOULD JOIN! I did meet some interesting people, volunteered for 'watching the computer' for an hour, and attended some great sessions. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the after party-ing at Slate. Aside from Podcasting, there were blogging sessions, too, which I was most interested in . I also learned how to use WordPress to support multiple bloggers to a hosted website from one of the participants - I think it was Eric Skiff from clipmarks.com (great tool for clipping parts of web pages and saving/sharing them) who offered a solution for that. I attended 5 different sessions -
- Amy Domestico of blogTalkRadio led an information session on using about BlogTalkRadio to host your own Internet radio podcast, live! Of course it does get archived for later listening. What a fabulous service.. you can hook up to 7 different people via phone (other tools coming.. including community groups) for a podcast panel, broadcast it live.. this could be very useful for...
- Wayne Turmel, host of The Cranky Middle Manager Show who led a session on 'Creating a Read Podcast Brand' He told his story about growing his podcast audience. He is now featured as a writer on a British website. Interestingly, when he polled his readers listeners they most often expressed an interest in being able to connect with each other (enter BlogTalkRadio). Which brings us to ...
- CC Chapman on the New Media Playground talking about - how we connect in this read/write /record/listen web world. Twitter this! Very friendly, very connected - he even has an island on second life, that virtual reality world site that I haven't explored yet. I will get to that when the semester is over. There are lots of 'adults' there, too. Chris drove home the point that we each have a unique voice and others are interested in sharing with us.. so Go out and Play! .. blog, find other blogs, make comments, get connected!
- Valerie Luther of Creative Concepts talked about using blogging for business. Her company created a very successful blogging, marketing strategy for Biglow Tea and she discussed the process of growing that. It's making a significant difference for the company. Valerie's company is hosting a onference on May 15 2007, BusinessSmartTools, in Stamford Connecticut. She is a very engaging speaker and I am sure the conference will be worthwhile.
- More marketing ideas from Chris Penn of Edvisors, who was very knowledgeable about the blogosphere and podcasting, spoke fast, and reinforced much of what other had to say. I am a member of Linked-In, and Chris had contacted me there before the conference. He does a DAILY podcast & blog at Financial Aid Podcast, primarily tuning into the college-student market and categories on Podcast, PodCamp, Focus on Financial Aid, Podsafe Music, Scholarship Update, Mailbag, and Politics .
I was very impressed with the organic nature of the event and the presenters. They had great experiences to relay and excellent ideas. Someone I missed was Laura Allen, co-founder of 15secondpitch.com. If you are doing any kind of marketing, this looks like a great tool and you can share your pitch from their site. The event itself was organized very 'organically,' - they used wikis and blogs throughout the website which made it a simple process to register, volunteer, add events, and resources and they will be updating the site.
It's time to get serious about blogging and connectingvia the web with new people. How? comment, link, technorati, stumble upon (and don't forget to stumble upon your own site), maybe twitter, linked-in, ning. Poke around. I've found lots of useful tools by reading other's blog.. like this one-click blogroll tool from blogrolling.com .. what a great timesaver! Investing time, takes time, ... and over the next few weeks I won't have too much to spare. - school work, trip to Arizona and working may keep me away for awhile!
PodCampNYC was a wonderful experience... and people are busy organizing them in other cities.
For some pics, try this link to a flicker search. Check out the NYC Podcamp Wiki for resources .. which are minimal right now, but hopefully many will be added soon. Did you attend PodCampNYC - what did you find most interesting?
The BIG question for teacher, is how do we use these tools and resources in the classroom for learning. Many are using blogs, but the social network phenomena is frowned upon. You might want to connect your students in a Ning network .. or encourage online portfolio development. What are your thoughts?
All the Best,
Lynne
teaching portfolio at lynnembailey.com
studio portfolio at PresentsByDesign.com
body art/face painting at FunMasters.biz
podcampnyc, podcasting, podcast for teahers, blogging tips, blog rolling, internet brand building, amy domestico, blogtalkradio, wayne turmel, cranky middle manager, cc-chapman, valerie luther, creative concepts, chris penn, edvisors, eric skiff, clipmarks, financial aid podcast, blogrolling, sara mcpherson, nyit, nelly yusupova, webgrrls, bigelow tea, lynne bailey.
Labels: blogrolling, blogtalkradio, cc-chapman, clipmarks, cranky middle manager, edvisors, financial aid podcast, lynne bailey, nelly yusupova, podcampnyc, podcasting, valerie luther, webgrrls
