Heading out to NCTM

I am on a plane right now…heading out to NCTM, http://www.nctm.org/ National Conference for Teachers of Mathematics. My lens is always to look at curriculum and see ways technology is being used to enhance education. I also go with the lens as a mom. What would make Math fun for Andrew. Andrew’s forte in school is Math. You can dish it to him in the simplest of ways, workbooks, and he will eat it up, or you can present it digitally, like Cyberchase and he’ll still eat it up. Here is the difference though, what does a workbook provide in giving math real world meaning? Cyberchase is a favorite site of mine for several reasons:

1. Sponsored and created by Channel 13…enough said


2. Provides real world scenarios for math and child work through possible solutions to find an answer that makes sense


3. Provides the digital gaming feel which is attractive to students in the 21st century


4. Is free


5. Sponsored and created by Channel 13…enough said

Being able to solve math equations is important but what good is it if you can’t apply it to life. As parents it is important to demonstrate on a day to day basis where math fits into our lives and important it really is. Here a re a few ways Andrew and I have math conversations seamlessly throughout the day and believe it or not, its painless, they don’t know whats happening and they certainly don’t realize that they are computing.

Fuel…$3.50 a gallon (and rising), talk about what it was yesterday, what will it be tomorrow, in one week, in one month at the increase of 1 cent/gallon. Don’t forget to point out the fuel tank and show empty as equaling zero to half full tp ¾ full to full.
“Go weigh this for me” This is my command at the supermarket. Andrew grabs the fruit or the vegetables and runs over to the scale, drops them down and waits patiently for the needle to stop move and announces “3 pounds plus a little” That’s code for over 3 pounds but not near 4 pounds. If it was closer to 4 pounds, Andrew’s answer would be “almost 4 pounds” Sometimes he will add an extra orange or apple to make it 4 even.
“Time check!” This is my shout out in the morning. While I am rushing around the place to do my hair, make-up, last minute emails, my son acts as the time keeper. He yells back 6:53, 7 more minutes till lift off. Then a few minutes later I hear, 2 minutes till lift off, then I hear “it’s 7:00 mommy time to go.” I have come to rely on Andrew’s timekeeping skills. He helps me with my time management in morning…sad but true.
Coupons…he loves coupons, loves reading the sale circulars and informing me of all the processed foods he can get for $10. This is a highlight of the food shopping excursions. “Look mommy…10 pizzas for 10 bucks” You can get 20 for 20 bucks and on and on.

These are a few examples of ways you can work math into your life skills education you provide your children. These conversations between Andrew and I are not because I have a smart child or pay extra special attention then anyone else. I work 60-70 hours a week, 6 days a week, but I make math a priority in our conversation. We all talk to our children, so why not make the conversation meaningful. Our jobs are to teach and share, and that is what our conversations are about. I would love to hear from you to see what examples you have to share about working math into your conversation with your children.

Stay tuned till after this weekend and I will report about the new and innovative ways technology is working its way into Math.

My big plans...

I decided today that I am going to activly persue the NOAA's Teacher at Sea program. I think through my blog I can open the window to many environmental issues with our oceans we are currently facing. The application process begins in October 2008. I already put it in my calendar as a reminder. I think my son would be rather jealous if I did this, but the amount of information I could potentially learn and being able to share that information digitally to teachers, parents and students would be well worth it!

Technology across the grades....Part 1

As you may or may not know…in addition to being a mom, blogger and technologist, I am also an educator. I work for the NYCDOE in technology. I would like to draw the curtains back and take a peak into classrooms and see how technology is being used in classrooms. I will focus on one grade level a week. During the weeks ahead if you are doing something great in your classroom or at home (especially if you home school…I would love to hear from you) please email me. theinnovativeparent@gmail.com

For our little Kindergartners here are some thoughts pulled together from the standards set forth by NCREL http://www.ncrel.org/tech/nets/netsrubricp2.pdf

· Kindergarten children, with assistance from their teacher, or working with student partners begin to use computers, calculators, the web and other technology tools to access appropriate resources identified by their teacher.
· Teachers model for the students’ safe web usage as an introduction to cyber safety. Students begin to navigate different resources (e.g., interactive books, educational software, drawing and presentation programs) to support their classroom learning and express creativity.
· At home, parents can work with their children using software or visiting web resources that help focus on early learning problem-solving skills (e.g., matching, counting, ordering and sequencing, patterns, sorting by shape or color, classification, hidden items, measurement, directional words, critical thinking, logic and prediction, same or different).

Parents (and teachers) need to become familiar with http://www.isafe.org/ . “i-SAFE Inc. is the worldwide leader in Internet safety education. Founded in 1998 and endorsed by the U.S. Congress, i-SAFE is a non-profit foundation dedicated to protecting the online experiences of youth everywhere. i-SAFE incorporates classroom curriculum with dynamic community outreach to empower students, teachers, parents, law enforcement, and concerned adults to make the Internet a safer place.” It is important at an early age to begin discussing with our children the importance of practicing cyber safe behavior. Don’t scare the children! Be frank with them. My son is in Kindergarten and I have already solidified with him the importance of using a screen name different from his own name and one that doesn’t give away his gender. We talked about animals and his favorite animals (sharks, dinosaurs, birds) and we choose one and added a simple number strand at the end. When he logs on to webkinz world (while it is a closed environment) I know that he is putting cyber safe practices into motion. He has begun to play chess online. This is a little trickier. He goes to yahoo games which is a live chat area. We have talked about what he should say if someone asks him a question such as “Is your mom or dad home?” or “What school do you go?” I tell him to not reply but to simply get me. As questions like this arise, I will guide him with proper answers that will help keep him safe. I don’t want him to be scared, just knowledgeable and let’s face it, a five or six year old has the memory of a flea. Giving them answers now for questions that may occur months from now won’t help them. It is much better to say “And don’t remember to call me when someone asks you a question” and then teach them in the moment an appropriate answer. That will drive home the learning process. If you have any additional suggestions on this topic please share!

So remember, Kindergarteners should be on the internet and using applications. The earlier their skills are worked on the better it is for the student. Here are some additional resourses for you. If you have more, please share.

A great place to start with resources, lessons and standard. This wiki can also be edited as well.

http://schoolcomputing.wikia.com/wiki/Technology_in_Kindergarten

Standards/Expectations of learning in Kindergarten from North Carolina

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/computerskills/scos/06kindergarten

Publications on the using technology at young ages by the Northwest Educational Technology Consortium

http://www.netc.org/earlyconnections/index.html

Countdown to Earth Day (oh and that’s my birthday too!)

Five green things you can do with your students/children starting TODAY:
1. Email notices….9 times out of 10 they are created on a computer in the first place, but somehow they wind up in a copier.
a. If you are a teacher think how easy it would be to create a distribution list in your email address book and send home all notes in one attachment. You can do this quickly and efficiently and save paper.
b. If you are a parent, ask schools to stop sending paper notices home. Offer to create a distribution list for those parents who want less paper (I’m thinking PTA can be really helpful here) and offer to be the point person to email out the notices. It might make sense to break your distribution lists up by grades, that way if you have a grade specific notice it is real easy to send.
2. Take a look at your technology in your home, office or classroom. Are your devices plugged directly into the wall. If they are they are most likely draining electricity. It’s estimated that about 40% of home use electricity comes from this slow drain. Instead, plug all your devices into surge protectors-after you power down all of your devices turn the surge protector off as well to stop the drain.
3. Recycle those ink cartridges (and now cell phones, PDAs, laptops, DVDs, iPods).
a. If you are a teacher go immediately to http://www.cartridgesforkids.com/ and sign up your school. I always participated in this at my schools where I taught and it was easy, free and we always got lots of points to buy things we needed. Enough said.
b. If you are a parent go to http://www.freerecycling.com/ and turn your cartidges, PDAs, Cell Phones into cash. I live in a building, so I signed up. I figured I’ll put the box in the clubhouse, post a sign and collect some old recycled stuff. Send it and use the money to buy plants for the neighborhood, can’t get more green then that. (I’ll keep you informed about how much money I collect to beautify my neighborhood.)
4. Reduce your cell phone time…there seems to bee a link to the radiation given off by cell phones and the reduction of honeybees. Try SKYPE as an alternative when you are at your computer.
5. Try a solar charger. This particular company sells them rather inexpensively, and think of how convenient it would be to charge your phone, PDA or Laptop whenever there is sun!

No Mommy, Pokemon is real…

Andrew loves his Pokemon cards. The names on those cards are really strange and I have no interest in knowing about the damage level each character possesses but he feels compelled to share all his knowledge about Pokemon with me. The Easter bunny also brought new Pokemon cards so there is a new batch of names to learn and who evolved from who and 10 damage or 20 damage (those who know about this know exactly what I mean.)
This morning my son came running to me to announce he had two “legendary” characters. I asked Andrew if he even knew what the word legendary meant. He said no but he was certain they were legendary. Feeling the need for a teachable moment I showed him that I could type the word into MS Word, right click and choose “look up.” So that’s what we did. Here is what we got:
1. described or commemorated in a legend
2. retold for generations as history but unlikely to be completely or even partially true
3. very famous in contemporary society

Well definition number two caused quite a stir in my home. His jaw dropped, he looked at me and shouted “Pokemon is real Mommy!” Then he stormed away.
Shortly afterwards he returned to my desk and saw the title for this blog on the computer and then as cute as can be he said “So I guess now you are going to tell everyone I think Pokemon is real, right?” You got it kid!
But the point of this story is to show that whenever I have a chance to show him something cool on the computer I do. And you should to. Today he learned he can look up any word he chooses to use in his writing. I modeled it for him, he saw how to do it and the next time he sits down to write an email to his grandmother he will probably do the same. Knowing that he can look up words, use them appropriately in his writing will help him become a stronger writer, a fearless writer. Isn’t that the point of these tools, make our work easier?

Your blog is locked….

...this post was written yesterday as I waited patiently for them to fix my old blog but I thought I would share it anyway since there are some nice links in it.

I worked hard Easter morning. I wrote and wrote. I came home from celebrating Easter and literally jumped into my seat to check my blog. I knew that even if the whole world didn’t read it, at least Lisa Michelle, my friend, my critic, my colleague, my partner in crime, at least she read it. I assured her I would put up my first few posts and I did but as I logged on I saw something very strange: http://screencast.com/t/3zGemKLnMLq (captured with JING... http://www.jingproject.com/ (very cool, free and easy) They took down my blog??? Why would they take down my blog??? I checked my email and saw a notice that indicated that the spam-preventing robots have detected spam like qualities in my blog and until they read it it will remian blocked. I wrote to them and the response I got is here:

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.
We received your unlock request on March 24, 2008. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.
And so here I am 24 hours later and no blog. I am sure it is a mistake but it is very frustrating (and very annoying.)

But as you can see, I moved over to a new blog...and knock wood everything has been fine, but I wonder aloud here...is there a back-up service to use to save our blogs in the event it is taken down?

An Introduction...

(This was imported from my damaged site) Sunday, March 23, 2008

Who is the Innovative Parent? Here is a list of some words that come to mind when I need to describe who I am:Parent, Mom, Educator, Technologist, Blogger, Scrapbooker (…and not paperless), Online dater, Friend, Text Junkie, Social Networker, Sister, Cook That’s just a few, but I want you to have a sense of who I am. My goals through this forum are simple:

• To share with parents/educators what I know about 21st century tools and how to use them and where they fit in our children’s lives.
• To build a social network of parents/educators that share what they know about 21st century tools and where they fit in our children’s lives (lets face it…I don’t know everything)
• To communicate and share ideas and thoughts with people throughout the world.
• To build an active digital footprint that can have a profound affect on my parenting and teaching while learning and collaborating with anyone who wants to “chime” in.

Throughout my journey you will learn more about me and my son. I hope to learn about you, your students/children and together we can collaborate on ways to meet the needs of these kids who are growing up in a digital age so vastly different from 2 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago and beyond.