Semester 2

This is a busy semester for me. I am teaching 4 blocks and 3 new courses (new to me, and also to the math curriculum) so I find myself so busy with the developement and preparation for the courses. The good thing about my Enquiry project is that many of the things I want to learn and initiate I can actually complete directly within these new courses. But still for the whole week I have been at school until at least 7:00PM. It will be a long semester, but the work and positive attitudes I get from my kids reminds me that putting in the extra effort makes it worth it. I know I could just come in in the morning and do examples right from the textbook, but students loose interest so fast that way and it would be more work to get them back.

I have my Moodle site all set up which was the first thing I wanted to do, I have played around with all the settings, and now have a nice waterfall or nature scnene on all my class pages. I have also started uploading class notes. When I have some time I want to find links on the internet to supplement the students learning, or so they can review topics from home. I will try to get up some screne shots soon so you can see what I have done. I have emailed all my parents about the moodle site so I hope this will increase their awareness of what we are doing in class, and make sure that they keep up to date with their childs' learning.

I have also set up a Google Reader account as Joanne suggested, and am finding it very useful. At the moment I am only following the blogs of my small group members (hello members!), but will add more to the list as time goes on.

I have been using PowerPoint to create lessons for years now, but I am just learning all the new features in PowerPoint 2010 which is a bit time consuming as it takes time (obviously) to play around. But now my presentations in class are much more interesting, but also it is easier to illustrate many math concepts so that students can see things visually. Because I am teaching these new courses it is pusing me to develop new lessons and I think it will be good for both myself and the students in the long run.

Overall I am pretty pleased with what I have done these last few weeks. I am excited to get my twitter account up and running soon I have a list from other colleagues of people that they follow.