Here is the rubric for this year’s version of the project. 

Here is a link to the planning sheet, which included the justification of all of their photos, wall posts, friends, etc. Turns out, this was even better than Diigo. I was able to see their progress very easily using the history of the document, and I was able to have an online dialog with them about their research using “comments”. I know Diigo could have done some of this, but the kids hit the ground running with a tool they were already familiar with.

Since the online fake Facebook sites were so unstable last year, I used this JFK template I found online and taught students how to edit this to reflect their own mathematician. Even though the updated Facebook interface is different, students still were able to make this template work.

We spent a few days working through the research. Students still needed to be reminded that they would not be able to find a list of friends of their mathematicians. (See I Can’t Find Blaise Pascal’s Friends) After some one-on-one discussions as I circulated the class, students were able to figure out friends, photos, wall posts and comments for their page. They seemed to have a blast with it.

Here is a link to the peer assessment. This worked really well for us and students were able to make some connections between the mathematicians that were contemporaries of each other. That was cool!

Here are some of our final projects:
Carl Gauss
Rene Descartes
Isaac Newton

I am honored to have been chosen to kick off Whipple Hill’s new blog #Follow Friday.  I really enjoyed sharing the story of #ISEDchat! Please join us on Thursday night’s at 9pm EST.

Follow Friday: The Evolution of #ISEDchat – a Q&A with Lorri Carroll

Aside from the conference itself being an amazing professional development experience filled with inspiring speakers and terrific workshops, NAISAC13 afforded me the opportunity to achieve a professional goal I set for myself– to present! I thank my Head of School for supporting me in this endeavor.

Although I was really nervous leading up to the session, once we got started, it was as if I had presented with Chris Bigenho and Jason Kern many times before. Truth is… I “met” them for the first time on Wednesday night when we arrived in Philly. Here’s a link to our presentation: NAIS 2013- To Flip or Not to Flip: Practical Lessons Learned We had a standing-room-only crowd and the time flew by! The Q and A portion included some insightful questions and we received positive feedback when it was all over. It was an experience I won’t soon forget! Thanks guys!

Here are my top take-aways from the rest of the conference. They come from my tweets and notes.
(I hope I attributed these remarks with the correct people.)

• “You have to learn to manage “up” to your supervisor. It’s worth becoming a student of leadership.”
• “The Head of School is the Head of School. Your role is to implement the vision of the Head of School.”
• “Change is inevitable, adaptation is optional.”
• “These mantras are worth looking at! Great stuff here! pic.twitter.com/tMpS0lEwCu“

2) “The difference between a good leader and a great leader: humility… combined with an utterly ferocious will.” -Jim Collins

3) “Signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.
Don’t grab the new silvery thing… every 3 years try another one. chronic inconsistency
Look at the good programs, and make them GREAT…
what are we passionate about? what can we be the best at?
stay focused with great consistency.
no greatness happens in one step!
discipline alone is not enough
discipline AND creativity AND  innovation” - Jim Collins

4) “A great institution meets 3 tests:

• superior performance relative to your mission,
• makes a distinctive impact on the world it touches  (if your school went away, would it leave an unfillable hole? who would miss you, and why)
• achieves lasting endurance… beyond any leader. Your school cannot be great if it cannot be great without you.” - Jim Collins

5)  From 12 Questions for leaders:

 ”if you have more than 3 priorities you have too many. what should we stop doing?
do we have the right people on our school bus? are 95% of the seats filled with the right people?”- Jim Collins

6)   “You must vow to get comfortable each day in shoes that are not your own.” - Sekou Andrews

7) “Leadership is comprised of four things: aspiration, inspiration, perspiration, and respiration.” -Soumitra Dutta

8) ”We give way too much credit to technology. We almost want technology to drag us into change.” ”Technology, as a practice, means not only that new tools change, but also that we can change the practice. We want to see technology as an independent force, but it’s not. It’s ubiquitous.”-Alexis Madrigal

9) ”Let go of the old metrics… ROE(rules of engagement) is the new ROI “-Alexis Madrigal

10) “On Madison’s leadership: do the homework, work the network!, communicate frequently and clearly, change course as needed”- Pat Bassett

11) “Your dreams will never have greater meaning if they are not connected to your community.” - Tererai Trent

12)  ”Pat Bassett … distinguished educator turned champion!” RT @raventech: @PatBassett Your leadership & vision has provided ed tech folks in #indyschools a voice we didn’t have. Thanks!”

Thanks to Kim Sivick/ Proof Group and Travis Warren, CEO of Whipple Hill, for arranging meet-ups. It felt good to meet people “face to face” and not speak with the constriction of 140 characters. PLN- Thanks for sharing  from wherever you were! You added another dimension to my conference experience. I’m sad I couldn’t connect with everyone I wanted to… hopefully next year!

NAIS Conference Committee-   I loved the conference, the wifi, the conference app and the online community. I did, in fact, “Think big and Think great!” 

And Philly! You were an awesome venue. I felt so comfortable here.

Note: The week following NAIS, we dedicated our Thursday 9PM EST #isedchat to an #NAISAC13 Recap. Here is the archive from this chat.

I was really happy with the pi recitation contest. One student was able to recite up to the 30th decimal place. I will post that video soon. Students seemed to like the musical representation of pi and, while they thought some of the jeopardy questions were over the top, we laughed and it got them thinking!

My favorite part was the scavenger hunt. I love to get out of the classroom and so do my students. They were racing around campus and had so much fun! We ended with pie for dessert in the caf.

We had a blast! Here are some pictures.

NCTM Illuminations

Tomorrow is Pi Day! (March 14th) It’s been many years since this date did not fall during our March vacation. I am super excited that I

can celebrate it with my students. It gives me a great excuse to have some “math fun” and step outside of the curriculum!

Here’s my plan for tomorrow:

1) We will start with a video on the musical representation of Pi.    What Pi Sounds Like

2) Then we will have a pi recitation contest. The student who recites the most decimal places of pi will get 5 bonus points on the test they took today.

3) We will divide into teams and play a few rounds of Pi Day Jeopardy

4) Then I will give the students 15 minutes to complete a Pi Day Scavenger Hunt.

5) We will meet in the caf  to have pie for dessert!

That’s the plan. Let’s see how it goes.

Here are some links to resources that helped me pull this all together:

I have a lot to post about the conference… need to catch my breath first. More to follow soon!

Organizers have done an amazing job with pre-conference buildup and the online community is very robust. Thanks, Chris Bigenho, for all your work on this.  And this year, with wifi, I think the online community is going to be on fire!

I downloaded the NAIS AC 2013 app. It’s awesome. I remember feeling overwhelmed with the program book in 2011… no more! The app organizes presentations by time, allows you to organize your schedule, track exhibitors, get info about speakers, follow the twitter feed for the “back channel”, and much more!

When I first downloaded the app, and went to the workshop listing, I was wishing for the names of the presenters (not a huge deal, but I wished for it). Guess what? Next time I went to the app, I was prompted for an update… and the presenters were there! Nothing like your wishes coming true! So, I have been reading through the descriptions trying to plan my days and I realize that I have a huge problem. I want to be in three places at once during several time slots. Not a bad problem to have.

Pat Bassett’s session Greatness: 25 Factors Great Schools Have in Common is on my list. Hope they chose a large venue for it. It will be packed, I am sure!

I just registered for the #edsocialmedia tweetup on Wednesday at 7pm and I”m hoping to meet up with some Twitter friends and spend some f2f time.

I am also hoping that a bunch of #isedchat folks will want to meet, in person, at our normally scheduled time (9pm Thursdays) to join in with the online discussion. This week’s chat topic is “What have you learned today?” and it will be moderated by @srinaldi. (THANK YOU!)

SO… an exciting week lies ahead. I am ready for the learning and sharing… and brain overload. Bring it on!

This program has evolved quite a bit since 2007 when I started… the focus back then was on predators, pedophiles, and strangers… The internet was a “dangerous” place. I talked about MySpace, chain letter emails, chat rooms and AIM.  Parents were so focused on “blocking” the internet. There was no mention of creating a positive image online… and using the internet for “on demand” learning. My how things have changed! How would students today learn if the internet was “blocked”?

Each year, in order to prepare, I start from the prior year’s presentation and remove the “outdated” technology and add in the new stuff. After the MySpace era, we moved onto Facebook… and that was a focus for a number of years. Then, two years ago, I updated with Twitter.

This year… wow. Very different!  There was only one slide on Facebook. Still a few on twitter, but Instagram took a front seat. And Snapchat, was a close second. I also spent time talking about how smartphones make it so easy to share ANYTHING… photos, images within a matter of seconds.

Here’s a link to the presentation: Your Digital Life

The discussion went well (my daughter, a 7th grader, said I did OK except for talking with my hands too much…). It wasn’t a lecture in any way… very interactive, with some great questions.

Later on that evening, we invited parents to hear the same presentation. They had their own set of great questions.

I wonder what I will be talking about next year!

No matter how I, personally, feel about them, they are a reality for our Upper School students. And I have to be honest, I struggle with review week… How can I make the best use of time, and meet each students’ need? It’s impossible to go over every topic and each of my students always has different questions on different content.

This year, with Hamden Hall’s new set of iPads, I decided that I was going to have the students create their own review “library”, using the app Educreations. I shared the idea with a colleague who teaches the other section of the same course and he was willing to give it a try. YAY!

Here’s the project pitch I gave to the students in both classes:

You are responsible for helping your fellow Algebra 1 students review for the exam. Each of you will choose a section that we covered and create a 4-6 minute screencast on that section. Your screencast should include any important terminology and at least 4 examples. You will submit your screencast “script” to your teacher for approval. Once it has been approved, you can begin recording. When you are done, please email the video to your teacher so we can add it to the shared GoogleDoc spreadsheet for your use as you review for the exam.

Here’s the link to the rubric and timeline I shared with students.

I think it is pretty awesome that both classes are creating the screencasts because now we will have 31 – 4 – 6 minute review videos readily available to all students in both classes!

At this point in time, all scripts have been reviewed, corrected and approved and tomorrow is recording day! I am really looking forward to seeing the final product. I even had one student submit his tonight (AHEAD of schedule). I am also looking forward to students having access to this library of short screencasts made by their peers. They can watch the ones they need to, on demand, as they are completing their review assignments this week and preparing next weekend for the exam.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 5 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.