As an experienced surfer of the Internet, I must confess that locating blogs specializing in math education was a disappointing endeavor. They are few are far between, and the few that do exist are not regularly maintained in general. Considering that there are millions of teachers in the United States (with a conservative estimate of hundreds of thousands of math teachers), it is upsetting that we have not fully exploited the resources available to us. Unless I am mistaken, not even the NCTM has a blog or forum on which teachers can interact. We could potentially have thousands of teachers sharing best practices, provided that the site is user-friendly and easy to navigate.
The closest thing I could find to the abovementioned was on http://www.mathforum.org, which has a feature called "Teacher 2 Teacher." I joined the middle school thread, and there was some constructive, albeit limited, conversation about various issues facing middle school math teachers. As a math teacher, I would like to know how to better get across certain concepts with which students typically struggle, and here, there are many conversations in which teachers share how they tackle certain topics. This forum seems promising, but I am skeptical about whether or not my contributions will even be viewed, let alone replied to.
The best site that I stumbled upon was MathNotations (http://mathnotations.blogspot.com). This is a more traditional blog, but the content has depth, and it includes ready-to-apply activities (shovel ready, anyone?), discussion about current issues in mathematics education, as well as posts geared towards enhancing conceptual understanding in mathematics. If I am going to get anything out of this experience, it will probably be through this blog.
Stay tuned as I get my feet wet and start posting to these blogs/forums.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Welcome to My Blog!
Welcome to my blog! Here I will be taking some time to talk at length about my experiences and interactions on a number of blogs out there involving math education. I am a seventh and eighth grade math teacher in the New York City public school system, and I am looking to see if I could better myself as an educator by taking advantage of the wonders that Web 2.0 has to offer.
As a first-year teacher, I have made a point to become technologically savvy (as technology relates to education, that is). I believe that we can transform the traditional classroom setting into so much more by regularly incorporating technology. Most of my lessons are taught through Powerpoint, and I have recently begun using the interactive SmartBoard, much to my students' delight. My class has also begun a blog of its own, and I encourage you to visit it at http://www.oitqblogs.com/communities/getzelmath, although I must warn you that we use it only intermittently at the present time.
As a first-year teacher, I have made a point to become technologically savvy (as technology relates to education, that is). I believe that we can transform the traditional classroom setting into so much more by regularly incorporating technology. Most of my lessons are taught through Powerpoint, and I have recently begun using the interactive SmartBoard, much to my students' delight. My class has also begun a blog of its own, and I encourage you to visit it at http://www.oitqblogs.com/communities/getzelmath, although I must warn you that we use it only intermittently at the present time.
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