Learning in the 21st Century

Introduction I am at the stage now where I am finally beginning to write my dissertation and have noticed that this again needs a new set of skills. So I have decided to write another post to house the collection of resources I have used as I attempted to do this. This is actually the 5th post I have written which deals with resources I have found on the dissertation journey. I have linked the other three articles below for easy reference. Resources for Academic Writing with APA Focus Finding Literature for Research More Resources for Structuring Educational Research   Understanding Social Network Analysis with a Focus on Teacher Collaboration   Setting up Word Documents & Templates When writing a dissertation you need to have pretty decent word document processing skills and since I didn't really have those when I started I decided to read as many articles as I could and watch any related YouTube videos. The tools I am using are a 2018 Macbook Air with a copy of word for ...

Introduction I have just returned from an overseas teaching post and I find myself in the position that I need to buy a car in order to get around. Almost everyone will be faced with a similar situation in their life at some point. I have done a lot of writing recently about how to make Mathematics Teaching more authentic and this is exactly the type of situation teachers could use. So what are some of initial questions we need to be asking?  So probably the first decision one needs to make when buying a car, is approximately what amount of money can your budget support for the purchase.  In my particular case I am willing to spend between R80 000 and R110 000 cash. Then you need to decide are you going to buy a new or used car.  Once you have made these two decisions, the number of options available should be greatly reduced and therefore your decision making should be easier. The videos below gives a nice feel for the tradeoffs between buying a new or used car. Based on...

Introduction As I have recently come to the end of my 2 year contract teaching Mathematics at my first IB teaching post. I wanted to record my experiences while they were still fresh in my head and ripe for reflecting on. My particular context was that of a full continuum school where we had the PYP, MYP & DP programs running. The relatively new CP program was not running at the school where I was teaching. The majority of my time over the two years was spent teaching Mathematics in the MYP program and then about a quarter of my time was spent teaching Mathematics in the DP program  I also acted as a personal project supervisor (PP) for M5's and was also lucky enough to go on a number of Interdisciplinary Unit Trips (IDU's) and Outdoor Pursuit Trips (OP). This is an overview reflection and therefore quite broad, but hopefully at some point I will get to go into more detail on other relevant aspects. General Structure  In terms of understanding the overall design of an IB e...

Introduction As I go through a period of signifigant reflection at the end of my current teaching contract. The need to file and store high quality sources is up most on my mind. I find that during conventional teaching time, it is always a struggle to store and file the interesting maths teachers and the associated resources I find on the web. So I wanted to take the time now, to make a list of people whose work I plan to look at more closely in future. Perhaps some of these names will be of use to you too. Mrs E   Dan Meyer   William Emeny Alice Keeler Jo Boaler Gareth Metcalfe   Denise Gaskin Don Steward Marilyn Burns Craig Barton

Introduction Sometimes you just need simple resource rich websites without pages of slow to load video. This is a list of some of my favourite sites that are quick to load and easy to engage with. If you take the time to look around these sites, there is a lot of very useful information for anybody who is a teacher of Mathematics.  1) MathsSalamanders   2) MathIsFun   3) BritishInternationalSchoolOfPhuket   4) OnlineMathLearning   5) Educational Simulations    6) TopDrawerTeachers   7) National Council of Mathematics Teachers 8) Mathematics Assessment Project TRU 9) +MathsMagazine 10) Centre for Education in Mathematics & Computing(CEMC)

Introduction A couple of years ago I became fascinated by project based learning (PBL). As a result, I conducted my own experiments by designing unique educational engagements, based on literature I had read about PBL -   2015 , 2017 . I was impressed by the engagement achieved and it made me wonder how could I get a similar level of engagement, but with a content base more directly tied to my maths curriculum? The theory that seemed to offer the most promise was the concept of " Authentic Learning & Authentic Assessment ". To me, it seemed to offer a reasonable way of combining the strengths of project based learning, together with a process for acquiring understanding of a universally agreed upon useful mathematical content base. As a first step in the process of designing authentic learning experiences in mathematics, I tried to create a comprehensive list of topics that covered the context in which mathematics most commonly appears.  I would love your suggestions or a...