Reflecting in the Math Classroom

My colleague, Meredith Swallow, recently shared a post about the importance of reflection in her professional growth, which got me thinking.  She points her readers to a post written by Barry Saide and Jasper Fox, Sr. Reflect or Refract: Top 3 Tips for the Reflective Educator where the authors suggest "reading a wide variety of education blogs regularly exposes educators to new ideas and concepts. Transformational thinking occurs when conversations about these posts develop. New ideas that stem from blog posts provide alternate thoughts to consider. Engaging with the writer is one of the strongest benefits to blogging."

I couldn't agree more. Here are a few tech-savvy math bloggers who you might want to engage with over the break to inspire ongoing reflection:

MathyCathy

 Mathematics, Learning, and Technology

Great Maths Teaching Ideas

Math Hombre

squareCircleZ 

And finally...
The Pursuit of Technology Related Happiness: The name itself makes it worth of a visit in my book. I am linking you to the math resource list published on this blog; while the links on this page have not been updated since 2011, the extensive list is worth a look.  For instance, I was pleased to stumble upon The Math Interactives site which includes some engaging simulations.  Check out the blog posts on the site as well.

Needing Some Common Sense Advice - Digital Bytes

My 12-year-old twins are counting the days to their 13th birthday in April, anticipating with much more urgency than past years their special day, all so they can finally triumph over the tyrant of online limitations...the dreaded Under 13 Terms of Service rule.

According to the infographic Trending Tweens: How Kids Use Social Media, 21% of kids under 13 are subscribed to (at least) one social networking site.

Our family rule on social media and app use is to follow the legal restrictions posted on each site's "Terms of Service" page, much to my daughters' dismay. 

 The work around in the past has been for me to create an account and then share that username and password with them; it's worked well with apps, but when it comes to social media, they balk and put up a mighty stink, liberally peppered with tween girl drama.
Apparently, asking friends to follow HennesseyGirlsMom on Instagram would be social suicide.

I was on a mission to find resources explaining why the under 13 rule exists that would resonate for them, and not rely solely on the simple answer of the importance of being a law-abiding citizen. The gist for me, getting them to truly understand the data tracking and gathering that is at the core of most business models.

I appreciated finding this post from Alpha Mom Lessons Learned: Kids and Instagram because it mirrored my experience and provided this good advice:

     I’ll also utilize some of the tools the website GetNetWise.org has for parents as well as their  
online use contract for kids to sign. Sure, a contract may seem a little silly, but that plus a social media discussion will reinforce to the kids the seriousness of the situation.

Then, I found a pretty impressive new "choose-your-own-adventure" type resource from Common Sense Media called Digital Bytes that provided exactly the information I was looking for to start that social media discussion: 

The Online Tracking module, which I selected, provided a short context-setting video that got my girls' attention.  Then, Ted Kovac's Ted Talk Tracking Our Online Trackers provided just the right amount of provocative information to prompt a a real discussion, effectively moving us away from a "because I said so" conversation into one where they genuinely wanted answers. 

If you want to know more about data tracking, check out Dan Tynan's good post Explained: Here's How Advertising Tracks you Across the Web