Embedded Files
Evidence: Math 1 and Statistics Websites
This year, I have independently been creating a website that houses all of the relevant materials a student would need for my classes. My hopes in doing this were to be able to share materials more freely, organize and collect online resources more authentically, and potentially even move in the direction of creating an online course where students could progress through our math program at a pace that is tailored to their needs.This year I was finally pushed to do this as we may be switching our LMS that currently acts as a default location to share class information with students.
The web pages contain learning targets, all of the class resources that we are using that day, helpful videos or applets that I discover, and their homework. Generally speaking, the assignments are Google docs, so there is no downloading necessary. The pages also contain completed class notes and a slew of other resources. Please check out the webpages!
A way that I have found this to be helpful this year is when students want to (and are able to) move at a faster pace than the one that we are moving in the classroom, I can give them access to all of the material and let them accelerate through as needed. Additionally, some students are interested in studying math independently throughout the year, or over the summer in order to bypass classes at our high school if they test out. These webpages have been resources for them to tap into.
Evidence: Blog post on collaboration using Google Drive
One of the foundations of innovation and collaboration that is vibrant in the math department where I teach is the idea of embracing an open culture. We share resources with in our department using Google Drive daily with the hopes of aligning each section of the same course. This has been happening since about 2015 spurred by three merging events. The first was that I advocated migrating all of our documents from the school hosted network drive (which could only be accessed if you were in the school or connected through an ancient VPN), the second was because we needed a fresh start - the files were extremely disorganized and the third was that we were redesigning our math curriculum in such a way where we ousted textbooks and had to create all of our materials.
Since moving to Google Drive we’ve found that not only it is much easier to share and adapt each other’s creations, we can share our curriculum out in the world. While the process isn’t as open as some (there are tests, quizzes and other documents that should remain confidential) we share our materials with the middle schools that send students to us, and those who are just curious about what we are doing.
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