Thank you #MTBoS & #Iteachmath community


Friday night in class, I gave out an assignment to my preservice teachers (PST) entitled “Engaging the Mathematics Community.”

Here it is in it’s entirety:

Engaging the Mathematics Community;  Miscellaneous Assignment 2: 10 points

The goal of this assignment is to encourage you to engage with the existing larger mathematics education community. You must do one Global Math Department video presentation and one Twitter Chat.

To get full credit, you must provide a transcript of your interactions (copy and paste) to verify the Twitter chat.  For the Global Math Department, if you participate in a live chat, copy and paste the transcript. If you watch a video of a past presentation, reflect on the material. For the reflections, you should answer the following questions at a minimum. What did you learn from the activity? Who was the person or persons who had the largest interaction with you? Describe them based on your interaction. What is the value, in your opinion, of the activity? How would you use this in classroom practice?

Global Math Department:http://globalmathdepartment.org/  These weekly video chats occur weekly on Tuesday evenings, 6:00 pm Pacific time. They are an hour long, on a variety of topics relevant to mathematics K-12 educators. For example, recent presentations have been on the topics of ‘Improving student discourse through debate in the math classroom’ or ‘Interactive notebooks: Tapping into left & right brain thinking.’ Go to the link and hit the big blue “Conference Info” button for more information. All videos are archived at the end of the session.

Twitter Chats:https://twitter.com or even better, https://tweetdeck.twitter.com Twitter chats are hashtags used to collect people who have a similar interest. There are ‘live’ chats at certain times (usually an hour, sometimes 30 minutes) and there are ‘slow chats’ where individuals post a question using the hashtag and others reply when they can. Every hashtag is used throughout the week in the ‘slow chat’ model even if there is a ‘live chat’ time. When engaging in a chat of either type, always introduce yourself, and use the hashtags in every tweet.

  • #alg1chat: “slow chat” style, no set time or evening
  • #alg2chat: “slow chat” style, no set time or evening
  • #geomchat: “slow chat” style, no set time or evening
  • #msmathchat: Monday evenings, 6:00 pm Pacific time
  • #mathchat: “slow chat” style, no set time or evening
  • #statschat: “slow chat” style, no set time or evening
  • #teachNVchat: Thursday evenings at 7:30pm Pacific time
  • #swdmathchat every other Thurs 6pm Pacific
  • #elemmathchat every week, 6pm Pacific
  • #makeitreal every Wednesday, 6:30 pm Pacific

These last two hashtags are not chats, but are general hashtags used to include the larger community of mathematics teachers. Make it a practice to include both of these tags in each tweet.  #mtbos #iteachmath

 

My college students laughed at me. They said, “I don’t use Twitter, it is just for celebrities and stupid politics.”

Ha! I had the last laugh.

via GIPHY

Three brave souls said, “Okay, Waddell, I will try it.” I retweeted their first post (because they had zero followers), and the Math Community stepped up! Within 1 minute, all three had responses. And then more responses. And they had a discussion. And within 5 minutes they were so excited that other math teachers were actually sharing and talking with them.

They were so loud, that within 5 minutes, three additional PSTs joined Twitter and tweeted. The same thing happened. One PST said, “I can’t wait to be out in the classroom, get stuck, and realize I have a whole community of people to help me out. This is awesome.”

I was proud. I am proud.

This is a heartfelt Thank You! Thank you to all who helped my learners see there is a larger community of math teachers who want to help. Thank you to all those that didn’t help last night, but help others every day, once a week, once a month, or whenever they can. Thank you to all the teachers who are lurking, and thinking they are gaining something from reading others posts. Thank you to all those who will be joining the community in the future.

We all grow when we learn from others.

Thank you.

(edited to add additional chats, 1 July)


3 responses to “Thank you #MTBoS & #Iteachmath community”

  1. Thanks Glenn for this great entry — pls add #swdmathchat every other Thurs 9PM EST
    #elemmathchat at the same time but every week
    #makeitreal Weds 9:30 ET
    Thanks
    Robin
    NYC

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