 Okay, bye guys. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye, man! Hi, I'm Audrey. That is my classroom. I teach math in a live online virtual classroom. Apart from that though, I'm just a regular high school math teacher, but that's not all I am. I'm also a gardener, a movie buff, especially anything with Meryl Streep in it, or my wrestle. Now, what was the point of all that? Well, like all of us, I'm more than what I do for a living, and the same is true for our students. They're more than whatever math they did or didn't learn in our math class. And last year, my senior students did projects that were as much about themselves as they were about the math. Let me show you what I mean. This presentation for 2012's K-12 online conference is about the year-long projects that my senior students produced last year. In particular, it's about how students' choice, plus students' voice, plus a good research framework, actual class time, all added up to Boku to Cool Student Projects. The quality and variety of projects was amazing, like for example, a math rap, or a Vi Hart inspired video all about sizes of infinity. I love you times 10. And finally, she says, I love you times 100. And then, thinking that you are very, very clever, you say, I love you times infinity. Not to mention a glog about math and architecture, a prezzy about body image, and that good old standby PowerPoint, one about Napier's bones, and another one about fractals. By students' choice, I mean, students could choose any topic whatsoever, as long as it was of sincere interest to them. Of course, it had to have some math content, but it had to start with their own interest. They also had free and open choice of any medium or digital tool that they wanted, Vimeo, Glogster, Prezzy, you name it. By students' voice, I mean, they were literally and figuratively invited to use their voices to express themselves. Each student already had their own blog that had been created at the beginning of the year, so they could use that to publish their project, and of course, some of them literally put their voices right into their projects. I used a 10-step research framework that guided their research in a logical way. Here are all the details, but I'll just give you a quick overview. They could pick three possible topics of interest, assess the quantity and quality of information available on each, and then narrow it down to one final topic. That got changed now into a research question to help focus their research. After gathering enough information to answer that research question, it was all organized into a concept map. Next came the real creativity, fleshing it out into a project worthy of being published. As far as class time goes, I found the first year that I tried this, it was really difficult to find 10 class periods to give to this. However, I then flipped my classroom, and it was no longer an issue. But now it's time for you to hear from the students themselves. Some were kind enough to take time from their busy college schedules to be interviewed. This month, October, by me, about their projects, almost a full year after they began working on them. I superimposed the interviews onto the projects and or their blogs as well, so that you can see how they too were everywhere stamped with the personalities of the students who created them. And by the way, the purple callouts like this that you'll see contain either the question that I asked during the interview, or my comment for you, the K-12 audience for clarity. Meet Arnold, the rapper. Arnold's project displayed an astonishing amount of creativity. He wrote the lyrics, the music, he sang, he rapped, he played some of the instruments, and he produced the video. This project speaks for itself as an expression of Arnold's interests, music, math, and creating videos. I basically decided to mix two things that I really enjoy. Well, I really enjoy music. I like it's part of my day, no matter how busy I get. Like I always make time for that. My topic was the math within music, but to also integrate music into the project, I made it into a song. But yeah, general homework, it definitely doesn't compare to the magnitude of this. I'm glad that we got a whole year to do it, because I definitely nibbled at it for the whole year, but it ended up being a lot of work. And a lot more work than my general workload from math. Like the actual beat and everything, it didn't take too long to create, but I used a website called NoteFlight that you kind of enter in what you want, what you want the instrument to play, and it plays it for you. A project like this, that's so open-ended like this, it really leads you to your own devices and your own creativity. I did learn how to kind of mix tracks using Windows Movie Maker, which I was kind of excited to learn, because like I've always kind of wanted to mix my own tracks and make my own songs, but I never really got around to trying to do it. Until this project. And I also learned a couple of things about what I was doing the project on. Like I didn't know before about how the Fibonacci sequence kind of pertains to certain things in music, making us do like the research questions and like the concept maps and stuff. It made me really concentrate on what I wanted to do with it. What doing in class did, it kind of reminded us of the project, because I mean if you give, you give us this thing at the beginning of the year, and it's definitely going to slip our minds a few times. To me, I enjoyed doing it, so it wasn't really, it didn't really feel like homework. I guess there were only a couple occasions where I would go to someone else's blog and like gain something from it. I liked it, because it was a really good review for me, because I had to actually, you know, re-look at what we looked at in class, which like in all honesty, I should be doing that for every class. Katarina created the Infinity video. Her project was inspired by the work of people like Vi Hart. It also reveals that Katarina is a great thinker of cosmic proportions. I did my project on the infinity paradox, where there could be more than one size of infinity. And I guess I can't remember where I had heard it first, but I think I'd read it in a book or something, and I was really, really intrigued by that. And so when that came up as a topic for the IAs, I was really, you know, I was really happy because I could further investigate that. At the beginning, it really felt like a math project, because I didn't really know where, at what angle to tackle it from. I, you know, I could have tackled it from the historical point of view or from the strictly math point of view. And when I really got into it, when I was reading books and reading really old texts about the topic, it stopped feeling like a strictly math project, and I found that it could apply to so many more topics, which I thought was really, really cool. I learned a lot about how black holes can be bigger and smaller, even though they're infinitely big, and can contain anything. I know it's a lot to process, and it's a lot to think about. And when I think about it, it kind of makes my brain hurt. I had seen a lot of that approach toward math problems, like just putting pictures towards, which makes it more comprehensible than if it's on a blackboard, because everyone's being taught something on a blackboard. So I thought that if pictures were related closer to what was being said, then it could be easier to comprehend. Definitely the biggest project that I've ever done solo, but I think I've done something that big in a group for a final English project or whatever, but I don't think I've ever done a solo project that long. And it was really, really cool, because I got to work on it. It was more than just a month that I had to work on it, so it felt, it didn't feel like I was putting in so many hours. When I was making the final video, I think I started around nine o'clock in the morning when I got up on this Saturday, and my parents were getting home from work on Saturday, and I guess that was probably seven o'clock at night, and I had no idea that I had worked so long on it, and I wasn't done. My mom was like, what are you doing, Caterina? Because it stopped being just work, and it started being more entertaining, because I was really intrigued by what I was working on. Emily's project about Napier's bones came about as a result of something that happened in her elementary education, which she'll hear about. Her detailed examples show how much of the math she actually absorbed. Emily will also talk about blogging as a learning environment, and just to note, her initial reaction to blogging was considerably less than enthusiastic. I chose Napier's bones. I was never able to multiply myself, just like that. I had to use the calculator in true elementary. It was awful. So I was like, okay, this is something I can relate to. Logarithms, if I ever had a choice, I would run in the other direction as fast as I can. And it's funny because they were the same person they'd bode them. When I read that, I was like, well, how can someone make something so interesting, and something so boring and hard? I just find it like a math project, almost. I almost found it like if you're doing a project for history, where you have to like come up and say, this is what happened, and this guy invented this, and all, it basically wasn't a math project. Just because it was fun. I had the basic one, two, three, this is what I'm going to do, and then I'm going to do this, now I'm going to do this. So then I would be able to put in the favorites bar with the page, but I would call it from something on my concept map. Everything I've ever done and project-wise, I like making it a little bit prettier. Because I'm always thinking, if you're running to look at a presentation, if it isn't visually interesting, well what's the point of even making it, because everyone's just going to drone and fall back to sleep, and basically no one's going to pay attention, no one's going to retain anything from it. I loved that other students had posted their stuff on their blogs. I found it so nice that you could actually go back and look at other students work. I loved it. I think his name was Joey. He always had, he did kind of a thing where after there was all kind of the equations and everything, he would put them up on his blog, and he would put them in use paint, I think it was. Whenever we were doing the mat, and I'd have it right next to me on top of my binder. See, the blogging made me feel like, okay, it's okay to actually show that you were, everyone else does work equally as hard for your grades. It's nice to see that some people also have to try hard for the same things. And then when you solve a complicated question, and then just work through it and just post it and say, yeah, I got it. It's kind of like, you're happy about yourself. Joey is an avid drummer, and he made a video about, of course, his drums. Joey happens to be one of the students who became a prolific blogger. He used his blog, Mathemology Squared, to not only publish his project, but to organize his math thoughts almost every day. Many of his peers, including Emily, whom you just heard from, really appreciated his work. You'll see many of his blog posts, as well as his project in the next segment. Well, I chose drums because they're very, they take a very large part of my life, and I love music. And some things more than others, like the concert map, that was a really good... I based my whole video off of that. I was reading my concert map. It was definitely something else. There was very little math for some reason, but there was some for sure. But yeah, I was more like explaining different characteristics of a certain type of map. You know, like the formulas. It felt like the basics of music. That sort of felt like it. Felt so much more independent on it. Like, except for those little sessions that we had together, it was pretty much just me. So that was pretty fun. And inside of one tom, we'll make it very different from the others. Let's say the small one right here. They're very different because their sizes are very different. The skin's on the jumps. The mouse was too... Actually, yeah. Especially when I was filming it, I think it took me a whole day to get the right shots for the video. It's part of my... I just felt like it belonged in there because it still has to do with math, you know? And it's my blog. I loved it. I used codecogs, which helped me a lot with my explanations. I would often go back and see my blog if I had any questions. And not very rarely did I have to go look at your notes afterwards. So it really helped me to make a blog like that. Choosing the damn colors. That MC square thing took a while. I can't say though that if I do take math next year... Oh, not next year. Next semester, I might be blogging actually on this blog. And that's it for my presentation. I hope you enjoyed. Patrick's Fractals project had perhaps the most math content of all. Rich in detail. Packed with examples. And ending in a hands-on activity, it's a great example of the differentiation that's possible with this type of project. Here you'll see a gifted student's passions are given free reign. Okay, well I did a project on the topic of fractals. It took me a lot of time learning on my own teaching myself. A lot of details were put into my project and I think I got a pretty good grasp of everything. And I found them very fascinating, the way you could just zoom into them infinitely and all the detail that you would find within them. I do actually. I have pretty much the whole concept in the back of my head to be able to lay it all out to you right now would be doable but pretty challenging. However, all the equations, different numbers and how they work, like I, for example, the different powers of I that I can remember. And like how to draw fractal, all the different points that I would have to grab. I remember them too. Well, when I complete projects, I mean, they're there for me, but I like to share it with other people. People often tell me that when you write down things, you remember them a lot better. And that was completely true of blogging. Not only for me, but it helped all the other people in the class who might also not get the math. And by me getting it, they got it. And I think it helped everyone. My current students have just begun their projects. And the first thing they did was to watch last years, including those you've just heard about. As hard as it is for me to imagine, I'm thinking that the 2013 projects will, as a result, be cranked up a few notches more. Some improvements I'd like to see for next year. From the students, deeper math exploration and connections. Without, of course, sacrificing any of the interest or creativity. I'd also like better citations for the references. And in order for that, I'm going to have to learn how to do that myself. And I would also like to encourage projects that either result from or lead to some kind of action being taken on the student's part. Maybe in their school or community or at home. Improvements I'm expecting from myself. I need to do a much better job of assessing these projects. Including using a clearer, much more detailed rubric. And also allowing for peer assessment. I'm also going to do my own research project right alongside my students. So I can walk the walk and talk the talk of lifelong creativity. Thanks for watching.