Refining the PLN

Fair warning: Most of these blogs/feeds are high school math related.

Blogs

Mathalicious: http://www.mathalicious.com/

I stumbled upon mathalicious during the week and fell in love with it. The blog gives different “blueprints” for lessons starting in grade 6 and going through algebra II. Each lesson is associated with a common core standard. The lessons are broken down into three separate sections an introductory, middle and end. All of the lessons correspond to real world situations to students can apply what they learn right away. There is a subscription service to use all the lessons but they always have 6 free lessons available at all times- and just looking at their other lessons gives you ideas that you can use in your own classroom.

The Geometry Teacher: https://thegeometryteacher.wordpress.com/

Andrew Shauver’s blog centers around geometry but also gives different ideas and lessons for algebra II, calculus and physics. He uses different youtube videos that can be applied to concepts learned in class. He’s also worked closely with desmos to enhance activities that use their program. He is a Western Michigan Alum and does presentations throughout Michigan, making him accessible and convenient to see.

MathCathy: http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/

MathCathy is run by Cathy Yenca, a mathematics teacher of 15 years. She gives examples of how she uses technology in the classroom, different experiences she’s had teaching middle and high school math. I do wish the blog posts were organized by subject rather than one long list, but the information (especially the technology reviews) are well.

Twitter Pages

Rick Mackrell @mackrellr

Rick Mackrell is currently a math curriculum specialist and a former math and special education teacher.  He regularly tweets about STEM conferences, education tips and more.

Sean Sweeney - @SweenWSweens

Sean Sweeney is a high school math teacher. He posts different activities used in his classroom and also retweets other useful math links such as topics from Dan Meyer and Desmos.

Christina Hamman @hammanmath

Christina Hamman is a high school math teacher in Medina public schools. She is an instructional coach and does technology integration for the schools. She tweets math and technology tips as well as encouraging posts for teachers across the country.

MathheadInc. @mathheadinc

Mathheadinc has been teaching and tutoring math since 1995. They tweet about the importance of number sense and encourages teachers and students not to give up when math gets difficult. Inspirational and informational topics are discussed and posted.

Change the Equation @changeequation

Change the Equation is a non-partisan, ceo-led initiative to improve STEM learning across America. They focus on encouraging students to go into math and science fields and to build up our curriculum throughout the country.

In the past few weeks, the pages I’m using the most from the PLN activity would have to be the pinterest pages I’m followed. Pinterest is very visual and I’m on it throughout the day periodically anyway, just browsing through different pins. Because of that, I notice more topics I can use for my classes. My advanced algebra II class recently completed a unit on logarithms and I used a pin I found to help them understand how to convert logs to exponents and vice versa. I’m not used to browsing through twitter or my rss feed so I haven’t been keeping up on the pages I’ve followed. Going back through and looking at the different blogs reminded me of some of the great ideas and topics I saw the last time I worked on this project. I just have to push myself to actually look at the twitter and feedly app that’s downloaded on my phone instead of ignoring it.