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TEACHER ACADEMY SCHOOL EDUCATION GATEWAY

HELLO, I AM CHRISTOS AND I TEACH MATHS AND SCIENCE IN ALONNISOS ISLAND HIGH SCOOL TO STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS. I LIKE TO TEACH AND HELP MY STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND AND COMMUNICATE USING THE MATH LANGUAGE. IN ORDER TO MAKE STUDENTS COOPERATE AND ENGAGE THEMSELVES TO THE TEAM, I TRY TO SHOW THEM THE BEAUTY OF MATHS, USING VIDEOS, PROGRAMMS AND MANY APPS AND GAMES. WE ALSO SPEND ENOUGH TIME TALKING ABOUT THEIR NEEDS AND BELIEFS ABOVE MATHS, SCIENCE AND LIFE.

Main points to remember
1 - Modules & Activities
2 - Deadlines
3- Discussions & Exchanges
4 - Duration & Workload
5 - Assessment & Certificate

A. Course Timeline and Participants
Course Timeline

B. Learning Diary

The learning diary should be a COLLECTION OF YOUR REFLECTIONS ON THE COURSE QUESTIONS AS WELL AS ALL ELEMENTS FROM THE COURSE RELEVANT FOR YOUR OWN CONTEXT. A good learning diary will provide you with a summary of the course at a later stage and focus your attention on those areas that are especially relevant for your own context. A good learning diary will also show that you have reflected on the questions introduced on the course and that you have engaged with the ideas of others on the course.

REFLECTION: I AM GOING TO MAKE MY LEARNING DIARY

C. The Learning Designer

To create this learning design we use a very nice tool called the Learning Designer which was developed by the London Institute of Education. We highly recommend that you create an account now and get familiar with the Learning Designer as soon as possible so that you are well prepared for the next steps on the course.

REFKECTION: A QUICK VIEW AT LEARNING DESIGNER

D. Alumni Group & Editorial Board Alumni Group
Everyone who finishes the course will be invited to join the course alumni group. The alumni group offers a place to continue the activities and exchanges with fellow course completers after the course has come to an end. The group will be moderated by Irina, who will offer you regular events or activities linked to the topic of the course. The editorial board will be recruited from members of the alumni group.
Editorial Board
The editorial board will consist of 10-30 people who have demonstrated commitment and outstanding work during the course. The purpose of the board is to review and rate lesson plans which have been flagged as noteworthy, in order to finally select 20 lesson plans which will be professionally edited, translated and then published on the School Education Gateway. The board will have a designated online space to discuss their reviews and ratings, and will be led by Irina.

So, make sure to complete the course and submit excellent work. Your work might be selected for publication, or you might want to join the editorial board! More details will be provided via email at the end of the course.

E. Netiquette, Copyright & eSafety 1 - Netiquette
We are an online learning community and all online communities have their own codes of conduct. It is therefore very important that we all know and follow this code of conduct to create a good working climate and ensure everyone feels safe. In most cases, these are just common-sense rules, good manners and other good practices normally observed in any social interaction.

However, it is important to take into account that we are communicating online and therefore missing very important pieces of information, like tone of voice, gestures, etc. As such, it's very easy to misunderstand what others say or take words out of context.

Take a look at our Code of Conduct, Use Policy and Honour Code to make sure you are aware of how to interact on the course.
2 - Copyright
The Internet is a space for sharing and exchanging. But when and how can you use material found on the Internet? Can you use copyrighted music when creating a video/presentation? Can you use a nice picture found on a Flickr album on the web without a second thought? If you are at a loss about copyright issues or have trouble understanding complicated law statements related to terms and conditions of use of certain materials, take a look at this Childnet International website.

And what happens when you create your own material? Would you like to share it with fellow colleagues but protect it from any misuse? Take a look at Creative Commons, which can help you answer these questions. It is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of materials and resources through free legal tools. Learn more about the different licenses and what they mean. On their website, they have a simple tool that will help you choose the type of license you need. Once you have picked the one you need, you can download it in high quality and different formats here.
3 - eSafety
Your online reputation is the "perception, estimation and opinion that is formed when you are encountered online". Learn more about online reputation here.

What can you do to protect your personal data and online reputation? The golden rule is "think before you post". Is the content you are about to share online going to affect your or someone else's privacy? Can you be friends with pupils on social networking services? What should you do if other people post inappropriate images of you online? And if you fall victim to cyberbullying? Take a look at this guide, which includes advice and interesting questions regarding your online reputation for you to reflect on.

For more information about eSafety as well as lots of resources to use with your students, check out the following links:

1. eTwinning Featured Group: Bringing eSafety into eTwinning projects (you need to be a member of eTwinning to join the group)

2. Better Internet for Kids

3. Web We Want

4. eSafety Label

5. Safer Internet Day

The above texts have been adapted from the eTwinning Ambassadors course.

WELCOME TO MODULE 1

Let's get started with our first module on the course. In this module we have the following Learning Objectives:

1. Understanding why traditional Maths teaching is often considered problematic and can leave many people with the feeling that they are simply not good at it.

2. Understanding how Maths can be made more engaging and facilitating a deeper learning of mathematical concepts and processes, rather than simple memorisation and application of formula.

3. Understanding why personalising learning as much as possible can help student engagement.

4. Reflecting on and assessing our own Maths teaching practice, and identifying some key goals to focus on during the course.

5. Identifying some specific innovative actions or ideas that we would like to incorporate in our Maths teaching.

6. Incorporating some key reflections in our Learning Diary.

7. Identifying a class and topic to use for the Learning Design course, and setting up a Learning Design on the Learning Designer.

In the Course Introduction we already saw some general statistics on who else is on this course, but let's get a more personal picture of who we actually are. For this purpose, let's build a Course Selfie together: just post a picture and a short description in the Padlet below. We would highly recommend using this Trading Card tool to create your own trading card that you can then upload to the Padlet. However, this is not essential and you can also just upload a picture. In that case, please remember to only upload a low-resolution image as otherwise the page will become very slow.

REFLECTION: Reading the first module and watching the videos in 1.1, some thoughts came up, about the teaching methods many of math teachers use, disregarding the needs of our subjects, our students though they are people and of course they don't have a average. That's the mistake we all make in our classrooms. We all should give a chance to all students to participate in the learning procedure.

1.1 Why is Maths unpopular?
"Why a Maths 2.0 course?" you may ask. We've been teaching Maths for so long and it seems to work fine, right? Well, not really, if you think about the large numbers of young people as well as adults who believe they are inherently bad at Maths. Are they actually bad at Maths or have we maybe failed them in how we teach Maths? At the very least we should consider why Maths, unlike most other school subjects, has such a bad reputation. This is nicely reflected in the below video clip depicting how Hollywood sees Maths:

An important aspect here, and one reflected in numerous Hollywood movies, is that many students quickly come to the conclusion that they are simply not good at Maths and lose motivation and drive to improve. And this is a problem not only in our classrooms, but also at a much higher economic level. In a time when students' motivation for studying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) subjects needs to dramatically increase all over Europe (only 12% of the European students get a STEM degree, compared to 45% of Chinese students), it is essential we find methods to teach a new, friendlier, more enjoyable, more useful and less abstract Mathematics, a subject for each of our students, adapted to their particular skills and competences, a subject that is not merely a tedious hour on the timetable, but a vehicle for mutual understanding and for communication.

So what exactly is the problem? Dan Meyer, a US Maths teacher, outlines why he thinks Maths education needs a makeover in the below presentation.

REFLECTION: THE MAJORITY OF STUDENTS ARE AFRAID OF MATHS BECAUSE THEY FEEL THAT THEY ARE NOT GOOD AT MATHS. THIS IS A ILLUSSION THEY HAVE BECAUSE WE THE TEACHER HAAVE NOT MAKE MATHS APROACHABLE TO OUR STUDENTS. WE ALL SHOULD SHOW OUR STUDENTS THE WAYS TO USE IN EVERYDAY LIFE THE SUBJECTS WE TEACH..

1.2 Moving to Maths 2.0
So how can we change our way of teaching Maths? First, it's important we are clear about what we want to achieve. The European Union's Key Competences framework provides a short and clear definition of mathematical competence that we can strive toward as teachers: the ability to develop and apply mathematical thinking in order to solve a range of problems in everyday situations, with the emphasis being placed on process, activity and knowledge.

To achieve this we will look at four themes throughout the course (real-world application, creativity, collaboration, ICT) which should help develop mathematical thinking (and other crucial skills) in your students and allow them to apply such thinking in the real world around them.

Dan Meyer already gave us some ideas on how to get there in the previous section, but let's explore what we might want to call Maths 2.0 a bit further. Take a look at the video below, where Dan Finkel, another US Maths teacher, outlines five important principles to consider for your innovative Maths teaching.

Also make sure to check out course moderator Irina Vasilescu's following Prezi about Involving Students in Maths 2.0, foreshadowing some ideas of hers that will be presented in later modules.

Prepare a mindmap with at least 5 different actions/ideas that you would like to put into practice in your Maths classroom; see here for a simple example.

MY MINDMAP

One of the key questions you should ask yourself before embarking on innovating your Maths classroom is how familiar you are with your students' learning preferences, interests, confidence levels, etc. All of this information will substantially help you to realise all the activities and ideas that will be explored on this course. Of course, the premise here is that you will use this knowledge to personalise the activities according to the requirements, interests and preferences of your students (insofar as this is possible), thereby engaging them more easily and more effectively in their Maths learning. Linda Flanagan goes some way into explaining this process in her MindShift article, How to Make Math More Emotionally Engaging for Students.

Technology can help us with this and in Module 5 we will explore the role of digital technologies in our Maths classroom in more detail. However, for now, let's take a look at an example of personalising Maths learning by using adaptive computer games.

Tell us something about the students you teach and your capacity to personalise your lessons for them. Do you have access to the type of data/information that is provided by the computer games in the video? Would you want this information, and how would you use it? What kind of activities do your students like? What communities do they come from? What topics are they interested in? What is one thing that always works with them, and what is one thing that never works? And how do you take all these aspects into account in your lesson planning? Share some general reflections on personalising learning in your classroom in your Learning Diary and in the Padlet below. If you do not teach any students, consider your potential audience: how could you find out their preferred learning styles before or at the onset of a lesson/workshop, and how could you spontaneously accommodate the outcome of such an activity?

REFLECTION:

Personalising Learning

AS I TEACH STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL EDUCATION NEEDS, I HAVE TO MAKE MY LESSON VERY PERSONAL IN ORER TO BE UNDERSTOOD FROM THEM. I USE GEOGEBRA AND OTHER PROGRAMS TO MAKE MY LESSON MORE CONVINIENT AND USEFUL FOR THEM. WE DON'T HAVE ALL THE TECHNOLOGY WE NEED BUT WE DO WHAT WE CAN.

As part of this course you will be building a Learning Design that will allow you to implement some of the ideas, tools and activities you have come across on this course (either via the course content or the course participants) in your classroom. The goal is that by the end of the course you have a concrete plan on how to go about innovating your Maths teaching.

The Design will be built step-by-step throughout the course: in each module you will be adding a bit to your Design as well as submitting it for an optional peer review in Modules 2-4. You can use the feedback you receive from your peers in Modules 2-4 to improve your draft, so thatin Module 5 you can submit a rigorous and comprehensive Learning Design. In Module 5 it is required that you submit your Design for peer review if you want to receive the course certificate.

For starters, select a class you are teaching or will be teaching, as well as a curriculum topic that you have to address. If you are not working as a teacher, then imagine you are running a workshop for your colleagues (teacher trainers, headteachers, policy makers, researchers, etc.) and use this as a basis to create your Design.

In the Course Introduction you will have already come across the Learning Designer, the tool that we ask you to use for this activity. As we will be reviewing each other's work, and to ensure some consistency, it is important that you use the Learning Designer tool for your Learning Design.

1. As a first step, if you haven't already done so as part of the Course Introduction, create an account on the Learning Designer and browse a bit to familiarise yourself with the tool. For an introduction to the tool, see here.

2. Next comes the creation of your Maths 2.0 Design: Create a new Learning Design, and at the top you will see some general fields to be filled.

3. In the field "Name", add a name for the lesson(s). In the field "Topic", add the curriculum topics that you would like to address as part of the implementation.

4. In the field "Learning Time", fill in the anticipated or ideal time for what you are planning. Don't fill in the "Designed Learning Time" field, as this is automatically completed when you add TLAs (Teaching and Learning Activities) later on.

5. If you already have a good idea of what you would like to do, briefly summarise it in the field "Description". Otherwise, you can leave this blank for now and add it later, once you have a better idea of what exactly you plan to do.

6. In the field "Aims", outline what you anticipate to achieve and what you hope will be the final outcome of students' work in the lesson.

7. In the field "Outcomes", you can add a selection of predefined learning outcomesby clicking on the + sign and then adding a short description for each.

8. Make sure to save your Learning Design, as you will have to continue your work on it in the following modules.

We will come back to your Learning Design in the next modules, so this was simply to get you started with the Learning Designer tool. Please resolve any questions about the Learning Designer as soon as possible, so that you do not get into trouble later when you need to submit your work.

As a final step in this module, we ask you to further reflect on your current teaching approach by completing the following self-assessment table: Word version & OpenOffice version. Download the table, complete it and upload it on your Learning Diary. As we recommend submitting your Learning Diary together with your Learning Design in the peer-review activities, the completed self-assessment form will provide valuable context to your reviewer and hopefully allow them to provide more valuable feedback to you.

Use the activity to think about which areas you would like to improve on and what some of your work in this course could focus on. While not all parts directly pertain to Maths teaching, most of the aspects covered will be addressed during the course in some form. It should therefore provide you with a good outset from which to shape your learning on this course.

You can see an example of this table below, but please note that you cannot fill it in here; rather, you need to download it via the above links.

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TEACHER ACADEMY SCHOOL EDUCATION GATEWAY HELLO, I AM CHRISTOS AND I TEACH MATHS AND SCIENCE IN ALONNISOS ISLAND HIGH SCOOL TO STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS. I LIKE TO TEACH AND HELP MY STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND AND COMMUNICATE USING THE MATH LANGUAGE.