Instructional tool: student cell phones

Tomorrow, I'll embark on the crusade of letting my students use their cell phones in class as an instructional tool. I will both email and send home the following letter/policy with students for parent approval. Understandably, my school has many hoops regarding things of the sort. Currently, cell phones are not allowed to be used during school hours anywhere on campus. Students may only use their phones before and after school. This is a K-8 school. I teach 8th grade. Over 95% of my students own phones and it kills me to see them carry around these expensive devices all day and not be allowed to use them as an instructional tool. You can see from the letter that the primary use of the phone will be for capturing student work. Tomorrow, I'll be laying down the law.

In case you missed it, here's the letter/policy again. Hopefully, what I call Phase 1, will be one of many phases for cell phone use in my class. Phase 1 has two objectives.

Objective 1: Capture student whiteboard work
My students do a crazy amount of work each day on their giant whiteboards. How lame is it that we have to erase it and never see it again. Even a black hole will never have the opportunity to consume it. It's gone. I've learned not to waste time having students transfer their work to their notebooks. BIG waste of time. We could use that time for learning, discussions, group work, etc. That said, I need students to capture what they're doing, because some of it is absolutely amazing. Even mistakes can be useful. For example, check out the student work done on these 3 Act lessons:

Basketball Travel

and Dan Meyer's Taco cart.

Seriously, I was lucky enough to capture it. So there you have it, I intend to support my students in capturing their work while at the same time assist them in using their devices responsibly. It's definitely going to be a change of thought for students to think of their phone as an instructional tool. That's why I'm easing into it with this simple task. We frequently do "gallery walks" in my class where students circulate the room and check out other student work. This will present another opportunity for students to capture whiteboard work. I'm thinking of some class 'lingo' and/or routines that will set everyone up for success. Make your math look good, now say, "CHEESE!" If you have any routines or tips to share, please let me know. When I assess this after a week or two, I'll let you all know what has been working and what has failed.

Objective 2: Send students and parents notifications
There is a great FREE service that my good buddy @mrkubasek sent me in this article. I will be using Remind101.com to send both students and parents notifications about class activities: Home Jams (my homework), quizzes, due dates, links, etc. I can send them notifications from a phone, computer, or tablet and they won't see my phone number. Likewise, I don't see their information. Furthermore, they can't send me anything back... mwoohahaha. I mean, how fantastic is that? They can email me if they have a question. I love the idea, because I won't be strapped to my phone answering questions related to the notification I just sent out. More importantly, my forgetful 8th graders will receive the ever-so-loving nudge or reminder about something vital to their success in math.

It doesn't stop here. Realistically, I can't pull off numerous uses for their cell phones a third of the way into the school year. Therefore, I will chip away at this. First and foremost, I plan to nurture responsible and mature digital citizens in my classroom. I hope that this works and I don't ruin it for other teachers at my school to test out. Speaking of which, I have to email them and keep them in the loop here. I hope I can work out any bugs and prevent any huge mishaps. I've seen and heard some of our student population abuse technology and that saddens me. Literally, less than a mile down the road are a couple of schools where students lack technology and/or personal devices. I'm fortunate to be in a place where this is possible and hope to learn with my students. Here are a few things to leave you with.

Bryan Meyer is on to something because I eventually want to have students create some type of digital folder, file, journal, blog, etc. I'd love for them to keep track of their work and either post it or submit it to me.

Dan Bowdin is doing some really amazing and inspring things in his class. Bounce around his website  for about ten minutes and you'll run into some fresh and inspiring ideas. I'd love to pursue the use of QR codes in class one day.

CHEESE,
942

When does a rock stop being a rock?

When does a pebble stop being a pebble and become a stone?
When does a stone stop being a stone and become a rock?
When does a rock stop being a rock and become a boulder?

I ask my wife these three questions too frequently. She's had enough of my philosophizing. So maybe you can help me out here? Are the answers too subjective? Is there an objective, definitive, agreed upon set of answers to these questions? Are the answers determined by weight? size? volume? mass? density? ootsies? (a la Christopher Danielson)

I'm thinking bigger picture here: How do we bring this type of thinking or wondering to our students more often? When dealing with measurement, how do we get our kids to know the correct (or most logical) way to measure quantifiable items without telling them? Would asking these types of questions help encourage our students to be better problem solvers or be better at applying the right terminology?

So many questions... here's more:
Living in the USA, our customary units system of measurements seems counterproductive with inches, feet, yards, fathoms, miles, ounces, cups, pints, quarts, gallons, barrels, etc. Terminology can be difficult enough for students and to throw all these different measurements at kids (nay, humans) can only seem daunting. When should we use feet to measure something instead of inches or yards? I envy the metric system and, well, let's leave it at that. These measurement questions become even more relevant as I dive into estimation with my students and as I update estimation180.com each week.

I haven't posted in a while and feel like I need to ease back into my blogosophy (blogging philosophy?). I'm not sure I just eased back into it. What do you think here?

Rocky,
858

CMC - South: What could be?

November 2 and CMC South are only a few days away! I'm excited for a few reasons:

1. World of Nathan Kraft is flying in (if Hurricane Sandy isn't too absurd this week) from PA to attend. I'll pick him up and we'll carpool to Palm Springs for the conference.
2. Fantastic Fawn is literally missing her favorite football 'game of the year' to attend and cause some trouble with Nathan and me.
3. Mullet King Matt Vaudrey is both attending and presenting.
4. Recent doctorate and newly appointed Mathalicious brain Matt Lane is making the trip.
5. The infamous Dan Meyer is presenting (need I say more?).
6. ... and there will be a Tweetup on Friday with all these fab people, hopefully with John Berray too.

There are some appealing conference speakers this year. I wish there were more on Standards Based Grading. I think the two presentations I'm most looking forward to (besides Dan's) are Standards Based Grading to Evaluate Mathematical Practices by Lisa Miller and Take Your Places by Brad Fulton. I've seen Brad present before. He has got some great ideas and is hilarious with a capitol H. Sorry Mullet Vaudrey, I truly wish I could be at two places at once. Video record yours and post it, will ya?

I'll admit, there are parts of me that would get a kick out of the following:

1. Nathan checks his tuba at the airport, pays the outrageous fee, and carries it around CMC testing out the echos. Heck, we are in the desert, but there is a small mountainside nearby and we could test the echo off of that sucker. 
Tuba Echo from Nathan Kraft on Vimeo.

2. Matt Vaudrey needs to sport a mullet the entire CMC (if he hasn't grown one out by now) and have his camera ready to take pictures of some locals with mullets. I'll bet Matt a beer that by the end of Friday, we spot at least 3 mullet-y locals worthy of your ratio lesson for this year.
3. Fawn, better bring me that box full of avocados she owes me from File Cabinet. I'm tempted to pack my OG Nintendo and Tetris so we can have a little Tetris showdown. That way, she can't cheat on her Xbox (Okay, she might still kick my butt). At least I'll stand a better chance, right? If she doesn't bring me the avocados, maybe she'll bring me all her Brad Fulton books so I can steal, I mean copy them.
4. As for Dan Meyer, I'm looking forward to meeting him and actually looking up at someone for a change. I'm speaking of height here people. I look up to everyone mentioned in this post! However, wouldn't it be fun if our Twitter group heckled him during his entire presentation?

Stay tuned for a full report from CMC and some fun contributions to Estimation180.com

CMC to be,
930