Wesley Fryer was as good as advertised.  His vision of School 2.0 is how I feel; however, he has the ability to put into words. 

As a special note: The superintendent of my district was named the State Technology Administrator of the year.  That really helped make the day exciting.

As another special note: Congratulations to the State Teacher of the Year, you really deserve it and continue to develop a technology presence in Northwest Ohio. Go Moodle!

Session I didn’t expect to like at first:

• Teaching Math Through Sports – Mickey Gilliland
  Link: School Website

  He did a great job of describing how he uses sports to teach math at the middle school level.  This is definitely something I have a great deal of interest in at the high school level.  I was slightly disappointed that he achieves some of his success through the process of picking his students through a survey the previous academic year.  Basically they take a survey and based on their interest in sports, they are either placed in his class or one of the two other teachers classes.
   

How I contribute to the future of our digital natives (I thought about this for at least half of the day while at different sessions):

• My class blogs where the students create content
• My classroom website where students can use my links and find other student materials
• Ability to mix images and videos into the daily instruction of mathematics

Is that enough?  Well, answer this question….when is learning enough?

NEVER GIVE UP ON LEARNING!

 
http://flickr.com/photos/alishav/3156574283/

Like any other year, the trend is to look back on the year with a view on biggest positive and biggest negative moments.  In the world of sports, being a Cleveland fan can be lonely; however, there is one moment I have not been able to forget about which involves Michael Phelps.  Actually, it is not even Phelps, it is his USA swimming teammate Jason Lezak.  I can still hear the words of the announcers.

From Wikipedia

The United States trying to hang on to second, they should get the silver medal, Australia is in Bronze territory right now, but Lezak is closing a little bit on Bernard, can the veteran chase him down and pull off a shocker here? There’s no doubt that he’s tightening up. Bernard is losing some ground, here comes Lezak… UNBELIEVABLE AT THE END, HE’S DONE IT! THE U.S. HAS DONE IT! HE DID IT! HE DID IT! Phelps’s hopes [are] alive!
”

-Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines calling the final lap of the 4x100m relay.

Here is the YouTube video showing the race I am speaking of…

Wild about Fun! and Math! and Puzzles! and Life!

Recently, I have discovered a neat math related website called Wild About Math! Maybe it was just timing; however, in the middle of reading a book about prime numbers and have my mind twisted by my constant thoughts of number theory I ran into this post.  The post asks how many divisors there are for 10!.  Being a computer science teacher, I couldn’t help myself from writing a program to check it out.  I never actually joined the contest; however, I started to investigate many of the past posts.  For those that are reading my blog from a math teacher standpoint, take a look for yourself.  This is definitely going to take a spot in my blogroll.

NECC 2009 in Washington, D.C.

I submitted my paperwork to my district and only time will tell if I am going to NECC 2009.  I have wanted to go for the last couple of summers and am finally deciding that the 7 hour drive is close enough for me to make the trip.  Any of my readers going this year?