Community Service with Web "to point, oh"

After punching the hell out of my keyboard, I hate Explorer 7.0, a computer miracle occurred. I must have smashed the right keys and a site called Math Is Fun jumped out at me. Come on though; Math is Fun, really? Forgiving such a blatant disregard for a young child's idea of fun, I checked the site out anyway, and behold; the Math Is Fun Help Me Forum.

Before I get any further, I want to bring up the idea of community service for a moment. Beyond being an aweome thing to do, many schools are incorporating community service as a graduation requirement. It is also a necessity to students petitioning and maintaining membership in the National Honor Society. So why not incorporate online collaboration into this.

Any form of tutoring qualifies as community service, but it is usually limited by the buildings the tutors have physical access to. Lets use the strength of a sweet blog to break down these physical barriers, and teach 21st Century skills at the same time. Again, for an example of what this can look like, go to the Math Is Fun Help Me Forum.

Imagine students from your school helping the "mathematically challenged" across the continent creating contacts that could very well last beyond high school. Nice. Think of the number of Facebook/My Space pages kids visit on a regular basis already, and “why” they visit them. The "why" scares me a little bit. Through scholarly pursuits, such as online tutoring, students may change their creepy “why” to more academic/collegial reasons.

I am proposing our district form an online tutoring club with myself in charge of monitorig the web discussions for content accuracy, phishing, bullying, and general nonsense. The biggest problem I foresee at this point is getting the word out to students from other schools once this service becomes available. Any ideas??? Comments welcome…

In the beginning...

Many of the preiminary ideas I plan to post are collected from the myriad of professional development opportunities that have been made available due to the rising demand of Web 2.0 usage in today's school system. My first challenge to all math professionals reading this blog is to begin to investigate and search for as many professional opportunities they can find.

The conundrum here is: much of what I've learned through out the past year was not from the presenters or assignments I had to endure...and trust me using the word endure is being polite. Just view this video to see what I mean...



It was through meeting with other teachers, sharing email addresses, Skype contact info, bitching (a very powerfully underrated collaborative tool...lol), and following up to maintain contact. Throw them questions, share ideas; presentations are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to professional development. I just wish presenters would realize this.

Stay tuned for some tips you can use in your math classroom.