Our in-service was boring but I...

...came up with a fun idea!

*update*: What if I cut and pasted the blue facebook parts and laminated them? I could give them to each student and they could use poster board to write and draw and use the laminated parts as the headings and such.

I've wanted to do some projects but being that it's my first year, I don't really know what the heck I'm doing. Throughout college, we always had to write a paper about a famous mathematician.

What if I had them make a facebook page about a famous mathematician?

I have to admit, I stole this idea from a poster I saw in a magazine:

Seriously, please go look at this poster and how fun it is! It names relatives, work info, status updates, groups, friends, etc. How fun! It would definitely be entertaining and relate to their lives but the thing is...what does it have to do with real life? I so hate how everything I do is pointless. Yes, this would be more fun than a worksheet and I kind of love designing and arranging and organizing things but is this teaching them anything worthwhile? They are already experts at creating a facebook page so the only benefit I can see is learning what critical/important information to pull from different resources to present on the facebook page. Anybody else see anything? Is this project worth pursuing?

Today we had an inservice meeting about school improvement and we had a presentation done on a survey of enacted curriculum. The idea itself is that we all take this in-depth survey and it graphically compares what we do in class to what we are supposed to be doing (according to the state). It actually looks helpful and interesting, especially to me as a first year teacher. The thing I hated was, our presenter had a Powerpoint with screen shots of the survey...the ones where we fill in our name and school and all the obvious things. I figure if we aren't smart enough to read and fill out the form, we have no business here anyway. I was thinking to myself how much better the presentation would be if they would start by presenting the results and the changes it made in their teaching first, and then let us ask 'how' questions when needed. Start the presentation by answering these two questions:

1. How will this help me become a better teacher?
2. How do I go about implementing change in my classroom?

Once you have my attention and my interest, then let's talk about how to achieve the results.

Now I realize how my students feel. They are asking questions as well:

1. How does this affect my life?
2. How can I learn to do it myself?

I have no answers.

The next part of our in-service was about Professional Learning Communities. The presenter used (crooked) transparencies on an overhead projector and VHS tapes. Need I say more? Actually, he didn't show the tapes but I'm not sure what his point was. He basically said how hard it was to develop an authentic PLC and get everyone on board. Fortunately for us, he offered no suggestions on how to do it or any reasoning on why it's even important. My insides were busting: Twitter! Delicious! Blogging! Oh my!

But alas, I said nothing.