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Don't clean the whiteboard
In the previous post, I talked about classroom archaeology: the concept that we leave behind evidence of the learning that goes on in our classroom for others to find, and since people will see this evidence whether we like it or not, we should leave some useful artefacts on purpose.
Classroom archaeology
At the combined MERGA/AAMT conference in 2011, one of the keynote speakers was Matt Skoss, a high school maths teacher in the Northern Territory. I talk a lot about how much we at uni have to learn from schoolteachers and Matt was case in point: he had a lot of most excellent stuff to say. But the thing that stuck with me the most – and is still with me more than 15 months later – was the concept of viewing your own classroom as an archaeological dig.
The one most important thing you can do in MyUni to make your students' lives better
MyUni (known as "blackboard" to people not at Uni of Adelaide), is a powerful tool for supporting your students' learning. There are a whole lot of awesome things you can use it to do: use discussion boards, have virtual classrooms, set up group assessment, student wikis, and the list goes on. The bread-and-butter of MyUni is of course to put up the lecture notes, assignments and prac instructions.
And this brings me to the most important thing you can do in MyUni to make your students' lives better: label everything properly. And not just any labels – descriptive labels.
Let me illustrate with some examples:
Kindy is awesome
My younger daughter started kindy last week, and I got to actually be there for the beginning of her first day. It was one of those moments only a parent can understand as I realised with both excitement and sadness that my little baby was not a baby any more.
Happy Photographers
Once upon a time at my place we used to watch "New Zealand's Next Top Model" and "America's Next Top Model". They were a bit of light fluff that we could have on while doing something else.
Conspicuous Pi Absence
The number pi is very cool. Many people say that pi is cool because of all the unexpected places it appears. In fact, they don't just say it's cool, they even go so far as to say that there is some sort of mystical significance in the fact that it appears all over the place.
Things I didn't learn from OZCOTS 2012
A couple of weeks ago I found out that OZCOTS (Australian Conference on Teaching Statistics) was being held here in Adelaide. I thought that I should go to it, since I seem to be spending rather a lot of time teaching statistics these days. And so I went.
Good movies, bad movies
I went to the movies a month or so ago and saw two movies. I get to go to the movies very rarely, so when I do I like to see movies that are very good. Of course, you can't know in advance whether they will be very good, and based on last month's experience the reviews in the paper are no help whatsoever.
Can I take a cheat sheet?
The first maths exams for the year are tomorrow, so recently I've been talking to more and more students about exams. To be clear, I'm not complaining about this! It's a really important part of the MLC's role to give students advice about exams, since they have such a huge impact on the students' experience of learning maths at uni. We can make a big difference to people by simply helping them cope with this stressful time.
"Helping" Hands
In recent weeks, a new artwork has appeared on the walls of Hub central. They used to have people's faces, and now they have people's hands in various poses.
