Educon 2.2 math-related sessions this weekend

[Maria Droujkova]

This weekend, there is a large conference in Philadelphia, streaming online through LearnCentral's Elluminate rooms - same place we hold our webinars. The conference website is at http://www.educon22.org. A listing of all 76 sessions ("conversations") with the links to their descriptions and the Elluminate rooms is at http://www.educon22.org/conversations. All times listed for the sessions are US Eastern Standard Time. If you need help converting to your time zone, I recommend the converter page at http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html.Here are some math-related sessions I found, though I expect math to come up at more sessions, and most of them seem quite interesting to me anyway!

Projects in the Math Classroom: Learning Through Doing

Who:

Erin Garvey, Brad Latimer, Mark Miles, Caitlin Thompson, Sunil Reddy

When:

Session One

Where:

Room 207

How do teachers create a curriculum based in projects for a subject grounded in discrete skills? What does project based mathematics look like? How can meaningful projects serve to not only demonstrate student comprehension of key concepts, but also provide an opportunity for students to apply skills and knowledge to practical situations? What role do traditional assessments play in a project-based math curriculum?

Papert Matters: Thinking About Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas

Who:

Gary S. Stager, Ph.D.

When:

Session Four

Where:

Room 204

Seymour Papert's work has defined the frontiers of education for 40+ years. Gary will share what Papert's ideas mean for the future of learning through personal anecdotes, Papert's words and video clips.

Resources for Success: How to Offer Differentiated Support for Math Students

Who:

Brad Latimer and Sunil Reddy

When:

Session Five

Where:

Room 307

What can be done when students require additional support beyond the classroom? How can we offer support for students while balancing a full teaching load? How can resources be made available to effectively offer differentiated support? This conversation will focus on creating a structured set of mathematics resources both inside and outside of school.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
http://www.naturalmath.com

Make math your own, to make your own math.

[ClimeGuy]

This is a conference is worth following. Looks like it might be a good
model for Math 2.0 conferences.
-Ihor

[Sue Hellman]

Thanks Ihor -- I was disappointed not to be able to take in the math session
this am, but ended up in a great one in the middle of the day. I guess the
lesson is rehearse the technology over and over to be sure one knows all the
glitches. There's plenty that can go wrong and the Twitter feeds indicated
that quite a few people felt frustrated. To invite reluctant math teachers
to an online conference and then to have the technology let them down will
only confirm their doubts I'm afraid. Perhaps I'll be able to get into the
math one tomorrow.

-Sue

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[Maria Droujkova]

It's getting more reliable, to be fair. Still, there are always some glitches. The systems are so complex I would compare them to something ecological or biological, like the weather or the mood - not quite reliable in principle! We've had our fair share of glitches in the Math 2.0 events. I gave up on Twitter after it had ten-minute message lag during several hashtag chats, for examples. Last week, our presenter could not see the web tour, but the good thing about Elluminate is there are usually multiple options, so we went with application sharing and it was fine.

The lesson I am taking home is to have several independent platform and technology back-up options for my events.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
http://www.naturalmath.com

Make math your own, to make your own math.

[Cal Armstrong]

I had the opportunity to be physically there at Educon... I was amazed that the technology ran as well as it did... 500 participants, most with at least one networked device and every room (at least 10 simultaneous sessions) attempting to stream audio/video.

It was students running the streaming computers and they hadn't been sufficiently trained and didn't encourage the presenters enough to tie everything together.  As Maria mentions, it's a real challenge... think how many times we've waited while presenters fiddle with projectors, let alone tying things together off and online.  

I'm also more and more pleased with Elluminate... again, the presenters have to be more involved and aware of the possibilities as they are preparing but this will come with time.

Cal.

[Sue Hellman]

The only session I attended where I thought the full power of Elluminate was used was a math one in session 5. They  had the slides online and were monitoring questions from the online audience quite closely, but it was obvious the preseneters use Elluminate in school and so were very comfortable with screen sharing etc.

 

I was impressed with what the students were able to do, but felt the speakers should have known more about the process from the online side. I just felt there wasn’t enough rehearsal. A couple of the kids really took to their roles and moved the camera and mike so we could hear. Others were more fearful and stayed with the as/was set up. I’m not surprised they were reluctant to tell the presenters what to do; they were kids after all.

 

In some ways I think the organizers didn’t think through what the experience would be like for an online participant. That’s the hard part of blending experiences like that. All in all, it was a great weekend for me.

 

-Sue

[Ihor Charischak]

Hi Sue,

Thanks for sharing what happened at that math session. (See description.) I missed it and plan to watch the archive. I think what happened there is significant and will help us in planning future Math 2.0 conferences!

Thanks -Ihor

[Socha, Susan C]

I think they did an amazing job considering that there was no charge to attend the conference remotely.

Susan Socha

[Cal Armstrong]

Absolutely!  The conference sold out this year so I think their goal next year will be to beef up the interaction between real & virtual space since even those able (in time & funds) to attend may not be able to.  

And presenters will have to learn how to deal with the differing needs of the two groups... I think obviously you need co-presenters, one has to act as a bridge between the two worlds, which is really what the math teacher did in Session 5.  As I mentioned elsewhere, last year they seemed to have done a better job when they used Mogulus (now Livestream) but that was likely because the interface was more complicated and they had a teacher driving it.

Cal.

[Ihor Charischak]

After reading Cal's post I just realized that its important to have a local presence when we do an online conference. Even if its just token. I have no idea at this point how to implement that, but I have an opportunity to try something like it a kind of microworld of a larger event. At my CLIME booth in San Diego in April I'm going  experiment with his idea. I posted a first call announcement for the event (April 22-23) in my latest CLIME blog. More about this later (when I figure out what I'm talking about.) - Ihor

[ClimeGuy]

In case you missed this. From Steve Hargadon:
A fun week ahead! Before I begin, though a quick Report on our
"Philadelphia Experiment:" I returned in the wee hours of the morning
today from having attended the Educon 2.2 conference at Philadelphia's
Science Leadership Academy, where I helped a team of intrepid students
live-broadcast in Elluminate the 76 (!) conference sessions. What a
GREAT experience. Because the school had experienced a power outage
the day before the conference, the first hour was more "exciting" than
any of us wanted as we worked through getting the equipment ready, but
from that point on it was relatively smooth sailing. Kudos to Marcie
Hull and the student team for a job super well-done! The recordings
of the sessions should be appearing shortly on the conference
website: http://www.educon22.org.

Remember, you can host your own public webinars using the LearnCentral
public room--instructions are available by joining the "Host Your Own
Webinar" group on the main announcement tab (http://
www.learncentral.org/group/3432/host-your-own-webinars)

-Steve