OTRNet Newsletter 28
Hi and welcome to our November 2002 Newsletter.
As the end of the school year approaches most schools review
changes they have made and start planning for 2003. In my 20 plus years of
teaching I've never seen our profession undergo such significant change as
has been taking place over the last few years. It can be stressful and
tiring, but at the same time it can be invigorating to face new challenges
and find ways to teach children who face a world vastly different to the one
we were educated in.
As a profession we can be proud of our willingness to reflect
on what we do and make the changes necessay to better educate our students.
I hope the end of your year goes well.
Before the end of the year all subscribers to our online
service will receive a reminder regarding continued access for 2003. There
will also be one more Special Offer for 2002 so look out for that, and we
will send out a brief December newsletter.
Regards,
Mark
In this newsletter there is
information on:
1. The Latest on the
Integrated Maths Modules
2. MAWA Secondary Convention
3. Downloading Resources
4. Make OTRNet Your Home Page
5. OTRNet Website Gets Busy
1. The Latest on
the Integrated Maths Modules
Module F02: Indirect Measure 1 is our most
recent release with this module by
Steve Hadfield
now available through fax order, online ordering or from your bookseller.
This latest module brings to 19 the total number published and we have now
released half of the modules planned for the complete project. Schools
using the modules in year 8 in 2002 will be able to continue using the
modules for year 9 in 2003 and year 10 in 2004.
Samples from this module are available from the samples
page at:
Don't forget that you can download and use samples from any
of 19 completed modules. This means 19 activities and 19 applications
totalling over 40 pages are available for you to use free with your
students either as immersion material or as complex tasks to apply
understandings to.
Trialling is now complete for module F03: Quadratic
Functions 1 and it will be available around the end of November.
You can check availability of all modules at this page of
our web site:
Nineteen integrated maths modules are
now published and samples from all these modules are available
from our website at the link below:
2. MAWA Secondary
Convention
Western Australian maths teachers should by now be aware of
MAWA's upcoming Secondary Convention. Held over three days and offering
over 50 sessions this is the best opportunity for professional development
offered in WA. Day 1 on Sunday 1st December is the Technology Day and is
held at All Saint's College, Bullcreek, with days 2 and 3 being at the
Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle on Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd December.
At the Technology Day I will be repeating my session from
this year's State Conference based around using the online resources
available through our Integrated Maths Modules project. This
session will highlight the lessons, spreadsheet files and links to web sites
that can be used to supplement learning in secondary mathematics. The
resources are directly designed for use
with our modules but are also freely available to other teachers.
Participants in this session will discover what is available, how to access
the resources, and how to make them a part of your student's learning
experiences.
For an example of these resources, the following link will
take you to the Teaching & Learning Resource page for the latest developed
module, Quadratic Functions 1. TLR pages are available for most of our
modules.
On Days 2 and 3 of the Convention I will be giving a session
titled "Focusing on Learning in the Classroom". The aim of this session is
to suggest ways and means of making a classroom more student
centred, making learning more constructivist based, and allowing students to
work cooperatively. The session would be of interest to people who
are trying to make changes in their own classroom or are looking at how an
alternative learning process can be managed.
3. Downloading Resources
As mentioned previously the OTRNet website has many resources
freely available for teachers to use. Some of these are Excel spreadsheet
files for supporting various parts of learning in both the Chance & Data and
Algebra strands. To use these files they need to be downloaded and then
opened in Excel. This process is very fast usually taking only a few
seconds as the files are quite small. When using these files in lessons I
find it easier to have students download them than trying to copy them to
each computer in the classroom.
Full instructions for downloading are given on each of the
TLR pages where links to these files can be found. Put simply, you need to
download and save the file so it can be opened on the computer rather than
opening the file in your browser. To do this you need to right click on the
link rather than left click. Once downloaded the file can be opened and
used.
Try right clicking on this link then choosing "Save Target
As" - download and open it to find out what it does.
This particular spreadsheet file is a simple type of database
for storing data collected from a survey. It was designed to help develop
the Chance & Data Outcome 5.2 and accompanies module E04: Data Collection &
Analysis 2.
4.
Make OTRNet Your Home Page
If you use OTRNet resources, have a subscription to our
online service, or simply want to be able to quickly find maths or
middle school resources via our links pages then making the OTRNet
Home Page your Home Page may be a good idea.
This is easy to do and can be changed whenever you like.
The instructions for making this change are at the following page of our
website:
http://www.otrnet.com.au/sethomepage.html
5. OTRNet Website Gets Busy
The OTRNet website continues to become more widely used with 10 000
more unique visits in the last 6 months. It took 18 months to get
our first 10 000 unique visits to the website, 9 months later we passed the
20 000 mark and last week we passed the 30 000 mark. If you want to contact
the maths education community or have a resource you want to share then get
in touch and we'll ensure it is seen by the 50 or 60 visitors a day that
browse our web site. We now also have well over 200 people reading this, our
monthly newsletter.
Want your students to be
working on richer tasks?
Use Integrated Maths Modules and
you'll find Applications that involve students applying concepts to complex
tasks.
If you have completed our free registration you
can join the growing group of people and schools who order online
and now receive 10% discount off normal
prices!
OTRNet thanks you for your time in looking at our newsletter.
Please forward this newsletter to a friend if you think it
may be useful for them.
If you received this newsletter from a friend and wish to get subsequent
editions you can join here:
http://www.otrnet.com.au/
Mark R. O'Brien
Online Teachers Resource Network
C.O. Post Office
Wooroloo WA 6558
Phone: (08) 9573 1367
Fax: (08) 9238 1334