Thursday, November 12, 2015

In about a week I will be presenting twice at the AMATYC national conference.  The first presentation is an IGNITE talk.  Basically 20 powerpoint slides that auto advance every 15 seconds; start talking!  I am one of about 22 of us, and I will be talking about using what I call Competency Clusters.  Basically the idea is to group your homework problem assignments into small clusters that are related to help students understand the differences and similarities between the problems.

For example, x^2 - 1 = 0 , 1 - x^2 = 0 and x^2 + 1 = 0 all look similar, but only two have solutions over the real numbers.

A copy of the slideshow I used will be posted next week after the conference.  I will also post a link to the video of all of the talks when it is up.  I would also post copies of the slides, but I have a lot of animation on each slide so it becomes a jumbled mess.  A link to the video of the entire show will be posted about 10 days after the conference so you can see all of the talks.  Below are the resources I mentioned in the talk.  Thanks as always.

Division Clusters 
Using Rich Problems for Differentiated Instruction
The Homework Dilemma
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)