Online Courses

• How to Learn Math 
  

This is a free online course being offered by Stanford University, by Professor Jo Boaler, author of the book, "What's Math Got to Do With It?". Highly recommended.

Through very accessible presentations of latest educational research, videos of classrooms, interviews with students and successful professionals, Professor Boaler offers teachers both serious big ideas in effective and research-based math instruction as well as great specific instructional practices. Her sessions look at how students past negative experiences with mathematics can effect their beliefs on the very nature of intelligence.  She offer several interventions for transforming students' mindsets. She discusses inquiry-based mathematics instruction in an unintimidating and powerful way. She talks about refocusing math lessons on conceptual understanding and fewer and deeper problems. And how to teach algebra as a way of thinking and exploring patterns. The course consists of 8 sessions. Available from July 2013 until September 27th, 2013. In the future, an adapted version of this course will be offered for students learning math.

• Introduction to Physics: Landmarks in Physics

This is a free online course offered by Udacity.com. It can be taken at any time. This is great class for improving your own background knowledge, and for getting some great ideas for how to help students make deep connections between mathematics and the history of physics. The teacher explores the content by asking some of the key questions in the history of physics (written below). He then travels to the place where a discovery was made, and gives you a historical context of what people understood at that time. He doesn't ever present the science as a done deal - he presents it as a thoughtful set of errors and breakthroughs And the best part is the only background knowledge you need is some very basic knowledge of algebra. If you have any doubts, I recommend watching a little bit of the first lesson... I guarantee you'll get hooked.

Lesson 1: How can we measure the circumference of the Earth? Basics of geometry and trigonometry 
Lesson 2: How do objects move? Data analysis and kinematics 
Lesson 3: What causes motion? Forces, acceleration, and Newton’s Laws 
Lesson 4: How can we use motion? Work, energy, and simple machines 
Lesson 5: How can we determine our longitude at sea? Simple harmonic motion 
Lesson 6: What is electricity? Charge and electric fields 
Lesson 7: What is left to discover? Modern physics and open questions

• Constructive Classroom Conversations: Mastering Language for the Common Core State Standards

This free online course is being offered by Stanford Online, by Professor of Education Kenji Hakuta. The class runs from October 21, 2013-December 9, 2013. A big part of the Common Core Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards for peer to peer, student to student communication. In both math and ELA, students are expected to collaborate, participate, and engage in conversation with each other in building knowledge.This class will focus on the language that builds academic knowledge in students and strategies for making classroom discussions more productive. This course will involve collecting  samples of your students language and sharing them with other teachers who are enrolled in the course.

• Common Core in Action: Math Formative Assessment

This free course is offered by Coursera. Participants will look at (and implement) a Common Core lesson developed by the Mathematics Assessment Project (MAP) and learn about what an inquiry-based classrooms look like. The course will focus on using formative assessment while developing the 8 math practices. In the words of one math teacher, “it’s not the students’ job to figure out what is in our heads; it’s the teacher’s job to figure out what is in theirs.” Such an approach requires far more focus on formative assessment and deliberate strategies for teachers to understand students’ strengths, needs, and misconceptions – then move them forward while continually re-assessing.

Online Resources

• Teaching Channel -Teaching Channel is "a video showcase of inspiring and effective teaching practices in America's schools. They have more than 75,000 registered members who trade ideas and share inspiration from each other.  Their mission is to revolutionize how teachers learn, connect, and inspire each other to improve the outcomes for all K-12 students across America.

Watch some of these videos and try out what you see in your own classroom. Even more powerful - watch them with a colleague and discuss how you might incorporate what you see into your classrooms. Then after you try it with students, talk about what you learned from the experience.

Take the Teaching Channel's Common Core Challenge!

(1) Watch video of a master teacher in action and analyze their lesson using Common Core Instructional Practice Guides (about 1 hour), (2) update one of your lessons using the Common Core Instructional Practice Guide (about 1 hour) and (3) share what you learn - what worked? What didn't? 

• TIMMS Video Study

TIMMS stands for Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. The TIMSS 1999 Video Study was a study of eighth-grade mathematics and science teaching in seven countries (Japan, the US, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic). The study involved videotaping and analyzing teaching practices in more than one thousand classrooms.  The goals of the TIMMS Video Study were to investigate mathematics and science teaching practices in U.S. classrooms and to compare U.S. teaching practices with those found in high-achieving countries.  The thought was we could discover new ideas about teaching mathematics and science, develop new teaching research methods and tools for teacher professional development.  On this website you can watch videos of these classes, download the resources used for each lesson, read reports analyzing the most effective teaching practices in all seven countries. 

• McGraw Hill Webinars on the Common Core

A series of webinars consisting of a presentation and commentary by experts in different content areas. The second session in the one that looks at Mathematics Learning features a presentation by Alan Shoenfeld. (59 minutes, with slides and math problems to consider along the way)

• Pearson Webinars on Common Core Math Instruction

A series of webinars in which various mathematicians and math educators weigh in on various aspects of the Common Core.