Kelly Wallace

Mathematics | Secondary PDPP Candidate

Season’s Greetings

As my final project for this semester, I decided to embrace another challenge… An animated GIF! It’s pretty subtle, but adds dimension and intrigue to an otherwise simple piece. e

I would like to figure out why my iPad refuses to save my screen recorded videos… perhaps they are too long?

Overall, I have really enjoyed practicing new skills with the tech that I am so privileged to have. Once the investment has been made, this is a free, non-messy, way to practice artistic skills and express creativity!

Another key benefit from this project is that my instagram feed is almost entirely filled with both digital and physical art tutorials! #TargetedContentForTheWin

Gallery Walk Poster

This semester, we have all been working hard on numerous inquiry projects. Among the projects not yet displayed on my blog, the Gallery Walk Inquiry poster presentation has become a project that I am quite proud of. I researched the “Building Thinking Classrooms” model as proposed by Dr. Peter Liljedahl, the same math researcher that presented the card trick videos.


As such, I wanted to find a way that I could, not only keep the information of the poster for my future career, but also bring my poster in as an “artifact of learning” for my exit interview. Given that I did not want to drag around my 36″ x 48″ poster, I decided to draw on my affinity for digital formatting. This also gave me an excuse to explore Apple Keynote as well as Microsoft Powerpoint, both of which I have (surprisingly) never used before!

My original poster highlights some of the findings for implementing the “Building Thinking Classrooms” model in the classroom with Peek-a-boo flaps that explain each step with sketch-notes. Therefore, I wanted to ensure that my digital rendition of this poster demonstrated the same ability. I used a non-linear approach to bounce through the slides much like a website interface. When you click on each section of the poster, you are redirected to a new slide that either zooms into a clearer view of the material, or surprises you with new information that was “hidden” under the hexagon flaps. This is done by “linking” images, shapes and text to other slides in the presentation. After each new linked slide I duplicated the original interface to immediately follow. This forces the user to return to the main poster and then choose a new link and repeat the process once again. In hindsight, this non-linear pathway is similar to the choose-your-own-adventure style that is highlighted in Twine!

The following is a screen cast demonstrating the non-linear path. I’ve gone through everything fairly quick, but feel free to pause and have a read. Alternatively, I have attached both the Keynote file (original output) and the powerpoint file (seamlessly converted) if you have any interest in this non-traditional classroom model!

Gallery Walk – Building Thinking Classrooms
Gallery Walk – Building Thinking Classrooms ppt

Math Card Tricks

I have been struggling with how to engage students in my future math classrooms. Some teachable subject areas, such as social studies and english, seem to have more freedom to explore topics with an inquiry based approach to actively engage students in the prescribed content. I haven’t, yet, discovered an inquiry approach to link the heavy content curriculum of secondary mathematics, but I have found an approach that might secure engagement in the classroom. Peter Liljedahl, of Simon Fraser University, introduced his use of card trick in the classroom in the paper “Card Tricks, Discovery Learning and Flow in Mathematics Teacher Education”.

He begins by acknowledging that mathematics instruction often follows the pattern of direct instruction, teacher led exemplification, followed by the assignment of homework. As such, our future teachers of math have been through this instruction and generally fall into two categories: secondary teachers from those few who thrive in this system (guilty) and elementary teacher from the many who do not. We talk about this internal debate in our mathematics methods classes: I’m sitting in these classes because I did truly thrive in the high school mathematics environment, but pedagogically I understand that mathematics and problem solving can be taught so much better. 

Dr. Liljedahl is primarily an instructor in mathematics teacher education, therefore, he is instructing the future of mathematics instruction. One way that he tries to break the structured mold of mathematics instruction is by allowing teacher candidates to rediscover mathematics on their own, and often through card tricks.

Questions to accompany this video could be:

  1. How did he do this?
  2. Could you reproduce this trick?
  3. What would change if we omitted the face cards?

Peter Liljedahl has posted nearly 20 videos of mathematics based card tricks to his website (http://www.peterliljedahl.com/teachers/card-tricks) for teachers to use in their classrooms. But there’s one catch – He doesn’t post the mathematics underlaying the trick. As with many of his resources, he believes that teachers can and should learn alongside their students. As we have recently learned in Psychology, when it comes to vicarious learning a coping model will likely be more beneficial than a mastery model. This way, the teacher is either required to produce and understand the solution prior to sharing with their students, or they can work it out with the class and, therefore, demonstrate an element of authenticity in problem solving.

The video formatting of these trick are beneficial, compared to a live play-by-play demonstration of the trick, in that you can pause the video in order to keep track of the inner working of the cards. Dr.Liljedahl does not demonstrate any card tricks on his website that require fancy skills or slight of hand performances, rather they are all mathematical and logic based puzzles that fit well into the classroom.

“Moonlight”

This project uses two different colours and is trying to portray water colour lettering with large water pockets. The colour almost completely fades out and you can hardly see the letters, yet you can still tell what the letters are. This achieves an array of super light transitions that looks like water is present right on top of the letters. We add some darker more saturated areas where the paint was likely dropped into the water.

The word that was used in the tutorial was “Colourful”, but I decided that this technique more resembled the word “moonlight”.

Enjoy!

Reading Break.

This was a fun challenge I decided to take on over reading break. Many digital artists I follow on Instagram use procreate to create dynamic, layered backgrounds and loop their calligraphy through multiple layers. I haven’t been able to find a tutorial for this, therefore I have been able to utilize the skills I have learned so far bring this technique to life.

I started by choosing a stock flat-lay from UnSplash.com. I then used the selection tool to duplicate the coffee mug and the top notebook. The key step is to place the lettering layer in between the flat-lay layer and the duplicated elements in order to achieve the effect of depth.

“Inquiry”

This was the first project in the video series that included more than lettering – I finally get to paint leaves!

They seemed easy… You start with just a little bit of pressure on the Apple Pencil, then apply more pressure for the leaf itself, and then release pressure again to add a pointed tip on the leaf.

It was really hard.

You’ll see in the video that I erase and replace almost every leaf after I draw it. The video tutorial that I watched suggested that we practice drawing leaves the same way that we practice lettering. You must practice the strokes and pressure with the pencil to understand how to move the tool to achieve the desired look.

Of course, I was impatient with this one and decided to try my best without practicing.

I am quite happy with the final product, but I do not particularly like the video that captures the process of getting there. I think this is partly due to how each individual leaf looks fairly awkward and imperfect, but when all of the layers are put together it looks uniquely natural.

3 Act Math

When it came to incorporating multi-literacy in the classroom, I naively assumed that this wouldn’t apply well in my mathematics lesson plans. Mathematics is the type of subject that suits the lecture and note taking teaching strategy. Since starting this program, I have been introduced to a well known math teacher by the name of Dan Myers, and his unique way of discovering mathematics with his learners has opened my eyes! 

Mr.Myers has designed an array of “three act math tasks” for teachers across the globe to adapt in their own math classrooms. One of the strongest components of these activities is the fact that they come with a loose lesson plan as well as a collection of open-ended questions – so you can cater to almost any skill level. Most questions aren’t necessarily asking for concrete solutions, they are helping students ask the right questions to solve the problem.

He begins each lesson with a short video. The videos aren’t necessarily of the highest production value, and they definitely do not teach any content for you. Rather, these videos are presented to set the stage for some problems we could ask.

For example, the following is the Act 1 video for “The Taco Cart” task.

Questions and prompts are presented as a closure for all Act One videos – In this case, we can ask “Who will reach the taco cart first?”.

Act Two generally opens up the floor for questions. Since these videos do not come straight from a math textbook, we are often left with unknown information, for example: How far away is the taco stand? How far away is the road? How fast can we walk on sand? How fast can we walk on the road? 

Dan Meyers presents any information you may need, but not until you need it. This helps students identify which information they may need to find or discover, rather than try to fit the given numbers into a specific formula. 

Act Three is where we can check our answer. In this example, Mr.Meyer provides the completed video to see who really did reach the taco stand first (with a genuine time stamp to really put this problem into perspective). 

I could imagine that this Three Act Math Task would really command student engagement more than the typical lecture and note taking strategy. Dan Myers even includes “sequel activities and resources” for classes that might want to take this problem further: Where would the taco cart have to be so that both people would reach it at the same time? What path to the taco cart would take the least amount of time?

If you’re interested, the following url will take you directly to a Google spreadsheet document that links over 50 Three Act Math Tasks:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jXSt_CoDzyDFeJimZxnhgwOVsWkTQEsfqouLWNNC6Z4/pub?output=html#

Some of my favourites include:
1. Domino Skyscraper https://www.101qs.com/1989-domino-skyscraper
2. Pokemon Go! Cheat https://www.101qs.com/3827
3. Girl Scout Cookies https://www.101qs.com/3675

November

Today I explored the symmetry tool on procreate! This was not part of the tutorial course I have been following, but I was inspired by a post I saw on Instagram earlier this week.

This tool cuts the canvas into 2, 4, or 8 equal slices to perfectly mirror any brush strokes. This first image was an exploratory doodle, so I hadn’t turned on screen casting; however, I really like how it turned out so I wanted to share it here!

The symmetry tool is incredibly satisfying to watch so I created a similar doodle with a screencast for your enjoyment.

MineCraft

Today Minecraft was unleashed on our Ed Tech class. We were fortunate to have some middle school students join us as our experts for the experience! I found that this was crucial, both because we needed the guidance into this virtual world, but also because these students were able to genuinely demonstrate some of their takeaways from using this in their classroom.

I am interested in the educational resources catered to different core subjects in school, and am particularly interested in how Minecraft can be used to introduce coding and computer science with our students. It appears that Minecraft has some coding options that are similar in fashion to that of Scratch, where the framework has already been developed and students can code by dragging and dropping code blocks.


Minecraft also offers a program called the “Minecraft Hour of Code” which seems similar to a virtual escape room where you can search for treasure by solving virtual puzzles with code. SO FUN!


Both of these images are screenshots from education.minecraft.net .

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