Week 1 (May 14 - May 17): This week I spent most of my time learning about different computer programs that Shodor uses. I read up on Operation Systems and wrote an essay on what I learned, I practiced Unix and answered some questions about it, and I explored Excel and NetLogo (both of which i really enjoy working with). At the end of the week I did a basic tutorial about HTML and it was very interesting; in fact this website is a product of that tutorial. Since this was my first week here I also met a lot of people and they all seem very friendly. The staff and interns went out for lunch on Thursday to celebrate my mentor's graduation and that was a lot of fun. It allowed me to meet everyone in a different environment, which was nice. I'm really excited about this summer.
Week 2 (May 21 - May 24): This week I worked on some more of the tutorials that Shodor has. I started Vensim, completed the NetLogo challenge, worked on the Shoe-Tie algorithm and worked a lot more on my webpage incorporating CSS. I also helped Bethany with some lesson plans for a course on fractals. I worked with another intern, Maria, and we created a weeks worth of lesson plans for the course.
Week 3 (May 29-June 1): On Tuesday I went with my mentor, Bethany, and another intern, Maria, to a talk at NC State about math education. This week I worked on a few materials related to the Regression activity on Interactivate. I wrote two discussions related to the activity (Correlation Coefficient and Line of Best Fit) and got them onto the Interactivate site. I also looked through textbooks to align them to the activity and from this created an Instructors page for the activity. Right now I'm finishing up a Lesson Plan for the activity. I am excited about getting these on the website!
Week 4 (June 5 - June 8): I worked on a couple of different projects this week. I finished up loading my Interactivate materials onto the website and now I'm working on another discussion about bivariate data and univariate data. I also brainstormed with some other people about the environmental workshop that Shodor will be having in July and signed up to assist/teach on a couple of days. There was also a meeting about the Apprentice Math Workshop we will be having for the next 8 weeks (Tuesdays 2-4) and I am helping with a couple of those. Mainly, for the past week, however, I have been searching for data about hybrids and electric cars that we could use to teach Regression in an upcoming workshop. We finally found some interesting data and I entered it into excel and graphed the data and the residual plots for the different correlations.
Week 5 (June 11 - 15): This was my first week working in the office for all five days! We had intern orientation for a couple hours each day, which has been a nice thing to look forward to. We played two truths and a lie, blanket volleyball, and frisbee with all of the interns. Also, they had a few classes to familiarize us with everything so I learned about Shodor, how to improve my writing, intern expectations, workplace ethics, problem solving, and how to graphically design something using inkscape. We also were formally introduced to all of the staff and found out what it is they do at Shodor. Besides intern orientation I made some editations to the Interactivate website, worked on a few discussions, brainstormed about the Math Explorations class that I will be teaching, and attended two meetings (one about SSP and the Regression activity we will be leading and the other about Environmental Science and our plans for the workshop). My favorite part of the week, however, was on Tuesday afternoon. Bethany leads a math class offered to Apprentices from 2-4 on Tuesdays in order to help them understand and enjoy math. I got to help explain some of the math problems that they were working on and I really enjoyed interacting with them. Today we have a cookout planned and a water balloon fight so I'm excited :)
Week 6 (June 19-June 22): This week I worked on a couple of projects. I helped out at the Apprentice math class on Tuesday and we worked on practice problems about equations. I also completed the Bivariate Data Relations discussion, Univariate Data and Bivariate Data discussion, and Graphing and Interpreting Bivariate Data discussion for Interactivate. In addition, I spent most of Wednesday organizing the Math Thematics 2nd edition (which is printed on seperate sheets of white paper) into binders for easier access. I think it will help out a lot when we are trying to do Textbook Alignment for lesson plans and I love to organize stuff so I had a really good time doing it. Thursday Bethany was in charge of the SSP workshop and I assisted with that during the morning; she taught the students about regression and how to graph a regression graph and residuals using Excel. I also got involved with the Forensics workshop and went to two meetings discussing plans for it. Also, I've done a bit of editing on Interactivate and helped out with the kids participating in SSP.
Week 7 (June 26 - June 29): I was sick pretty much this entire week - ugh. I helped out with the Apprentice workshop on Tuesday and we discussed terms associated with numbers and did some "understanding math" problems. I also finally finished the Residuals discussions (Finding Residuals and Using Residuals to Identify a Good Fit) and put those and the bivariate data discussions on the Interactive website. When I was completing the Using Residuals to Identify a Good Fit discussion I used Imaging software (Gimpshop) to edit a graph and while it was difficult because it was new to me it was also fun to learn something new and experiment with the program. I also worked at home one day and made editations on the Interactivate website. Bethany taught me a lot of new things this week so I spent a lot of it learning. On Friday we had a potluck, which was very yummy and we had a TON of desserts. We also had the SSP workshop going on again this week so I watched the kids during lunch one day and twice after class; they did really neat presentations on Friday that we got to see!
Week 8 (July 2 - July 6): This week I felt really productive. On Monday I worked with Maria the whole day and we converted all of the scripting language in Interactivate from HTML to XML. A lot of it did not need to be converted, but there were some coding that was fine in the HTML format, but not in the XML so that had to be changed. Tuesday we spent almost the entire day formatting worksheets on Interactivate. Right now all of the worksheets are pdfs and so if a user wanted to use them then she can't really change anything so we are formatting them to word documents as well so the educators can make their own changes if they would like. There are A LOT of worksheets on Interactivate so this will be a long project, but we got through a lot. Also, on Tuesday we had another Forensics Workshop meeting and things seem to be coming along with our plans for the investigation. Wednesday was the fourth of july so the office was closed. Thursday I edited a few more worksheets and finished putting rt tickets on all of my discussions so that Bethany can see my progress and we can work on getting them put online. We also had another Forensics meeting and today we are planning on having a run through, which will hopefully turn out alright. Also, I am working on my lesson plan for the workshop on Probability I will be teaching in two weeks and have made a draft I think will work out really well. The rest of the day I plan to work on worksheet formatting. It has been a really good week; I've been very busy.
Week 9 (July 9 - July 13): This week was A LOT of fun. We had the Forensics workshop taking place in the afternoons from 1-4. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Ismael, Latesha, Sam and I had meetings about the investigation. The students did half of the investigation on Wednesday and completed the other half on Thursday so we discussed how the process was going to go and made sure that we planted all of the evidence. On Wednesday we even had a reporter come to Shodor and take pictures and observe the happenings, and then they wrote a really good article that was in the Harold Sun the next morning! I was questioned on Thursday and then on Friday I led a discussion where we reviewed all of the evidence that they found about the investigation. I also helped them prepare for trial and was part of the trial. In the trial the kids were split into different groups to present the evidence and defende me and Monte was the judge and Ismael, Trisha and Ernie were the prosecutors who were going to fire me because they thought I killed Wanda. In the end the jurors (apprentices) declared that I was not guilty *yay*! This week I also had a meeting with Jeff about the Environmental workshop I was working with that was coming up. Maria and I drove to Enoe River and collected water samples and measured a trees circumference to prepare and test our lesson plans. In addition, I worked on some html conversions to xml and I helped out with the Apprentice class on Tuesday. I actually got to go over the test the kids took so I got to explain some of the questions they didn't understand and while it was only for about 15 minutes, it was still fun and my first real teaching experience here. Today we also had a catered lunch of ziti, fruit, green beans, chicken, pastries, and potatoes and it was really beautiful so we all ate outside.
Week 10 (July 16 - July 20): This week we had math explorations every afternoon from 1-4. It was a lot of fun getting to know the kids and helping out with all of the lessons. On Monday Bethany taught Area and Perimeter, Tuesday Maria taught Transformations, Wednesday I taught Probability, Thursday Trisha taught Estimation and Friday Joel and Deb taught Cryptography. I had my first real teaching experience because I had to make up a lesson plan, organize the materials, and teach the entire class time. It was a bit intimidating, but I think now I am more comfortable with teaching and I'm learning from it. Other then the Math Explorations workshop I also have been planning the environmental science workshop with Maria. We have a lesson plan created and now we just have to fix a few details. We had a meeting with all of the people teaching next week for environmental science and discussed how it will be going. Also, I've been doing some occassional converting html files to xml when I've had some free time. I like getting involved with the workshops, I've really gotten to know the kids this week.
Week 11 (July 23 - July 27): This was a busy week since it is my final week at Shodor. I had a lot of things that I wanted to complete before leaving and fortunately I finished them in plenty of time. With Maria's help all of the html coding has now been converted to xml! That was one of my favorite projects this summer because I liked working with coding. Also, I finished converting all of the pdfs on the Interactivate website into word documents so that educators can edit the worksheets if they choose. In addition, I worked with Maria and we taught a lesson on Carbon (we calculated our carbon footprints and the amount of carbon stored in a tree) and a lesson on Water (we discussed water quality and water runoff in particular and we had three gues speakers come). It was a lot of fun and they went very successfully. Maria and I also took a trip over to Duke to pick up some microscopes that we were planning on using for our water lesson. I also helped with the sign out for the workshop kids, typed up some paperwork and created and presented a powerpoint about what I have done as an intern at Shodor. It was a very good last week here. We have a potluck today where I plan on taking a lot of pictures before I leave.
Winter/Spring 2008 (December - May): I started working at Shodor again during the month of December and I've been trying to come on Saturdays from 10-3 during my spring semester at UNC. During this time Apprentices are in class on a wide range of topics and sometimes I will try to help out in the classroom and other times I will help out at the computer stations answering questions. Bethany also put me in charge of grading some AMC work and so I have been doing a lot of that, which has been fun. The grading takes time, but it also is a lot of fun and feels very productive when I've completed some. I am planning to start interning at Shodor again in a couple of weeks and then I will start my weekly journaling again.
Summer 2008 (May-June): This summer I was in and out of the office. While I was there though I got to help with two of the Apprentice Math Courses (AMC) which focused on Algebra and then probability. Hanley and I graded a good portion of the students submissions and then spent class time observing and working with the students to improve both their exploration questions and evaluations. It was a lot more fun to directly talk to the students about their work rather than just emailing back and forth like I had been doing during the Winter when I graded submissions for the AMC workshops.We even got to help lead a class and had the students work on tricky, fun word problems. During the summer I also worked on some discussions, lesson plans, exploration questions and a new applet about inequalities.
Fall 2008 (September): This month I worked on projects that Bethany assigned me which included testing several applications on the site. We are now introducing the ability to download the interactivate games and play them without internet connection which is really cool. I also tested some new applets that were being modified (i.e. Algebra Four). Also, I worked on writing instructions on how to download applications when using different browsers and how to use the SEED option that Shodor has now created. Overall it has been a little bit of everything
Fall 2008 (October): Today I input data and created some excel documents.