Tomorrow I am presenting at the Colorado Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference (CCTM).  My presentation is on Web 2.0 tools in the teaching of mathematics.  At NECC this summer many bloggers and others including Will Richardson and Bud Hunt mentioned that we (as proponents of 21st century learning and Web 2.0) need to start going to conferences that don’t center on technology to preach the benefits of using technology in the classroom.  Well, this is my effort in that call to action.

Check out my presentation.  Thanks if you attended my presentation, I hope it was worthwhile and that you can take something away from it to use in your classroom.

The grading period just ended and grades were due on Wednesday, and it got me thinking about our gradebook program Infinite Campus.  For the most part it is a good program.  It allows for teachers to have grades online so parents and students can see them anytime.  This leads to teachers evaluating their grading systems and sometimes improving them.  It makes grades and the grading process for the most part transparent.  It has also has cut down on the number of parent phone calls and conferences.   These are all blessings.

But because we live in a society where we get things on demand, like movies, food, and information, students and parents think that grades are also an on demand commodity.  I had a student who was missing some assignments hand in a bunch of things right before the grading period ended.  He must have called his mother right afterward because within an hour I had an email from her asking if his grade improved or not.  I don’t know about you, but I think that is ridiculous.

Somewhere along the line learning has died and in it’s place a terrible monster has taken over.  The monster is grade chasing.  I rarely if ever have had a conversation with a parent that surrounded the conceptual understanding a student had about quadratic functions.  Rather parents call and email about missing assignments and what does Joey have to do to pass or get a B.

I have tried to push the discussion in the direction of understanding of math.  I separate grades into the big ideas so that students can look at Infinite Campus and see how they are doing with Algebraic Manipulation or Area and Volume.  I have even separated academic factors (conceptual understanding) from non- academic factors (being a good kid and handing things in on time), but still everyone else focuses on the grade.

When will we get to a place in time when learning and understanding are valued more than grades?  I hope to be around to see it.

I always like parent teacher conference nights. Especially when the student comes and is part of the conversation. It typically happens though, that the parents (and students) who you want to be there, aren’t there. I have tried emails and phone calls, but there are some parents that don’t come. Now I know there are issues around when they are held, and jobs or child care can get in the way of some parents coming. But we also know the correlation between parent involvement and student performance. So how do we get parents involved? Not just in conferences, but in their children’s education.  I wish there were a quick fix, but I haven’t found one yet.

Could technology be an answer?  Would more parents do conferences by phone, chat, skype, or some other technology that we haven’t come up with?