Talk:Effective Teaching with Big Ideas Math

Luke Fellows' Developmental Tryout of Effective Teaching with Big Ideas Math -- Luke fellows (talk) 19:24, 21 November 2014 (EST)

Hi Emma,

Excellent work on your mini course, well done!

My feedback after trying out your mini course:

• Is Big Ideas Math a consumer product? Is it a pre-requisite that your learners already own the textbooks and programs? I was confused on this aspect of your course.
• You ask your learners to log in, will you provide a log in for them or is this something that they have to do themselves?
• The course relies heavily on the information provided by the publisher, this approach gave excellent information but did slightly make me feel as if I were being sold too rather than educated in using the product. There may be some learning activities and tasks that you could add to the reading, searching for specific information or asking each learner to respond to a specific area of the text.
• I feel that your Objectives could be more specific. "explore and become familiar with" could become: "Learners will be able to state and explain ways in which Big Ideas Math will benefit their teaching."
• Your choice of visuals was very good, the images and your layout of text made the course aesthetically pleasing and it was very easy to navigate and access information.

Again, nice work.

Luke

Hi Emma,

I can see your site is still under construction so I don’t have too much to add. I hope this helps- I seem to have found the same things as Luke.

Things I like:

I like the pictures you have used in your course. I am not a math teacher, so I may not be the best judge of your mini course.

The different colors for the links to the units help them to stand out.

Suggestions:

Your objective might need to have more broad. Are the learners going to be using this program by the end in their classroom? Do you have to buy the program in order to be able to use this?

The read this article you posted is in a publishers online magazine that seems to sell advertisements to publishers. I am not sure it is really a viable introduction to using the math program. Have you found any studies using this program in peer-reviewed journals?

I tried to look at the Big Ideas Math website- but there is not login. It might be better to find another source- like is there a video of a teacher using this program in their classroom?

Exploration math discussion page is missing.

Good luck with the rest of the project. You are off to a great start!

instructor comment on your mini-course -- Jianwei Zhang (talk) 16:16, 1 December 2014 (EST)

Emma,

You've set up an effective structure for this mini-course in line with the curriculum map you've worked out nicely. Your lesson 1 as a sample unit works fine with solid content. Please continue to work out the rest of the lessons. Keep the criteria of this project in mind when your work on your lessons, especially re. engagement and interaction.