#slowmathchat – Reason and Wonder

Should Teachers Post Objectives?

Michael Fenton — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 13:30:45 +0000

Last week I shared a little resolution: to post more questions on the blog.

I also put out a call for questions, and within hours Chase Orton delivered, sharing a question he had been discussing on Twitter:

Is it better to clearly post/state a lesson objective at the start, or to allow students to discover it during the course of the lesson?

Feel free to treat this as an always/sometimes/never, or to suggest a third approach not described above.

Time for a #slowmathchat Shift

Michael Fenton — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 23:30:42 +0000

I’ve shared here on the blog, and also in several recent conference sessions, that Twitter has changed my life. No exaggeration. Not even in the slightest. I’ve heard similar sentiments from quite a few others, including this from John Stevens:

@mjfenton from blog posts to new resources to shoulders to lean on, the #MTBoS has done more for my career than any course, PD, or training.

— John Stevens (@Jstevens009) July 13, 2015

I’ve learned a ton from John. I’m a huge fan of his work at wouldyourathermath.com and with La Cucina Matematica, and if memory serves, he’s the one who introduced me to the idea of a Twitter chat. John and some other outstanding folks run the #caedchat which drops every Sunday evening at 8 pm (PT). I joined in once, and it was great. (Side note: If Twitter is like drinking too much awesome from a firehose, then #caedchat is that to the extreme.)

I enjoyed the conversations and connections, but the whole synchronous chat thing didn’t work for me. Most chats are in the evening, and in my house that time is dinner time/bath time/story time/bedtime/put-the-house-back-together time. (My wife and I have four little ones, and the oldest just turned six. Yep. Intense is the way to describe it.)

#slowmathchat is Born

Anyway, a year ago I thought of a way that I could engage in Twitter chats without locking in to a specific time: #slowmathchat

I wrote about it here and with the help of Cole Gailus even archived some of the chats here.

#slowmathchat was a blast. I learned a lot in dreaming up topics and writing questions, and also through engaging in conversation. Sometimes I just learned by watching other folks’ responses. Either way, it was fantastic.

Time for a Shift

But it’s time for me to make a shift. I have some other projects I’d like to explore with the small pockets of discretionary time that I currently have. So I won’t be writing any more “This week’s #slowmathchat topic…” tweets, and I won’t be tweeting out #slowmathchat questions every Monday through Friday.

Several of you have shared that #slowmathchat helped you enter into this crazy online community, that the structure of these chats was helpful, even inviting. I still think the asynchronous chat format is really appealing, as is the focus on questions and discussions.

Call To Action

So if you have a math education question you’d love others to weigh in on, I’d love it if you kept using #slowmathchat. And if this thing keeps on ticking for a few more months, or even years, great! And if not, you know you can always find a great group of passionate math educators over on the #MTBoS hashtag.

So long, #slowmathchat! It’s been fun.

Twitter Chats vs Family Dinners: Do We Really Have to Choose?

Michael Fenton — Sat, 24 Jan 2015 07:33:20 +0000

I love Twitter. I think I’m on record in several places with this. (Actually, it’s probably more along the lines of “I love the Twitter,” just because it’s more fun to say it that way. Go ahead, give it a try.)

I love Twitter chats. This is probably less well known. And the less-well-known-ness is likely a result of my general lack of participation in Twitter chats.

Here’s a run through of the scheduled chats I’ve (in)frequented over the past year or so:

#alg1chat (Sunday, 6 pm PST)
#caedchat (Sunday, 8 pm PST)
#msmathchat (Monday, 6 pm PST)
#connectEDtl (Tuesday, 7 pm PST)
#calcchat (Thursday, 6 pm PST)
#paedchat (Thursday, 6 pm PST)

Now consider the fact that I love eating dinner and that I have four small children and you might begin to see where I’m headed with this.

As much as I enjoy these conversations with digital colleagues, it’s a huge sacrifice to drop what I’m doing to engage online during these key family hours. Between dinner time and bath time and story time and bed time there are enough “times” in each evening without adding a “chat time” to the list as well.

So here’s my solution:

Launch a new chat, one that borrows the structure and intentionality of a scheduled chat (e.g., #caedchat), but marries that with the freedom and flexibility of an ongoing conversation (e.g., #MTBoS).

Intrigued? Click the #slowmathchat tab in the menu for more details. Read up, get psyched, and add a new column to your Tweetdeck. I hope you’ll consider joining in the fun this Monday.

Post Script

Before you go… Consider this a reverse-tl;dr: