“My Favorite”

Welcome to week 2 of the blogging initiative!  Hopefully you were able to post last week and enjoyed the challenge!  But even if life caught up with you last week and you did not have the opportunity to blog, you can still blog this week!  Every week is a new opportunity.

Be sure to read the comments on each of the previous challenges so you can discover other new bloggers.  Also, visit the One Good Thing blog and the DITL (Day In The Life) Tumblr site when you get a chance as new contributors are always welcome.

Our week two blogging challenge is to simply blog about one of your favorite things.  Called a “My Favorite,” it can be something that makes teaching a specific math topic work really well.  It does not have to be a lesson, but can be anything in teaching that you love!  It can also be something that you have blogged or tweeted about before.  Some ideas of favorites that have been shared are:

• A lesson (or part of one) that went great
• A game your students love to play
• A fun and/or effective way to practice facts
• A website or app you love to use in class
• An organizational trick or tip that has been life changing
• A product that you use in your classroom that you can’t live without!

Also, in two weeks, you will blog about a lesson that you have taught so it would be great to start thinking about a lesson you would like to share.  It does not have to be an original lesson (as we do so much sharing here in the #MTBoS).  It can even be a lesson that you found on a blog and decided to try out for yourself!

Deadline: Press submit by the end of the day Saturday, January 23, 2016.

If you’d like a little graphic to include in your post, here is a little whatchamacallit we made:

When you’ve written and published your blogpost:

1. Tweet out the link to your blogpost with a short description, and include the #MTBoS hashtag.
2. If you’re a mentee, email your mentor the link! And if you’re a mentor, read and comment on your mentee’s post!
3. In the comments to this blogpost here, throw down the link to your blogpost and a short teaser.
4. Look at the three comments that are listed above your comment. Click on those three links, read the three blogposts, and talk to the authors by leaving a comment on their blogposts (not here).

Lastly, the #MTBoS can be a lot of information. So many blogs to read, not enough time! So we highly recommend signing up for the Global Math Department newsletter (click here to do so! see a sample here! here’s the GMD webpage!). Once a week, someone in the #MTBoS looks through what the community has produced, and shares some of their favorite things.

 

Welcome to the new year! I’m guessing that winter break feels like a distant memory… and we’re back in the swing of things. Refreshed! (Maybe.) And if you’re anything like me, you’re already waiting for Spring Break! Wooo hooo!

Right now we’re going to start the blogging part of the #MTBoS blogging initiative! For those who are new-ish to blogging, don’t worry… We have a gentle introduction which only asks you to write four easy blogposts, one a week. What’s great about this is that we’ll be doing this together! For those who are more experience with blogging, this is going to be an opportunity for you to blog in a community effort! And if you are a #MTBoS mentor for someone with a new blog, you can help ’em dip their toes in and see hey, it’s not scary! It can actually be fun!

With that, our week one blogging challenge:

We often get caught up in our day teaching, and often don’t take the time to be in the present. So we have two options that with that goal in mind. Choose whichever floats your boat and blog about it!

Option 1: We rarely take the time to stop and smell the roses. Even on the most disastrous of days, good things happen. And these good things, when you’re on the lookout for them, pop up. All. The. Time. So for one day (heck, do it for many days), keep a lookout for the small good moments during your day and blog about them. We bet that by keeping an eye out for the good, your whole day will be even better!

Option 2: A few years ago, some people in the #MTBoS wanted to share what their teaching lives were like. Partly because we all work in different schools, and so we wanted to get a glimpse of our friends-in-action. At the same time, we also wanted to battle against the idea that teaching is easy. We wanted to share what it is like to be a teacher with non-teachers! So we all blogged about a single day of teaching — from start to finish. So for the first week of the blogging initiative, we thought you blogging about a day in your lives would be a great way to start getting to know each other!

There you go! You have two options. Your blogpost can be as long or short as you want. However we’d love it if in your blogpost you could include at least one image/picture to make it more fun to read! It can be of you, of your good things, you documenting your day, whatever!

Deadline: Press submit by the end of the day Saturday, January 16, 2016.

If you’d like a little graphic to include in your post, here are some little whatchamacallits we made:

When you’ve written and published your blogpost:

1. Tweet out the link to your blogpost with a short description, and include the #MTBoS hashtag.
2. If you’re a mentee, email your mentor the link! And if you’re a mentor, read and comment on your mentee’s post!
3. In the comments to this blogpost here, throw down the link to your blogpost and a short teaser.
4. Look at the three comments that are listed above your comment. Click on those three links, read the three blogposts, and talk to the authors by leaving a comment on their blogposts (not here).

Lastly, the #MTBoS can be a lot of information. So many blogs to read, not enough time! So we highly recommend signing up for the Global Math Department newsletter (click here to do so! see a sample here! here’s the GMD webpage!). Once a week, someone in the #MTBoS looks through what the community has produced, and shares some of their favorite things.

And that’s all!

Our second week’s blogging prompt will go up next week!

PS. If you enjoyed doing option 1, the #MTBoS has a place where you can share your one good thing. Check out the blog; we’d love for you to consider becoming a regular or semi-regular contributor (there is a link at the top of the blog with information on how to add yourself to the blog). If you enjoyed doing option 2, and want to include your blogpost in an archive of many other “day in the life” posts by math educators, please consider submitting your blogpost to the DITL tumblr (site here; submission form here).

 

Are you new to the MTBoS? Don’t even remember that MTBoS stands for the unwieldy mathtwitterblogosphere? No worries! This post is for you!

Are you an expert MTBoSer? This post is for you!

Have you flagged in your engagement with the MTBoS and want to re-energize? This post is for you!

Are you looking for your lost pet chinchilla and somehow came across this post in your search for Fluffy-the-Destroyer? This post is not for you. (But good luck! Did you look under the kitchen sink yet?)

Because we love how much we’ve gotten out of working with other math teachers — asking questions, getting lesson ideas, pushing our teaching to be a little less sucky — we want others to join us in our little faculty lounge.

And we want to expand our global math department in both depth and breadth so it is becomes a huge faculty lounge. And here’s our plan…

Stage 1: Spread the word!

Have a colleague who has expressed interest in the cool resources you share? Have a new teacher in your department who is hungry to be awesome? Tell them about this site and tell ’em to sign up! Going to a conference? Tell everyone you meet about your amazing online math community (especially the check-in-clerk at the hotel!) and send them here. Own a blog? Write a post there directing people here, so they can find out about this!

Why do we want everyone looking at this site? Because that’s the only way they can sign up for (dum dum DUM) stage 2!

Stage 2: Mentoring!

From now until December 1st we will have two forms open:

One form (click here!) for people new to MTBoS who want a mentor. This is for people who are interested, but want a little personal help getting started. Twooter? Blerg? What are these things? Or people who have tried using twitter but are intimidated or don’t quite know how to engage or make it useful. Or people who want to blog but don’t quite know how to start! Or people who have started blogging but need a push…

One form (click here!) for MTBoS veterans who are willing to mentor. This is for people who have been blogging and tweeting, and are interested in shepherding others as they explore what great things are out there. They’ll connect with those new to the community, and help them find sites of interest to visit, people to talk with, and answer any questions.

The timing is purposeful — NCTM regional conferences as well as many state conferences are happening between now and December. There are a number of speakers who will be talking about the MTBoS! The sign up forms will be open during that time, so we can initiate them all as one group.

Starting in December anyone who knows anything about this community will help all those who want to learn more about the community. Mentors and mentees will be matched up and work together to explore, and mentees will have access to the expertise of the whole community once they learn how to tweet. (We all will watch the #MTBoS hashtag extra carefully, where newbies will be asking questions… and we all will be able to answer ’em!)

During this time in December, newbies will have the opportunity to engage at their own pace to learn about reading blogs, reading and contributing to twitter, organizing all that amazing information and the plethora of other resources this community has to offer. For them, this time will be not about drinking from a firehose and doing everything, but using their mentors to find the things that they might find interesting and useful.

Stage 3: Blogging Initiation!

We are suggesting a new year’s resolution for the entirety of the global math department: blog more. In January we will run a four week blogging initiation, hosted here. It will include entry level prompts for new bloggers as well as challenge prompts for experienced bloggers. Everyone is invited to participate and give back to this amazing community by sharing your expertise and reflecting on your practice.

Stage 4: The Future!

The future holds whatever you can imagine. If you love having a weekly blogging prompt we are negotiating an agreement with the global math department newsletter to bring back Sunday Funday. While official mentoring duties will be complete everyone should be looking out for new recruits and getting ready to welcome a new crew from the NCTM annual meeting in San Francisco!

Your tasks:

1. Explore some websites to use with your students.
2. Visit some websites for your own professional growth.
3. Comment on this post about what else you’ve discovered.

The MathTwitterBlogosphere is filled with all sorts of amazing resources. You’ve certainly run across some of them as you’ve browsed blogs and Twitter, but there are always still more to find. Here are a few of our favorites. If you discover others in your explorations please leave them in the comments!

At the NCTM booth we had informational pages on many resources. Check out the static pages and then follow the links below to the interactive version!

These are some sites that are fun for you and your students to engage with:

• Daily Desmos
• Estimation 180
• Visual Patterns
• Math Talks
• Math Munch
• Would You Rather?
• Which One Doesn’t Belong?
• Collaborative Mathematics
• Open Middle

Here’s a site to share with parents to help them engage their kids in mathematical conversation and play: Talking Math With Your Kids.

Analyze some Math Mistakes teachers have submitted, work with other commenters to pinpoint what the student’s misunderstanding is and brainstorm how to help the student correct the mistake. Learn and share how to help students avoid some of their mistakes caused by lack of conceptual development at Nix the Tricks.

When you’re frustrated with all the mistakes students make, remind yourself why you teach by reading several teachers’ One Good Thing from each day of school. Over the summer, refill your enthusiasm repository to overflowing by attending Twitter Math Camp.

Are you a first year teacher? Here are some letters to you: Letter to a New Teacher. Even as a eighth year teacher I enjoy reading them to remind myself of what is important.  This is just one of many Math Themed Memes, coined #matheme that people have participated in.

On Tuesday nights our community holds Global Math Department meetings via webinar. It’s the department and PD you’ve always wished for. You can attend in your pajamas.

If you’d like a window inside a variety of math classrooms, in two minute clips, check out Mathagogy. And here’s another window inside an even wider variety of (mostly math) classrooms, in full-day recaps: A Day in the Life of a Teacher.

Thanks for exploring with us and keep on sharing!

Your tasks:

1. Ask someone how they stay organized in the MTBoS.
2. Choose a way to stay on top of your blog reading.
3. Choose a way to stay on top of your Twitter.
4. Comment on this post about what you’ve set up.

So you’re reading blogs! You’re tweeting! Awesome. We knew you could!

Hopefully you’ve found some resources you like and some voices online that resonate with you.

So how do you keep in touch with all of this? How do you keep pace with all of the tweets and posts and ideas that your online colleagues are generating? Let’s talk about tools and time.

But first: Everyone wrangles the MTBoS differently. We all have our favorite tools and methods and apps and haunts. You’ll figure out what works for you. A great first step is just knowing what all is available and possible. The run-down below highlights a few, but you should really get a diversity of opinions from people who you suspect might operate similarly to you. So your first assignment is to ask someone how they stay organized in the MTBoS. You can tweet to them, leave them a comment on their blog, write them an email, or ask them in person. We grant you 100% permission. 😀

Tools:

There are a number of tools that you might use to help collect and streamline your online feasting.

There are better ways to keep up with blogs that you like than just visiting them on occasion to see what’s new. For blogs that you like, you might subscribe to them by email. Whenever the blogger publishes a new post, you’ll get an email with the blog post pasted right there in it. How conveeeeenient!

As you follow more blogs, you may want to have a special place for blog posts other than your email inbox. That’s what an RSS reader is for. Whenever someone publishes a new post, the RSS fairy pushes out magical dustings of…well, I don’t know all of the technical details of RSS. The important thing is that a RSS reader is like an inbox for blog posts. It gathers every new blog post from blogs you want to keep track of.

There are lots of different RSS readers. I use Feedly, Tina uses Digg Reader, and others like The Old Reader. You’ll find one that works for you.

For Twitter, there are many options for reading your feed. You can use the twitter.com website. On computers, there are two clients that Twitter produces, Twitter and Tweetdeck. Twitter is simpler, while Tweetdeck allows you to have multiple columns. There are also clients that third-party companies have created, like Hootsuite, and there are also a variety of phone apps available for you to keep up with tweets on your mobile device.

All of these are a little different and can be configured in bunches of ways. Find the right combination for you!

Time:

Having a MTBoS routine can be helpful. I mean, you’re going to fall into some kind of behavior pattern anyway, so why not take some conscious control over it?

Maybe you’ll have a weekly check-in time. Maybe you’ll look at your Twitter feed every morning. Maybe you’ll have as a goal to read one blog post a week and comment on it. Maybe there’s a regular Twitter chat that you’d like to make a regular appearance at.

Who knows what you will do! You’ll have to figure it out. Get ideas and opinions from others about how they wrangle things, and just pay attention to your own habits and what feels productive, uplifting, and energizing to you. Participating in the MTBoS is not an obligation. You’re doing it for you—for your professional growth and to be a part of a inspiring math ed community. Also, know that if you take a long break from the MTBoS, you will be able to pick things right back up whenever you return, and people will be glad to see you.

Strategies Shared:

Let me leave you with a couple of blog posts by MTBoSers who have shared some thought about their own systems and strategies for managing their online resources and feeds:

• How I Organize this Vast World by Jasmine Walker
• Organizing on Tina’s #matheme page

Know of one that’s not listed here? Please leave a link on the comments!

Once you’re armed with an organization strategy, it’s time to discover even more resources!

Your tasks:

1. Pick a handle and a profile image and start a Twitter account.
2. Find some people to start following on Twitter.
3. Write your first tweets!
4. Tweet to @ExploreMTBoS. Say hi and let us know you’re up and going!
5. Comment on this post and include your Twitter handle and a thought about Twitter.
6. Try out some of the Twitter mini-missions from the bottom of this post.

You made it to task two! I hope you enjoyed browsing some blogs already. You didn’t read and comment on a blog post yet? Not to worry. Feel free to go back and do that now, and leave a comment on the post. Or even better, wait until after you’ve gotten started on Twitter. Then you can tweet about the blog posts you discover! Reading blogs is not a one time adventure. That mission was the beginning of what will hopefully be a long and informative journey of reading and sharing.

Now, let’s focus on Twitter. Blogs are monologues. You get to share a complete idea with an introduction and a conclusion. And a blog post is static. People can comment but the post itself is just one person sharing a thing. Twitter is about conversations. You get to share snippets of ideas, build understanding, ask questions and it all happens much closer to real time. For the first week, some of you read blog posts that were written several years ago. I wouldn’t recommend trying to catch up on tweets from more than a day ago. That’s not because they aren’t interesting, but because you can only read so much. Twitter is more like stopping by the faculty room than reading a book. Sure, I’m curious what they talked about during first lunch, but I’m here during second lunch, so I’m going to listen to and join in on the conversation happening right now.

Twitter is chatting with the world. You may only know of Twitter as a place for pop stars or people tweeting their breakfast photos, but we promise that the MTBoS sub-community on Twitter is very different.  It’s microblogging. It’s the world’s best teacher’s lounge. It’s a free-flowing and wide-ranging conversational tapestry, a place to ask a pressing question, let off some steam, share and reshare resources, find inspiration and encouragement, and crack hilarious jokes. It’s a great place to tune in, vet an idea, and let your colors shine through.

Get Signed Up:

You’ll need a name to go by on Twitter. This is your username or handle. It’s that thing that starts with an @ that you always see people advertising. It starts like that because if I want to speak to Justin, I want my message directed at Justin: @j_lanier. If he wants to reply back to me, he’ll start his message @crstn85. So, if I want to talk to you, you need a name. It could be your full name, a funny phrase, something mathy, or anything else. I stuck with the username I’ve had since AIM when I was 10; not the brightest idea since I no longer go by Cristina so no one knows what my jumble of letters means. Justin also has some regrets—that underscore is two screens away on the phone keyboard. However, we’re both surviving just fine. Rest assured, your username of choice will not make or break your experience on Twitter. One thing we were both successful at was choosing a short username. A tweet has a 140 character length limit, and that can get tough if you’re trying to talk to three people and one of them is @MathyMcMatherso!

Once you have a name, you’ll need a profile image, or avatar. We would love to see your smiling face—especially if we met you in person at NCTM, because it will help us connect you to the person we talked to. But it doesn’t have to be a photo of you—any square image will do.

Don’t put this off until later! If you don’t add an image you’ll stay the dreaded egg and people are less likely to follow you because you don’t look any different from a spam bot—a robo-account that sends unwanted messages rampantly. You can change your profile image as often as you want, so there’s no pressure to pick the perfect photo today.

Armed with these two pieces for your new digital identity, head on over to twitter.com and create your account! You’ll want to fill in your profile information for the same reason you want an image, and the same fact holds true – you can edit your profile info whenever you like. If you’re not sure about being public or private read more about a few teacher’s choices on that. Public is certainly preferable as you get started, but you should know (and follow) your school’s social media guidelines. Anecdote: my PreCalc students googled me after I shared that I would be presenting at NCTM. When I returned one of them said, “I wanted to follow you on Twitter but I thought I should wait until graduation.” Teaching kids proper boundaries and not writing anything you wouldn’t want a student or parent to run across are good things to live by regardless. Having a public Twitter account doesn’t change that.

One step in signing up for Twitter is following people. Note that Twitter tries to get you to follow pop stars and corporate brands, but you can skip this step if you want to. Or just unfollow them again right afterwards. In terms of accounts you might actually want to follow here are some suggestions to help get you started:

• Follow @ExploreMTBoS.
• Search the MTBoS directory for people who teach the same stuff you do or who have interests that match yours.
• There are 188 people who wrote their twitter handle on the We Are MTBoS poster at NCTM Boston.
• Many math professional organizations—like NCTM and affiliates—have Twitter accounts.
• Check out this list of tweeps (Explorers Spring 2015) – they are recent converts!
• And of course, you might look to see who the people you follow choose to follow.

Once you get started reading your Twitter feed you’ll be able to refine by only following people who tweet things you’re interested in. Some people mix in photos of their (adorable) children, others get really excited about sportsball events. If you can build a balance of elementary, middle school, high school, and college teachers, as well as math education researchers, you will get the full benefit of the diverse perspectives of our community. A great way to build a well-rounded feed is to see who talks to each other. If you notice that you’re only getting to see part of a conversation, follow all the people mentioned in the tweet and your feed will suddenly be filled with a complete conversation.

Start Tweeting:

Once you’ve gotten past all the sign-up requirements, it’s time to celebrate with your inaugural tweet! Say something, anything. We won’t take the glory of your first tweet from you, but please make one of your tweets to us – @ExploreMTBoS. Introduce yourself as an explorer and share something about yourself. Leave your Twitter handle and any questions or thoughts you have in the comments of this post as well.

Since Twitter has a character limit there is some shorthand that happens. The forced brevity is awesome for helping you edit down to a single precise thought, but it also means that we use abbreviations for many things. Additionally, since there isn’t space for a pleasant opener, tweets can seem terse. You’ll learn to interpret tone over time, for now assume everything is meant kindly. Please, please ask if you have questions, about abbreviations or anything else! Anyone in this community is happy to help you navigate.

For Twitter to really work, you are going to want to commit to trying it out for a week or more, and that means hanging out. If you just sign up, tweet the mission, and then sign out, you aren’t going to be having mini-discussions and reading other peoples’s mini-discussions! So for this week, at the very least, check your Twitter feed regularly! Write to people and reply to people. Toss out your random musings. Really give it a chance. See what it’s like —and we hope you’ll see what’s caused so many math teachers to fall in love with Twitter. Next week we’ll tell you about how some people organize the information overload so you won’t be permanently overwhelmed!

And now, time for a FAQ. We will continue to develop this FAQ from questions in the comments and the questions that come to @ExploreMTBoS. Just like in class, if you’re wondering, chances are many other people are wondering the same thing. Ask now so we can fill you all in!

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions):

Who can see my tweet?

If you’re public, potentially anyone. But that doesn’t mean that they will. People mostly read their feed. Your tweet shows up in someone’s feed if they are following you. People also read their mentions. Your tweet shows up in someone’s mentions if you include their @name. Check out part 2 of this guide if you’re ready for the nitty gritty details.

What’s with the #?

When there are a lot of people talking, it can be hard to keep track of them all. Hashtags like #NCTMBoston and #MTBoS let people search for a specific topic and see everyone who is talking about it. This is a great way to find new people to follow, or to follow along with an event without having to follow all the people there. Fun fact: the # has many names, including octothorpe! (History of the octothorpe via video and podcast).

What are chats?

Some people like having conversations in real time rather than spread out across the day. They meet to discuss specific topics at a certain time. They use hashtags as well, so everyone participating searches for the hashtag to see everyone involved in the conversation. These conversations can happen really fast; if you’re feeling brave, jump on in! This week there will be special #MTBoS chats to help you get your feet wet.

Fun things to try as you get started or as you move from lurking to engaged. Do a few or do them all!

Twitter Mini-missions:

• Announce and introduce yourself in a tweet and include the hashtag #MTBoS.
• Pick three people you follow, but with whom you haven’t interacted—recently or ever. Say hello and introduce yourself to them, beginning your tweet with @theirname.
• Pick three people who follow you, but with whom you haven’t interacted—recently or ever. Say hello and introduce yourself to them, beginning your tweet with @theirname.
• Open up the #MTBoS feed and peruse it. Retweet something that you find compelling.
• Announce a blog post you’ve written, new or old. Include #MTBoS.
• Share a blog post that you’ve read recently that blew you away. Include #MTBoS.
• Share a question that’s been on your mind about your classroom practice. Include #MTBoS.
• Take a photo of your chalk-or-smartboard, or of a piece of student work. Tweet it and include #MTBoS.
• Share an online math resource you really love. Include #MTBoS.
• Tweet something mundane about your life. Include #MTBoS!
• #makeupawackyhashtagandtrytogetittocatchon.
• Respond to a famous person or guru’s tweet.
• Tweet a favorite quotation or fact about mathematics. #MTBoS it up.
• Share something awesome about your day of teaching. #MTBoS.
• Share something hard about your days of teaching. #MTBoS
• Open up the #MTBoS feed and find some new tweeps to follow.
• And while you’re there, send a reply to a few interesting tweets you see.
• Tweet a tweet that’s exactly 140 characters long. #sosweet
• Think of someone whose tweets you appreciate. On Friday, give them a #FF (Follow Friday) shoutout.

And by the time you’ve done all those things you’ll be wondering how everyone keeps track of all these amazing ideas! Read on to get some help organizing everything.

tldr: There’s going to be a MTBoS booth at NCTM Boston! We could use your help in the following ways:

• Sometime soon, you can tweet on the hashtag #WhyMTBoS a reason why the MTBoS is great.
• If you’re attending NCTM Boston, you can sign up to spend time staffing the booth.
• If there’s an MTBoS project or endeavor that would be great to highlight at the booth, let us know about it!
• Let us borrow your internet browsing device for NCTM— iPads would be excellent.

And we’ll be running a new Explore MTBoS online excursion after NCTM Boston, so watch this space!

---

As you might have seen, on Sunday we tweet-announced some small parts of our booth plans and made some requests:

We’re gearing up for the #MTBoS booth at #NCTMBoston. Will you tweet your own #WhyMTBoS so we can share your thoughts with attendees?

— Explore MTBoS (@ExploreMTBoS) March 15, 2015

We’re gearing up for the #MTBoS booth at #NCTMBoston. Are you involved with a project you’d like highlighted there? Let us know!

— Explore MTBoS (@ExploreMTBoS) March 15, 2015

You also may have noticed that these tweets came from @ExploreMTBoS and that we’ve woken up this blog. Did we pique your interest? We hope so!

 The Math Twitter Blogosphere has an official booth in the exhibit hall at the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Like, table, banner, curtains, chairs, the whole deal! This booth might serve many purposes:

• Let’s meet at the MTBoS booth and decide where to go for dinner!
• OMG, I lost my dongle. Can someone pretty please run a Mac adapter to the MTBoS booth that I can borrow for my presentation?
• I heard Christopher is working the booth at 3:00. I hope he’ll sign my shapes book download!!

But the real goal of the booth is to share the wonders of our community with the wider world of math teachers. The hope is that the booth will be an entry point for teachers who might not find our online community otherwise. But this community is vast and multi-faceted. A two minute spiel at the booth or a handout of a few resources is a great first step, but there’s so much more to see! So, we will be running a new Explore MTBoS event after NCTM to help people explore and participate in our community. Stay tuned!

To convince people they want to do that, we need some help:

If you aren’t attending NCTM, we still need your help! You can tweet or comment why you participate in this community (use #WhyMTBoS so we can find your tweet). And you can give suggestions of MTBoS projects and endeavors to highlight and items to have on hand in our booth space. 

If you’re attending NCTM, you can sign up for a time slot to work the booth. And you can also come by the booth early on to grab a #MTBoS sticker to alert other teachers that you’re in the know—because you don’t need to be standing under a banner to talk to people about why having on online math teaching community is great!

So what will the booth be like? Picture this: You’re walking up and down the aisles of the exhibit hall and you spot an interesting banner:

#MTBoS: Math Twitter Blogosphere

There’s a live twitter feed projected onto the curtain tracking the #NCTMBoston and #MTBoS hashtags. On one end of the table there’s an array of business cards and stickers representing many of the projects in our community. There’s a stack of sturdy info sheets to browse at the table, highlighting many aspects of our community (e.g. Twitter chats, TMC, Global Math). Plus there will be books to flip through and enticing baskets of prizes for raffling. (Note: we won’t sell anything at the booth because taxes and complicated stuff.)

Here’s a run-down of our plan for the booth so far. Please let us know if you have some specifics to add in or a new idea that could be incorporated!

• Lovely and welcoming decor
  • A big blank hanging poster for people to sign with their twitter handles, blogs, names, and greetings.
  • #WhyMTBoS curtain mini-posters (half size sheets with color photos of avatars)
  • Poster of MTBoS events and meet-ups happening during NCTMBoston (including Shadow Con: Thursday, 5pm, Room 258A)
  • Schedule of who is working the booth, and when
  • Schedule of NCTM presenters who are involved in the MTBoS
  • Schedule of MTBoS presenters at other conferences
• Browsable things
  • Foam-core info objects (in a pile or magazine holder)
    • Schedule of the Twitter Chats with some avatars and topics
    • Global Math schedule and highlights
    • One-stop Resources
    • Samples of things like printouts of visual patterns that people can hold (and toothpicks to play with the toothpick patterns?)
    • Tweets about #WhyMTBoS (more of them!)
    • Tweet-ups (including social events at NCTM’s)
    • Announcement and description of upcoming Explore MTBoS event
  • Projection from tweetdeck onto the curtain or a large paper, allow people to tweet questions as @ExploreMTBoS
  • A computer or two (ideally tablets) (Can we borrow yours?)
    • with feedly up (and matheme and virtual filing cabinets)
    • tweetdeck open with #NCTM and #MTBoS
    • people can ask questions from @ExploreMTBoS
  • Copies of Nix the Trix, Common Core Math for Dummies, Powerful Problem Solving
• Informational takeaways
  • Cards that point to Explore MTBoS info page
  • Business cards/stickers for individual projects and sites
  • Handout of steps to making a Twitter account
• A Raffle/Estimation Task – doing an Estimation 180 is like way better than the ol’ jelly bean jar.

We’re looking forward to it. Thanks for your help, and we hope to see you at the conference!

It’s amazing. You’re amazing. You joined in the Explore the MathTwitterBlogosphere set of missions, and you’ve made it to the eighth week. It’s Sam Shah here, and whether you only did one or two missions, or you were able to carve out the time and energy to do all seven so far, I am proud of you.

I’ve seen so many of you find things you didn’t know were out there, and you tried them out. Not all of them worked for you. Maybe the twitter chats fell flat, or maybe the whole twitter thing wasn’t your thang. But I think I can be pretty confident in saying that you very likely found at least one thing that you found useful, interesting, and usable.

With that in mind, we have our last mission, and it is (in my opinion) the best mission. Why? Because you get to do something to help someone else. A random act of kindness.

We want you think about something you saw in the MathTwitterBlogosphere that you think might be useful to a colleague, a department head, an administrator, a student, whatever. And then let them know about it.

Some ideas:

• You have a colleague teaching Precalculus, and you saw a blog author that has posted a lot of good resources and thinking about Precalculus. You email this resource and why they might find it useful.
• You have a math coach who may be interested in the Math Mistakes blog. You share it with this math coach!
• You saw an issue of Math Munch that might spark some interest to one of your particular students (or maybe all of them).
• You saw an activity on fractions that your middle school colleagues would looooove. You share the wealth!
• You think a fellow teacher might benefit from joining twitter. You help them take the leap.
• You attended a Global Math Department meeting and you thought of someone who should have been there! You send the recording to that person.
• You belong to an AP Statistics list-serv, and there is a great activity you saw on a blog. You email the list-serv.
• You did an activity inspired by something in the MTBoS. You share that activity with another teacher in your school who teaches the same subject.
• You ask for 5 minutes in a department meeting to share what you have learned about the online math teacher community.
• ANYTHING ELSE! Just share, my little Care Bears, share!

In other words, spread the word about something in the MTBoS that you found. You should let someone else who doesn’t know about the stuff we’re doing (yes, we: if you weren’t before, you’re one of us now! mwahahahaha!) see it, and know that it’s out there for them too!

This is the coda to the work you’ve done over the past two months. We wanted to show you what was out there because all that good stuff out there helped us and inspired us as teachers. Now we want you to be in our shoes. We want you to show others what is out there in the MTBoS that helped you and inspired you as a teacher!

Your Final Mission

1. Share!
2. Write a blog post talking about what you shared, who you shared it with, and why you shared it!
3. Tweet out your blog post. Include the #MTBoS hashtag.
4. Include your blogpost in the comments here and then read and comment on the blog posts of the three commenters directly above you. Be sure that you are commenting on their blog and not here.
5. Please fill out our survey to help guide us in future missions.  We promise, it’s very short.  Don’t skip the survey as we are planning on compiling all of your fabulous blogs and virtual filing cabinets so we can share them with the world!  🙂

If the survey below is not viewable, please click here. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14iPYN03iRASddG2rurlUgZcXSLCNGfpjztC3PpE4udE/viewform

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14iPYN03iRASddG2rurlUgZcXSLCNGfpjztC3PpE4udE/viewform