When I worked in the private sector, we used to have a meeting and talk about how to make a big even better for the next year. I would like to take a few minutes to document my ideas to make 2nd semester Math Technology better next year.
Opportunity to do better
Throughout the 1st and 2nd semester I had students record data to later use in their budget projects. They did a terrible job of this, those days went wasted because they did not keep track of any of it. To do a better job of this, I should have made them start their budget at the start of the year then done each section of it as the year progressed. This would also mean that the last 3 weeks of class don't need to be spent redoing that work in preparation for the term project.
Successes
I had a lot of success this year, it went much better than last year (aside from counselors using admin to interfere with my classes). My students spent way more time working with spreadsheets and doing higher order thinking exercises using the solvers on the Casio calculators. They analyzed a lot of things which I think will have a lasting effect on them.
The last quarter of 12th grade needs to be as uneventful as possible. For this reason, I finished all of the unit exams early. This left no surprises in the grades so the end of the term was very predictable.
The investopedia activity has gone remarkably also. The kids were carefully researching and constantly checking their portfolios. They were thinking critically, analyzing trends with statistical methods beyond what I could've come up with otherwise. There was a lot of excitement too. Investopedia is my favorite site for this, it's all free. Plus, if the students are interested, they can sign up for all sorts of investment newsletters.
I will comment on this thread as to other ideas that come to mind. If you guys (my Math Tech team) have any suggestions for next year, please comment.
