Summer To-Do's

As a mathematics person, I always feel the urge to say whenever I do something grammatically incorrect that I'm a math major. I know you're not supposed to put an apostrophe in words when you mean to pluralize them, but especially in math (like if you're like at all of the a's in a problem, or make sure to eliminate the x's and y's), not putting an apostrophe makes it ambiguous and it doesn't really make sense. "Look at the bs on the quiz," or "Great job, class, on getting all As on the test!" It just doesn't look right.

Anyways, I love how when summer starts I always make a hefty list of things I want to accomplish over the break, and just about every year I only end up doing one or two things off the list. This year isn't very different, but I wanted to talk about my goals for what is remaining of summer.

1. Khan Academy - I want to watch all of the calculus videos available on this website in order to review for myself and also see if the material is worth using in my classroom next semester. I have always promoted this website in the past, but it has changed greatly since the last time I had viewed it. There's now achievements and exercises and the possibility to monitor students who set you as their "coach." All of this is interesting and I want to find out more.
2. New Teacher Bootcamp - I am almost done with this one, I have two of the 5 projects left to complete. I am glad I was able to participate in this free summer workshop, I learned more about some online tools but more so I learned how to collaborate over twitter better. It definitely encouraged me to follow and tweet with other teachers and actually build friendships.
3. Math for Math Teachers (mfmt) - I'm hoping to get this group going and have a few weeks set up in advance, it's a group dedicated to reviewing topics in high school math which may not be familiar or had a hard time learning when we were in school. Most mathematics education majors feel a disconnect between our coursework and the math that is actually taught in high school so there is a focus on learning relevant material.

I think those are hefty goals for only 3 weeks remaining of summer. I know I need to finish off #ntbootcamp this week, perhaps next week while I'm packing I can watch some calculus videos. I am then planning on working on mfmt the week prior to moving into my apartment for school. Let's see how this goes!