Do you Teach or Do you Educate?

Reflection: Just found this great video on YouTube while I was checking out some links for ICT sent by our lecturer. This video has been a challenge for me (after all in my profile I described myself as a teacher) but also an inspiration. It is not so much the term but the philosophy and the approach underlying my actions. In my work as a mathematics teacher the most important thing I had wanted to realize was to somehow make my students appreciate and enjoy mathematics.  I have also realized that my greatest achievement as a teacher along the years has been to make my students independent and able to think for themselves. In actual fact what I am called to be is an educator and not just a teacher. Hope I can live up to this ideal.                                 

GeoGebra - Learning can be fun!

GeoGebra is a superb tool for the teaching and learning of Mathematics. It is free if you are using it for non-commercial purposes and the website here provides not just a chance to run and/or download the program but also a lot of extra materials.

One of the best things about GeoGebra is the ease by which "complicated" constructions and graphs can be accomplished in a few clicks. This was what impressed the students to whom my ICT elective group introduced it last week. For me the best part was to see students try out GeoGebra on their own. After the initial hesitation, they completed not just the assigned tasks but ventured into some new constructions and were seen enjoying themselves. This is the power of GeoGebra and all other education-related software packages, they make learning fun!

Achieve your dreams

Last Saturday, I read a really nice book titled the The Last Lecture.  The book is about Randy Pausch and his "last lecture" and also additional material he shared with the writer Jerry Zaslow. It is a truly inspiring book, it points to what is really important in life. I'm not going to spoil the joy of discovery for those of you who do not know what it is about.

I have decided to have this as my first post in my new series because I feel that it is fitting that I start with something inspirational. As a computer engineer Randy Pausch has achieved a lot but he finds his great joy in the fact that he has helped others achieve their dreams. As a teacher who plans to use ICT more in my own teaching, this gives me something to aspire to. To all of you out there ... go and achieve your dreams!