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School / Work Affiliation: Atlanta Public Schools

Blog: http://www.jovanmiles.net

Website: http://milesacademy.net

Favored IM Account: skype

Skype Account: jovan.miles

Twitter / Plurk / Other Account: Jovan_Miles

About Me: I'm an instructional math coach for Atlanta Public Schools

Jovan D. Miles's Blog

Self Contained Middle School Math Standards and Frameworks - GPS

Posted on March 26, 2011 at 4:42pm 1 Comment 0 Likes

In a lot of ways, Georgia, and Atlanta Public Schools in particular are always early to the party. This school system is always willing to adopt new reforms ahead of many other school systems, particularly those in metro Atlanta. One of the most significant reforms that APS has adopted over recent years is the push for special needs students to be included in the regular education program whenever possible. SEBD and EBD students in particular have benefit from this push. This is…

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Getting the most from your textbooks

Posted on December 5, 2009 at 5:02am 0 Comments 0 Likes

http://jovanmiles.net/2009/12/05/making-the-most-out-of-your-textbooks

I was a bit harsh on textbooks in my last post. In a perfect world all teachers would be creators of the content that they use in their classrooms. This isn’t a perfect world. Modern classroom teachers are often responsible for so many other things these days that writing the content to be used in your class is impossible. Time… Continue

teachers > textbooks

Posted on December 3, 2009 at 10:00am 0 Comments 0 Likes

The structure of the typical middle grades math textbook follows this basic outline:

1. Vocabulary review

2. Brief explanation of concept.

3. 2-5 very specific examples of the concept in isolation.

4. 1-2 very specific examples of the concept in a problem solving situation.

5. 20-50 problems that mirror the examples.

The problem with this structure is that if teachers simply "taught the text(test)" students would have almost no… Continue

Is online education really an improvement over face to face ?

Posted on March 10, 2009 at 2:40pm 4 Comments 0 Likes

I've been visiting a variety of sites throughout the ed-tech blogosphere that tout the benefits of online classes and the necessity for students to experience asynchronous learning environments before they leave high school...and I get it...educators need to push the use of online and collaborative environments for students.

But I often wonder, are these experiences any more enriching than traditional face to face classes or are we all simply caught up in the novelty of using the… Continue

Moodle and Me

Posted on March 5, 2009 at 12:26pm 3 Comments 0 Likes

I’ve decided to quit yammering on and put my money where my mouth is.

I’m preparing an installation of Moodle to use in my classes next year. My preliminary plan is to use the Moodle install to differentiate instruction and to allow students to choose what and when they want to learn something in mathematics.

I’ve tried to use Moodle before and I just found the package to be too large…and too difficult to play with as… Continue

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At 6:59pm on January 20, 2009, Mitch Coley said…: I need you as a colleague. Your bow tie makes me think you have a well above average IQ. And the fact that you are into open source software, teach math, and apparently have similar political views make me think I might enjoy collaborating with you. I teach 7th grade math in Waycross, GA in an co-teaching classroom. Maybe we could chat on skype? If you are interested in sharing ideas and resources, please contact me.

At 1:56am on December 31, 2008, Andy Pethan said…: Hello,

I'm sending out messages to everyone I know right now, and this virtual Ning network is no exception. My name is Andy Pethan. I am a 21 year old student from Olin College of Engineering (near Boston). I am a part of a group of six Olin students who are taking a year off to pursue interests in education, entrepreneurship, design and technology, which brought us to the logical project of a business that designs collaborative software for schools! Our company is called AlightLearning, and this is our "short" project description:

"We are working under the assumption that within ten years, the landscape of modern education will have fully integrated what we now define as new classroom media and tools: video, online collaboration, open source curriculum, and internet-based software. We hope to pioneer a web software tool that acts as a platform for this new media, bringing the power of the web and its tools to students, teachers and parents in a secure, comfortable and innovative environment. More importantly, and unlike many of our competitors, our software will empower teachers to better integrate higher level thinking skills, teamwork, personalized learning, goal setting, reflection, effective feedback and evaluation, and the ability to work with groups across classes and schools to more effectively let students follow their interests and let teachers share their knowledge. Our goal is to have our free software at a pilot middle school by April 15th, 2009."

Our team is currently trying to win an idea competition on Ideablob.com ending 11:59PM central time today. You can find us at http://ideablob.com/3975. Note that winning this contest will raise $10,000, a large and useful sum of money for a web-based company running on “sweat equity” and minimal costs. We would love your support in the form of a vote, but more importantly we'd love your feedback and comments. Our description on Ideablob is short, and even the one above hardly gets at many of the issues we would like to take a stab at solving.

Feel free to email me back, post on my profile, or check out alightlearning.com if you're interested in learning more or getting involved when we begin piloting the software!

Thanks,
Andy Pethan
andrew.pethan@students.olin.edu