much looking forward to Saturday's sessions. The first two sessions were both by Daren Starnes, a highly respected figure in the field, and a co-author of one of my favorite statistics textbooks (yes, I know how nerdy that sounds). He was an outstanding presenter. The first session "Designing Statistics Projects to Promote Equity and Identity", Starnes introduced to the group several very interesting stats projects by his students. He has a great sense of humor and a professional attitude towards teaching. His second session "Statistics & Probability for Common Core: A 4-Step Process" was equally engaging. We again participated in a few activities together. He also shared some calculator tricks as well. It was an honor learning from such a veteran teacher.
I stayed after lunch for one more statistics session, Shirley Miranda's "Building Mathematical Identity via Statistical Projects." She's a teacher of multiple statistics sessions at her school in San Diego (oh, how I envy that position). We participated in activities and went over how to prepare students to submit project for the class. Miranda's students actually present their projects at competitions in various fields. It was uplifting seeing veteran teachers challenging their students and taking their work to showcase to arenas outside the school. In all, it was a wonderful weekend of learning for me. I strive to take back these learnings and use the strategies that I've learned with my students.
(PS: The downfall of the economy has had an effect on the Palm Springs conference. The number of attendees has dropped. I overheard a member of the organizing team that in the past, there were over 400 sessions. This year, the number of sessions has drop to the low 200's. The number of venders participating was noticeably much lower. In the past, vender booths would fill the entire center hall of the convention center. This year, I think only about 60-70% of the hall was used. The entire isles on either side of the hall had no venders.)
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