Information

My grade 8 math class had been studying percentages, fractions, and ratios for several weeks.  Each day I would try to find some sort of real life application of fractions; my thought being that if students were familiar with real life ratios and fractions then they would be more comfortable talking about them abstractly in the classroom.

Some days I would show something extremely simple.  Such as juice:water ratios, and some days I would simply show them pictures of really cool things such as people hanging from the space needle cleaning the side of the tower.  But one day I showed them this:

How much revenue was there in the food sales industry? 

Not exactly your typical Grade 8 Math problem.  Not exactly a math problem at all... just a snipet from a newspaper somewhere on the internet.  You'll have to forgive me for stealing it.  It isn't the problem that is interesting though but the reaction from the students.  

See, I've been studying online learning communities and their seemingly addictive nature.  Places like WoW online communities, Starcraft, eduBlogs, pinterest, technology problem solving forums, and basically any other site which gives users the ability to access any information they want to access regardless of their learning ability.  These places let novices and advanced learners alike interact with each other without discrimination.

My students first reaction was "Could you maybe just tell us how to find it?" when I introduced a more advanced problem for students to ponder and told them we weren't going to solve it that day.  I could have said "We don't have the time for that." or "We might come back to it later."  But instead I asked myself what I would honestly do if I was so curious about something.  Honestly, I would probably tune out, ignore my teacher, talk to some friends about a solution, roll it around in my head for a while, and then wake up in the middle of the night with a whole "ah hah!" moment.  Well... I've only ever made it to the "ah hah in my sleep" moment twice in my life.  

So I took a minute in my classroom and appeased their curiosity for their sake and my sanity.  Seriously, access to information in a classroom is often extremely limited!  And that is not what I want in my classroom.  Students should be able to ask, explore, and even be satisfied and comfortable with an topic, or at least informed enough to access the information on their own later on.