Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Web 2.0: Multimedia Blog Pre-Posting

    One of the most difficult courses I'm taking as a junior is Pre-Calculus Honors taught by Mr. Olsen. We haven't quite learned anything yet because all we've been doing is reviewing material from last year. At the beginning of every week, he always gives us a syllabus that gives details on what we are going to do that week. Occasionally, he can be a strict teacher and he gives us homework almost every day of the week, that includes weekends. We are assigned a different topic almost every week on a website called Khan Academy. He often expects a lot from us being as we are the honors class. We don't really get projects or go on class trips being as you can't really go anywhere to learn about quadratic functions. I expect this class to prepare me for college seeing as to the fact that I'm going to be majoring in business and taking various math courses.
                                        Image result for khan academy                                       
     As aforementioned, we've only really reviewed material that we've learned last year. On the last day of school, we were given a packet with a 100 problems and that was due at the beginning of this year. We spent a week going over the answers and at the end of that week we took a quiz with a few problems from the packet. Afterwards, we reviewed how to graph functions and their inverses. Also, we went over domain, range, and transformations. The work gets seemingly tougher as the year goes by because we start learning things we've never learned before. Furthermore, there are two kinds of technology we use in class; the chromebooks for quizzes, games, and khan academy and our TI-84 graphing calculator which makes our lives much easier throughout the year.

                                                      Image result for ti 84 calculator

     Mr. Olsen's grading policy is often the same for every class. He makes homework 5% of our grade and Khan Academy is another 5% of our grade under the category "Informal Assessments." Under "Formal Assessments" are the quizzes and tests which count as 90% of our grade. Although many people complain about his method of teaching, I find it to be a very productive way of learning. Overall, his class may be one of the hardest but it is undeniable that you leave the class with more knowledge.