One of the largest grants awarded by the Education Foundation this year went to Permian High School Math Department Chair Patrick Moseley for Walk the Graph and Moving Cones.
The two grants total more than $21,000.
Walk the Graph was for $17,520 and Moving Cones was for $4,100. He’s getting 150 CBR 2s, or 10 classroom sets, and he asked for 20 TI Innovation rovers. The CBR2s are data collection devices.
Walk the Graph includes CBR 2’s which attach to Inspire calculators. It’s a motion sensor that can tell how far an object is away from it and gives you information on velocity and time information — “just a whole slew of little bits of information that the calculator can collect,” Moseley said.
“You can then analyze that data, but this particular grant I wrote I preset basically a graph into the calculator connected it to the CBR unit to the calculator. The student will have to move their entire body to follow that graph almost in real time,” Moseley said.
This is meant to help students grasp and solidify some basic algebra concepts, he said.
“This is actually a pretty common device. As I said, it’s a sound sensor. They actually use these out in the field as they’re trying to take measurements between different objects. It’s a good tool to use. There’s different varieties of them, but this one’s real simplistic. I know there’s a lot more complicated ones out there,” Moseley said. “It’s very similar to … radar that police officers used for speed traps and stuff like that.”
His second grant is called Moving Cones.
“And that’s where this rover comes into play … Basically, what it does is I have … some big charts with grids on it and I’ll set it up so it looks like a big gridded chart that looks like a coordinate plan the students can use. There will be some spots on it where they’ll navigate the rovers through those spots and ultimately … they have to use the rover to push the cone into a specific location,” Moseley said.
He added that later on as students get more involved with it, they can then start writing their own programs that will control the rover.
“You can actually set up a track with different colored lines and they’ll actually follow that with the right program. It’s pretty neat. There’s a variety of activities that go along with this one. …,” Moseley said.
Math isn’t always hands-on like physics or other sciences. Students have to wrap their brains around it.
“But these devices help get students out of their seats, get them moving and they start feeling how this stuff works and they start saying, oh the slope is this because because of these different things that happen. Yeah, time and they sort of see how time and distance really influence how things behave,” Moseley said.
Moseley said he went through some training with Texas Instruments that included training on CBRs and the rovers.
“… I’ve used the CB RS before. But it’s been a long time. And I actually scout around the high school and a couple other schools and see if they had any and I couldn’t find any, so I said well, I guess I better write a grant for it. Our previous department head, I was wanting to just get a classroom set of these, and she actually convinced me to get my 10 classroom set of them so that’s why that grant is pretty big,” Moseley said.
He said he was astonished when he found out he got the grants. Other teachers will be able to use them, as well and he’s certain it will help capture students’ attention.
“Absolutely. I think that’s a big thing,” Moseley said.
He added that other teachers should try for Education Foundation grants. This is his second award in six years.
“They’re only limited by their own imaginations,” Moseley said.
Moseley said he was successful in getting an Education Foundation grant about six years ago.
Permian Principal Delesa Styles said they were thrilled to find out about Moseley’s award.
“When we learned that Mr. Moseley had been awarded two grants from ECISD’s Education Foundation, we were elated! It says a lot about his leadership and innovative ‘outside the box’ thinking. It takes time to write and submit a thoughtful proposal that not only grabs the attention of the committee, but also creatively serves the academic needs of our students. Mr. Moseley has recently stepped into the role of Permian’s Math Department Chair, and we are honored to have him serving in such a vital position,” Styles said in an email.
Moseley added that it’s not hard to write a grant, but it may take time to get the signatures you need.
He added that his training sparked his imagination.
“As a matter of fact, there’s more stuff I’m planning on writing grants for this year. There are some kits that go with, these are called the innovator hubs. It’s actually, kind of the brain inside of this,” he said.
“What the student would have to do is build spreadsheets and different stuff. It kind of allows them to play with that stuff,” Moseley added.
Coding will factor into the devices, he said, especially with the rover.
“With the rover, it could lead into more coding, which is pretty big STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) push right now. The CBR is not really codable. It’s not a coding thing. It’s just recording data. There’s a data collecting tool in the built in on the calculators that allows you to click all kinds of data. And actually not just with the CBRs, there’s actually all kinds of different data collecting tools out there — temperature, chemical. Again, there’s tons of … scientific data collection tools out there,” Moseley said.
Born in El Paso, Moseley said his father was in the military so they moved around a lot. He lived in Germany for a few years and after his dad got out of the service, they moved to Odessa, which is where his father was born.
Moseley went to Odessa High School, earned an associate degree in sociology from Odessa College and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from University of Texas Permian Basin. He earned a master’s in educational technology from UT Rio Grande Valley.
Moseley didn’t think he was going to teach, but one of the security officers, Randall Jones, talked him into subbing, and he was hooked from there. He has been teaching for more than 18 years.
“I was pretty good at math. … I did really well in high school and didn’t really apply myself that much, just kind of did what I needed to do in order to get done. College was a lot more fun — math there is a lot better. I enjoyed a lot better — especially after I figured out what’s going on,” Moseley said.
