In the Class Room: July 2013

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Blog Posts

http://myfirstyearteachingat.blogspot.com/

http://piquecuriosity.blogspot.com/

http://mrdedios2013.blogspot.com/

The above are the great blogs I previewed and commented on from the forums. They had some great tools I didn't have and reminded me of sites like Edmodo. And even more basic things like remembering to directly embed videos.

Voxopop

Voxopop is something I experienced a lot on the student side. For several language classes, I did audio recording assignments.

Now I'm getting to do this on the educator side, and the website is extremely user friendly to set up. However, getting the mic to work can be a major challenge sometimes. Once the mic is up and running, the rest is far simpler.

I feel this is a great web app. There are hundred and thousands of videos, pages, and examples on the internet, but having something purely audio may be a great way to reach those auditory learners.

Animoto

So I uploaded a project one of my classes worked on last year. Originally it had been done on a video publisher program, but I was interested to see how Animoto could handle the project.

While it was very easy and user friendly, Animoto did take a very long time to upload. Plus while the free version is ok for quick short videos, it's not the best for longer more detailed ones.

You can upload relatively small numbers of photos, and being unable to manage the pacing of the photo transitions wasn't ideal. There also aren't very many music choices, and trying to add your own music or sound effects might sometimes conflicts with copyright laws.

Wiki

My district actually gives each teacher their own website to post assignments, files, and sorts of goodies. There are even places to submit work.

But what I do like about wikispaces is that it allows easy online collaboration for group projects.

RSS Feeds- A Lament for Google Reader

I had used Google Reader in the past. It help consolidate all my news outlets. New York Times. Huffington Post. Star Telegram. Associated Press. BBC.

All of these were great sites, but having to move between every page and tab wasn't the fastest way, and on a phone, it was just annoying.

On Google Reader, it really was just like a magazine composed of all my major News Companies.

Unfortunately, it was shut down.

I have since moved on to Feedly. While, it really does everything Reader did and has made great improvements of arranging things. I really never got into all the apps it promotes.

Plus, (and this may just be laziness) following all these news sites on Twitter has given me a similar experience (and definitely faster with the 140 character limit).

Google Docs (Drive)

Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) is something I can not laud enough. This web application I do endorse completely. Not only do you have the basic functionality of Microsoft Office anywhere, its free and synced across all major device JUST BY LOGGING IN!!!

My example was a Gradebook demo. With a few simple formulas, you have a functioning electronic gradebook.

While this would seem redundant considering the actual district gradebooks along with all the online gradebooks available, the great thing about this kind of setup is that SEVERAL tablets, phones, and computers will let you temporarily download your Google Doc Gradebook so that you can work on it without an internet connection. Then when you are able to find a connection again, you log in, let it sync, and your gradebook is updated even though you had no wi-fi.

Plus this allows you to always have a back up in case a paper grade book is lost, the district gradebook glitches, or you just can't log in/keep getting dropped because of internet connection issues.

Delicious

While I could see it would be fun to look around and explore new links, a lot of the pros that come from using this site can be found through using Google Chrome.

Out of the 10 Reasons to Use Social Bookmarking, about 6 or 7 reasons are accomplished through setting up a Google account and logging into Chrome which we have happily done so far in our web explorations.

Glogster

So I wasn't too happy about how specific I had to get on personal details just to sign up with glogster. It's also very laggy on uploads and slow on the transitions. And while making most posters would be easy for most people, making really creative posters is a little complicated and time consuming. Plus taking those posters and putting them elsewhere would also be difficult if you were not overly computer literate.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Beyond the Formula - Pythagorean Theorem

When tackling this theorem in the class room, student often get caught up in the formula. They memorize it in a few minutes and soon figure out how to plug numbers in and get the "answer." Before you know it, this ends up as a trend through quite a bit of their schooling. Seriously, go into a calculus class and nearly any student can tell you how to find a derivative, but when asking what a derivative is, you'll get a far less enthusiastic response.

So, how do we address this? Through lots of visual examples.

Let's start with the actual formula and a picture.

a² + b² = c²

With these two things you get a student to see that each letter (or variable) is actually just a line that makes the side of a triangle.

Here is where many student check out and just start plugging in numbers to get their "answer." But it's here where we need them to really thing about what's happening. We'll do that by zooming in on side a and using some guiding questions.

Side a is just a line.

So we ask the students. What are we doing with a? What does it mean to square something? And when you say square. REALLY PUSH THAT YOU MAKE A SQUARE. Then add in the visual literally making a square.

That way, when we do it for each side and put it all together, the students can see what the formula is actually having them do. Taking a side. And squaring it.

Hopefully, by this point a student would understand what the formula is actually doing to each side of the right triangle.

So we can finish with the simple meaning of the Pythagorean Theorem. If you take sides a & b and make them into squares, those two squares put together are equal to the square you make from side c.

To make the concept more fluid watch the following 40 second clip.

^{At the end, the goal is to simply have the student really understand what the formula is actually doing in a physical sense as oppose to, "Numbers go here. Answer comes out here."}

^{For further work on vocabulary and concrete examples visit:}

^{http://www.mathsisfun.com/pythagoras.html}

^Sources:

^{All examples taken from:}