Make your own Widgets using Wolfram Alpha

I love using wolfram|Alpha and got this yesterday. Enjoy making your own widgets.

COMPASS Test Practice Questions - Help your COMPASS Exam Score with free COMPASS Test Preparation | Diigo

COMPASS Test Practice Questions - Help your COMPASS Exam Score with free COMPASS Test Preparation | Diigo

I clicked on this link on my Diigo bookmarks and it was automatically posted to my blog. Cool :-)

New School Year

As we get closer and closer to the beginning of the new school year,   I'm excited about so many new technology applications.

I wish that there were real universal apps for the students to use with their mobile devices.  Everyone could freely access applications no matter what devices they have.   Some popular ones include:  Iphones/Itouches/Ipads and others like Blackberry's or Android Phones.

Now, blogging is so easy to do and there's no need to learn all the HTML codes to do formatting.  I can concentrate on the how to make my blogs really useful to my students and help them all be successful this year.

Reflections

I will certainly be using blogs this year so that shy students can ask questions they usually won't ask in the classroom.  I have seen it used very well in other disciplines so I'm hoping it will be helpful to math students.

Most of my students have Ipods or Iphones so I will also be looking for apps for students to use to help them learn better.

Video resources have available in Itunes University for years and now it can be integrated into a blog. I have tried doing this from the school teacher webpage but the capability to embed video is not supported. With blogs videos can be embeded so students can easily see it instead of following a link.

With Google docs and image generators and video editing software I can see students working collaboratively on projects that can be posted and shared online.

Students may like the avatars since they already use them for many online games.

These new tools will definitely be helping me make a better virtual learning space for my students.

The most unexpected thing I found out using these tools is playing with the advanced settings is a very useful tool in learning how to use the tools. Even if I have no formal training on HTML and javascript, I was able to make a few changes on some of the scripts by changing a few of the commands and watching what happens to the output.

I think on Tool #5 the text size wouldn't come out correctly even if I set the default font size. So I finally looked at the HTML code and forced the font size to come out the the size I wanted.

I'll be looking for ideas how to use avatars for math and how to make my blogs useful to math students.

But I had fun working through the 11 Tools.

Tool #2 Building Communities and Comments

I think the idea of PLN's is great specially for a small campus like WAIS, where many of the teachers are only teaching several courses and have no one else to work with. This way we can collaborate with teachers from other campuses in the district teaching the same courses.

The blogs can be accessed through smartphones  which makes reading comments and writing comments a lot easier.

Tool #3 Image Generators and Mashups

Here's a two for one. I decided to use one of the mashup programs and used a picture of apps I have on my Iphone. Note the first app is WAIS's website :-)






I had fun with the mashups and image generators.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the students will come up with using these programs.

I use MobileMe Gallery for personal stuff and will probably use Flickr Commons area for images to download.

Here's one I made using wordle.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to use this in the classroom?

Tool #11 Digital Citizenship

The three things I will stress with my students as digital citizens will be safety online, learning how to search for information correctly and online etiquette.

I'm going to make sure my students understand the laws regarding digital citizenship.

Kids also need to be able to see what is accurate or not online. Not because it is online means it's correct. They need to learn how to fine tune their searches in order to get to the correct information.

Netiquette is another thing I will stress with the students. As a forum moderator for another site whose members are adults it's amazing how people sometimes act inappropriately online just because they don't see the other person or just because they are using an alias.

Tool #7 Digital story telling

This is a just a short video using IMovie. Took about three minutes to create. 

This is the one tool I probably need help on the most since I can pretty much edit videos but don't feel comfortable doing voice overs or narrations. 

I can see my  students using these tools for their projects in math. 

Tool #9 Jing and Skype

We are able to post classroom notes using the our activboards and Jing would just be another way to do this and be able to animate things we find online that we can use in class.

Not sure if Skype will work through he school firewall however. But with students can talk to other students around the world or collaborate on a project using Skype.

I've been using using Skype for calling family and friends abroad before it had video capabilities. Now that video conferencing is supported teachers from different parts of the district or the world can collaborate. I'd like to see my students work on projects with other students in other countries and use Skype to communicate their progress in Skype.

My concern is bandwidth issues with Skype use within the district.

Tool #5 Tagging and social bookmarking

Our students all have facebook accounts and are familiar with tagging pictures. Tagging websites should be no problem for them once they understand that correct keywords are critical to tagging sites properly so they can find/share them.
I have opened both a delicious and diigo accounts and will show the students how to set up their own and share their bookmarks.

Diigo has a cool Ipad application for Ipad Safari that allows you to

• Highlight the webpage, just like in iBooks;
• Bookmark the page with tags;
• Add sticky note;
• Store bookmarks, highlights, sticky notes in your diigo account.

Tool #8 Embeded Videos

Here's a sample embeded video but I would rather see my students doing this on the ActivBoard or using the wireless slate. I think I will try this year and have students present mini lessons using video and post it so that they will have a collection of mini lessons they can use for review.

Under Video Tutorials is a link to Algebra Lessons, Calculus lectures and PreCalculus Lessons .

I think it's much better to embed videos when possible so kids dont have to leave the blog.

I can download each of these lectures on as QuickTime files or Mpeg 4 /H.264 . I will need to see how embeded videos will work at school since many can't go through the school firewall.

I plan to use many of the video podcasts available on Itunes this year so that students who are absent will not fall behind.

I have been posting classroom notes online for years for my students using by transforming ActivBoard notes to PDF. My students love being able to pay attention more and not worry about note taking too much on difficult topics. I'm hoping embedding videos of related lectures will help my students learn much better this year :-)

It would be great if my students are the ones posting their notes online and sharing it with their classmates.

I found the video above on YouTube and I think it explains well why we all need technology training :-) It was made in 2006. in 4 years technology has gotten much better and cheaper.

Here's one of kids having fun with calculus concepts :-)


by MindofMatthew

Tool #10 Mobile Apps

As a long time user of of the Iphone and now the Ipad. There are plenty of apps available for students. The one I really like is the Wolfram Alpha app both available for the IpodTouch/Iphone and Ipad. ( $50 before and now available for 99 cents) It's a math student's best friend whenever you get stuck and can't solve  and equation. Asides from the algebra system, it contains plenty of useful data.

I actually show my students how to use this application but also warn them that although it can solve equations and show the steps, one still needs to learn and understand how to do the problems. It is a tool they can use when needed but it doesn't help a bit if they just copy the answers off the application.

My students understand that my homework and tests will have questions that will render Wolfram|Alpha useless. Computation skills are the foundation of doing well in math. Then analysis and interpretation of results count for the rest.

"The Elements" is a beautifully made periodic table with pictures and even a link to Wolfram Alpha for crystal latices.

There is a free version called EMD PTE of a periodic table but its not as fancy as "The Elements".

The scientific calculator app is also great for students so they don't have to worry about having their TI-84's with them all the time.

What are your thoughts on Wolfram|Alpha ?

Tool #6 Wikis

Wikis might work well for students when they are making reviews for the math classes so that they can add to whatever someone has started.
Students can also show their understanding of the lesson when they edit wikis.

Tool #4 Google Reader,Tools, etc.

I have the Google Reader app installed on my Ipad :-) The Google reader app is also available for the Itouch/Iphone and Android phones.

I use Google Docs for most of my work and it makes collaborating with other teachers at lot easier.

Last year when I was working with some other teachers in the district on Algebra 2 scope and sequence we used Google docs so it made writing and editing the scope and sequence faster. We had projected the document on the Activboard and we can see the changes on the document we were working on the fly :-)

Tool #1 Getting Started

Creating a blog is easy enough. This is my first blog so spent more time worrying about formatting the blog more than anything else.

For math it may help kids to have a place to ask questions or discuss problems online.

I'm not a big fan of voki. It might look better if the avatar didn't have BabyMail under it. It bothers me that if you happen to click on it it takes your to a commercial site (ETrade).

Is anyone using avatars to enhance learning? If so how do you do it?