Who doesn't know about that famous Abbott and Costello skit "Who's On First?" We've heard it, or tried to repeat it, many times in our lives. Did you know that it was first a part of their stage act and then was featured in the 1945 movie, "The Naughty Nineties"? It is a classic! We get caught up in the tongue-twister-like dialogue, but it does illustrate a very elemental math concept: ordinal numbers. Wouldn't it be fun for students to watch the short clip when learning about ordinal numbers?
Mathematics in Movies
Today's site was shared with me by @maggiev, a fellow Twitterer. The site has several short movie clips that deal with mathematics. Mathematics in Movies was created by Oliver Knill, from Harvard University. His site says that he will continue to add movie clips as he finds them. What a fun way to introduce a new math concept, or to spur a math journal entry. Thanks Oliver and @maggiev for this awesome site!
Showing posts with label mathematics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mathematics. Show all posts
February 26, 2009
December 17, 2008
Cooperating Through Twitter
This morning I was reading a few posts on Twitter and saw a couple of opportunities to help Twitter friends. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Often I will read Twitter posts that are requests on how to do a particular task in an application, what the best brand of (dvr, mini pc, wireless router, etc) is, or to shout out a hello to new Twitter users. It is great to have such a diverse community of friends to help with these types of questions.
Twitter can help with another type of request as well. This type allows for collaboration. This is the type of request I responded to this morning, and will always respond to if I have the opportunity, because it is such a valuable contribution.
One of the requests was made by cscribner, a Twitter friend and fellow Maize technology integration consultant. He and several students from his school are working on a VoiceThread about Christmas traditions around the world. His request was to add comments to the VoiceThread about how Christmas is celebrated in the poster's country. What a wonderful way to complete a global project in a short time. In the past, students (or the teacher) would have to write letters or emails. These two methods require efforts that are unnecessary today.
The other request was from mrmayo, another educator I follow on Twitter. His students created podcasts for book reports. He was asking for people to visit his blog, listen to the podcasts and comment. What an easy thing to do! Each podcast was under two minutes long, and picking a few of them I got the gist of the assignment. I listened and posted in under 10 minutes. Back when I was fifth grade teacher, I would have loved having my students receive feedback from people around the world. Unfortunately, back then I could only go down and bribe my coworkers with a day free of recess duty to respond.
So while I joined Twitter to learn new ideas and be a "requester of information" I am pleasantly surprised to see how I can contribute!
Mathway
Mathway is a site that shows step-by-step how to solve a math problem. The problem types range from basic to calculus. Students (and their parents helping with homework) can see the steps of the problem if they forgot how to do it once at home. Teachers can use the site to reinforce the steps of a problem or to show student an alternate way to solve. Graphs can even be created from the equations. Finally a glossary of terms is available for refreshing your memory of math vocabulary.
Twitter can help with another type of request as well. This type allows for collaboration. This is the type of request I responded to this morning, and will always respond to if I have the opportunity, because it is such a valuable contribution.
One of the requests was made by cscribner, a Twitter friend and fellow Maize technology integration consultant. He and several students from his school are working on a VoiceThread about Christmas traditions around the world. His request was to add comments to the VoiceThread about how Christmas is celebrated in the poster's country. What a wonderful way to complete a global project in a short time. In the past, students (or the teacher) would have to write letters or emails. These two methods require efforts that are unnecessary today.
The other request was from mrmayo, another educator I follow on Twitter. His students created podcasts for book reports. He was asking for people to visit his blog, listen to the podcasts and comment. What an easy thing to do! Each podcast was under two minutes long, and picking a few of them I got the gist of the assignment. I listened and posted in under 10 minutes. Back when I was fifth grade teacher, I would have loved having my students receive feedback from people around the world. Unfortunately, back then I could only go down and bribe my coworkers with a day free of recess duty to respond.
So while I joined Twitter to learn new ideas and be a "requester of information" I am pleasantly surprised to see how I can contribute!
Mathway
Mathway is a site that shows step-by-step how to solve a math problem. The problem types range from basic to calculus. Students (and their parents helping with homework) can see the steps of the problem if they forgot how to do it once at home. Teachers can use the site to reinforce the steps of a problem or to show student an alternate way to solve. Graphs can even be created from the equations. Finally a glossary of terms is available for refreshing your memory of math vocabulary.
November 10, 2008
What You End Up With
I ran across a cool keyboarding game the other day while was searching the Internet. The game is a multiplayer game in which you can invite your friends by creating a unique url and compete against them in a private setting. I liked the privacy of it, so I began my quest to find other multiplayer games that were educational in nature, yet had a closed-environment. I came across one such other site that had math games. Both are highlighted below. I was disappointed that I could find no other sites that allow students to play without registering or to play against classmates in a closed-environment.
What I did find was a cool site that provides customizable flash templates for teachers and students that can be embedded into wikis, blogs, class websites, etc. Funny what you end up with when embarking on a web search!
If anyone knows of any educational games like those mentioned above, please send them my way and I will share them on this blog.
Arcademic Skill Builders
Arcademic Skill Builders is an educational game site that has a variety of math and language arts skills games (as well as one game on state capitals) in a flash format. Four math games are multiplayer games in which students can invite select individuals by providing them with a unique url. The games seem appropriate for students in grades 3-5, but older kids might have fun with them as well.http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/
Type Racer
This keyboarding game is in beta, but seems to run very smooth. You can register or play as a guest and invite friends by providing them with a code or a private url. The text comes from books or movies. I played my daughter yesterday and we had to type text from the movie Juno. She beat me every time! Players can chat with one another while playing, but most will be concentrating on typing to beat their opponents!
Classtools
Classtools.net is an awesome site that allows you to create FREE interactive Flash diagrams for learning and revising material. Templates are easy to customize and include Venn, fishbone, and jigsaw diagrams, post-its, lights out, a count-down timer, and more. The templates can be embedded into wikis, blogs, and websites for easy access by teachers and students.
What I did find was a cool site that provides customizable flash templates for teachers and students that can be embedded into wikis, blogs, class websites, etc. Funny what you end up with when embarking on a web search!
If anyone knows of any educational games like those mentioned above, please send them my way and I will share them on this blog.
Arcademic Skill Builders
Arcademic Skill Builders is an educational game site that has a variety of math and language arts skills games (as well as one game on state capitals) in a flash format. Four math games are multiplayer games in which students can invite select individuals by providing them with a unique url. The games seem appropriate for students in grades 3-5, but older kids might have fun with them as well.http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/
Type Racer
This keyboarding game is in beta, but seems to run very smooth. You can register or play as a guest and invite friends by providing them with a code or a private url. The text comes from books or movies. I played my daughter yesterday and we had to type text from the movie Juno. She beat me every time! Players can chat with one another while playing, but most will be concentrating on typing to beat their opponents!
Classtools
Classtools.net is an awesome site that allows you to create FREE interactive Flash diagrams for learning and revising material. Templates are easy to customize and include Venn, fishbone, and jigsaw diagrams, post-its, lights out, a count-down timer, and more. The templates can be embedded into wikis, blogs, and websites for easy access by teachers and students.
Click here for full screen version
image used in this tool originated from http://www.indiana.edu/~oso/animations/An12.html
October 09, 2008
Integration
We often refer to "technology integration" as if it is a task in itself. My job title even has the phrase in it. However, the quest shouldn't be to integrate technology into the curriculum, but to use technology to integrate the curriculum.
If schools were to take this approach, it might not seem so daunting to teachers. Maybe it would even free up some time for teachers to learn new technology skills and search for resources if they were integrating subjects. Just how to integrate is the tough part though. In an elementary setting, teachers are concerned about teaching students the basics; as well they should be. In the middle and high school settings, teachers are concerned about teaching the standards for their specific curricular area so that the schools make AYP. When does one have time to integrate, and why should a teacher do another teacher's job for them?
Teaching the whole child should be the job of every teacher. Just like doing crunches alone won't get rid of that spare tire, doing math facts alone won't make an accountant. Letting go of the fear of falling test scores if you take time to teach about careers in your math class is tough for teachers. However, doesn't it make more sense to take a class period to talk about a career in math so that students see the connections between what they are doing today and where it can take them in the future, than to have the counselor come in at any random time to talk about many different careers in a 30 minute lesson? Doesn't seem like rocket science to me. But then hey, I teach P.E. so I don't have to worry about it!
Math Mastery
Math Mastery is an online math curriculum that utilizes videos to teach students in grades 2-8 math skills. The videos are engaging and interactive. The curriculum does have a cost. The cool thing I found at this site is the Daily Brains Library which is free. The library has hundreds of word problems that are categorized by subject area. The problems are relatively short and make for an easy way for math teachers to integrate science, history, geography, health, and language arts into their lessons.
Google Lit Trips
This site utilizes Google Earth to combine literature, geography, and history for a wonderful cross curricular experience for students.
If schools were to take this approach, it might not seem so daunting to teachers. Maybe it would even free up some time for teachers to learn new technology skills and search for resources if they were integrating subjects. Just how to integrate is the tough part though. In an elementary setting, teachers are concerned about teaching students the basics; as well they should be. In the middle and high school settings, teachers are concerned about teaching the standards for their specific curricular area so that the schools make AYP. When does one have time to integrate, and why should a teacher do another teacher's job for them?
Teaching the whole child should be the job of every teacher. Just like doing crunches alone won't get rid of that spare tire, doing math facts alone won't make an accountant. Letting go of the fear of falling test scores if you take time to teach about careers in your math class is tough for teachers. However, doesn't it make more sense to take a class period to talk about a career in math so that students see the connections between what they are doing today and where it can take them in the future, than to have the counselor come in at any random time to talk about many different careers in a 30 minute lesson? Doesn't seem like rocket science to me. But then hey, I teach P.E. so I don't have to worry about it!
Math Mastery
Math Mastery is an online math curriculum that utilizes videos to teach students in grades 2-8 math skills. The videos are engaging and interactive. The curriculum does have a cost. The cool thing I found at this site is the Daily Brains Library which is free. The library has hundreds of word problems that are categorized by subject area. The problems are relatively short and make for an easy way for math teachers to integrate science, history, geography, health, and language arts into their lessons.
Google Lit Trips
This site utilizes Google Earth to combine literature, geography, and history for a wonderful cross curricular experience for students.
August 21, 2008
Hello, My Name is Marcia
and I am a Tweetaholic. There! I have finally taken the first step in admitting it! I know exactly when my downfall with Twitter began. It was a sunny day and I was just sitting on a bar stool visiting http://www.twitter.com/. Nevermind that the barstool was at my breakfast bar in my kitchen. One of the tweets mentioned a gadget called BeTwittered that could be added to my homepage. I cannot blame anyone but myself! I should have never gone in search of that gadget, never should have tasted it's sweetness. But I did, and fell HARD!
I am not bitter. I am happily woozy on getting my daily twitter fix in the privacy of my igoogle page. I am not a loud or obnoxious twitterer; most of the time, I am content with sitting back and following the conversations of some of my best tweets!
Speaking of best tweets (a best tweet is like a best friend, twitter-style!) there are two that I adore, even tho they have no idea who I am! I visit their sites regularly to get great ideas to share with staff. The blogs are The Cool Cat Teacher Blog and Angela Maiers. Another best tweet is skipz. He brings interesting sites and articles to BeTwittered, and I enjoy his trademark "Good morning, Twitterati" with the current weather report in VT.
I really appreciate all of my best tweets and all my other Twitter friends for providing me with sites to share with my staff. Twitterers are the best!!
Oh, by the way, my Twitter name is MarciaHersh. Maybe we can become best tweets too!
Mathtrain.com with Mr. Marcos
A sixth grade teacher put together a wonderful site of math lessons, called Mathtrain.TV, presented by his 6th grade students. There are links to other teachers' sites, as well as a few games. I have had trouble going straight to Mathtrain.TV, but you can access Mr. Marcos' site at http://www.mathtrain.com/.
I am not bitter. I am happily woozy on getting my daily twitter fix in the privacy of my igoogle page. I am not a loud or obnoxious twitterer; most of the time, I am content with sitting back and following the conversations of some of my best tweets!
Speaking of best tweets (a best tweet is like a best friend, twitter-style!) there are two that I adore, even tho they have no idea who I am! I visit their sites regularly to get great ideas to share with staff. The blogs are The Cool Cat Teacher Blog and Angela Maiers. Another best tweet is skipz. He brings interesting sites and articles to BeTwittered, and I enjoy his trademark "Good morning, Twitterati" with the current weather report in VT.
I really appreciate all of my best tweets and all my other Twitter friends for providing me with sites to share with my staff. Twitterers are the best!!
Oh, by the way, my Twitter name is MarciaHersh. Maybe we can become best tweets too!
Mathtrain.com with Mr. Marcos
A sixth grade teacher put together a wonderful site of math lessons, called Mathtrain.TV, presented by his 6th grade students. There are links to other teachers' sites, as well as a few games. I have had trouble going straight to Mathtrain.TV, but you can access Mr. Marcos' site at http://www.mathtrain.com/.
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