Kelly Tenkely of iLearn Technology blog has a good post about Angry Birds and Math Class
Yesterday instead of dutifully writing a blog post, I was having fun building catapults with kids. I was playing with a transdisciplinary lesson using Angry Birds as my inspiration. Yes, you read correctly-Angry Birds.
It doesn’t seem to matter what age group or demographic that I talk to, kids (and adults) everywhere are fans of Angry Birds. As I was playing around with Angry Birds (yep I’m a fan too), I started thinking about all of the learning that could be happening. I have watched a two year old tell an older sister that “you have to pull down to go up higher”. I have watched as kids master this game through trial and error. Being the teacher that I am, I started dreaming up a transdisciplinary lesson with Angry Birds as the base.
Read the full article: CLICK HERE
Date: Wednesday, June 08, 2011- Time: 2:00pm ET / 11:00am PT
- Duration: 1 hour
- Sponsor: Pearson
- Register Here
In an ever-changing education landscape, a shift is taking place in academic standards. Formally released on June 1, 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative provides teachers and parents with a common understanding of what mathematics students are expected to learn as well as appropriate benchmarks for all students, regardless of where they live. The challenge for educators is understanding how we got here and how to translate this initiative into action at the classroom and school level. Join Dr. Francis (Skip) Fennell, current L. Stanley Bowlsbey Professor of Education and Graduate and Professional Studies at McDaniel College and Past President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, as he examines the Common Core State Standards for mathematics and their practical application. This webinar is targeted to both curriculum staff and administrators concerned with the transition to Common Core State Standards. Register Here
After attending this informative webinar, you’ll have:
- An understanding of the foundations behind the Common Core State Standards for mathematics
- An outline of what’s new and different in terms of the new expectations in mathematical competency
- A clear view of expectations for both students and teachers in the transition to Common Core State Standards for mathematics
- Practical tips for processing and implementing new standards
- Ideas on how technology can facilitate the transition
Dan Meyer. taught high school math between 2004 and 2010 and he is currently studying at Stanford University on a doctoral fellowship shared this presentation on his blog.
“Judging from his slides, it looks like Bowen Kerins produced a corker of a presentation at NCTM last week, running through the math inherent to game shows across several genres and decades. Among other revelations, he’ll help you calculate the best location for dropping your Plinko puck.”
Well, it is pretty darn interesting!
FREE from April 13-16 Only, so hurry!
McGraw-Hill’s Everyday Mathematics program or just want some great math games for the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone you’ll be interested to know from April 13-16 EIGHT of their math apps are FREE on the iTunes Store.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mcgraw-hill-school-education/id413312889
Thank so much to Michael Zimmer of In Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness for sharing the links below on his blog this morning. Michael does a Weekly Core Subjects list and it is always rich with websites to explore. I always feel the need to share his resources with my students and readers. So thank you Michael for being such a powerful resource.
Newspaper Blackout. Students take a newspaper and black out all the words to create a story, poem, quote, or whatever. What a neat activity for English teachers. The link will take you to a “blog,” but in reality, this would be a neat classroom notebook to create. I could see this same format being used in other subjects when wanting to find the most important parts of an article/story. Great ideas Michael, and as a former journalism teacher, I love it.
Cummings Study Guides provides various study guides for Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and various other types of literature. There is a vast index worth checking out.
Capitonyms is a word whose meaning changes based on whether or not it is capitalized. .
The Basics of APA Style is a web-based slide presentation that also includes voice over. It does a good job of explaining APA formatting.
“The Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997.”
Knowing Poe is an interactive website designed to share about Poe the Person, Poe the Write, and Poe’s Library.
Check out the Math, Social Studies and Science resources, Click Here
Math TV
On this website, you will find a lot of high quality math tutorials. Their lessons cover the basics and also cover Algebra concepts. These free videos can be arranged into individualized playlists for you to make. Searching my topic or textbook makes it easy for you and your students to find just what you need.
Brightstorm
This provider of online study materials for both the ACT and SAT also has some great math study materials for free. These videos have teachers explaining and demonstrating how they solve the problems. They cover Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry and Calculus! You can even embed these into classroom websites of blogs.
MathTain.TV
This site comes from actual students who are taught by Mr. Marcos at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, California. In their videos, the students will explain how to solve certain problems. The perspective of a student can be comfortable for other students to relate to. In addition, there are many videos that are made by teachers.
Teacher Zone
Ten Marks, a mathematics tutorial service is now offering this free service. With over 1,000 math tutorial videos, these lessons are sure to be a help to students. They are created by real tutors from the company and cover the basics, as well as higher skilled lessons and concepts.
Have you forgotten most of your algebra? Algebra Touch refreshes your skills using techniques only possible on your iOS device. Say you have x + 3 = 5. You can drag the 3 to the other side of the equation. Enjoy the wonderful conceptual leaps of algebra, without getting bogged down by the tedium of traditional methods. Drag to rearrange, tap to simplify, and draw lines to eliminate identical terms. Distribute by sliding terms across the sum, and Factor them back out by dragging them together. Easily switch between lessons and randomly-generated practice problems. Create your own problems or edit current ones.
Current material covers:
Simplification, Like Terms, Commutativity, Order of Operations, Factorization, Prime Numbers, Elimination, Isolation, Variables, Basic Equations, Distribution, Factoring Out, and ‘More Advanced’ mode.
And one more thing…
External display support. If you have an external display cable, you can demonstrate algebra to your audience.
I sure wish I had had a math teacher like Dan Meyer!! WOW, now, this is an amazing teacher.
“I teach high school math. I sell a product to a market that doesn’t want it but is forced by law to buy it.” Dan Meyer
“Today’s math curriculum is teaching students to expect — and excel at — paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. At TEDxNYED, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think.”
Check it out: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html
Dan Meyer has a 38 week Algebra curriculum available for download; slides, handouts, everything you need to teach. It Download each week or download the collection. Dan also has a 38 week Geometry curriculum.
Do smartphones boost math achievement among at-risk students?
The director of nonprofit Project K-Nect says the group’s programs have been successful in boosting academic achievement in math among the majority of low-income and at-risk students. The program, currently in place in three states, aims to foster collaborative science, technology, engineering and math learning using smartphones and social networking. “The bottom line is we see increased student achievement and engagement because this is a media that students feel comfortable utilizing,” Shawn Gross, the director, said. KQED.org/Mind/Shift blog
Or at least according to Kevin Cummins of Cool Stuff for Nerdy Teachers. Below is a presentation that introduces that 12 concepts of the maths problem solving toolkit. These tools are essential for students to become effective maths problem solvers. Kevin has even made printable postes you can download.
http://www.coolmath-games.com/
- Coolmath has existed since the spring of 1997 and has grown to be THE most popular destination for math education (and fun) in the world.
- Coolmath was designed for the frustrated, the confused, the bored students of the world who hate math.
- Coolmath was designed for the students who just need to get through this stuff so they can reach their other academic goals.
- Coolmath was designed for the math geeks of the world who love math and want more, more, more! (And, no, we will NOT translate Coolmath into Klingon for you so, please, quit asking.)
Seven websites:
- Coolmath.com,
- Coolmath4kids.com,
- Coolmath-Games.com,
- FinanceFREAK.com,
- TotallyStressedOut.com,
- SpikesGameZone.com
- and ScienceMonster.com
Thousands of pages of content, over 750,000 unique visitors a day, over 13 million unique visitors per month
Check out this schools site. And who said technology was not useful in a Math class! http://sch.ci.lexington.ma.us/~elipinski/EDM%20units%20table
and here are two more:
http://mathschallenge.net/
University of Washington Challenge of the week: there are even prizes!
Wow, Awesome Library organizes the Web with 37,000 carefully reviewed resources, including the top 5 percent in education. This is a really cool site and worth checking out.
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/
English/Language Arts
50 Places to Find Free Books Online is a list of sites where students and teachers can find books online. For schools with a 1:1 programs in place, these types of sites are great additions to the curriculum and becoming a necessity in tight budget times.
Wordfaire it’s a free live blogging platform that anyone can use…….writing/blogging/publishing platform. The site advertises that as you write, it is published to the web. There is no waiting for the post to appear.
Mathematics
WOW Math is a personal teacher website for a math teacher who teaches Algebra 1 and 2, as well as AP Calculus. He has aYouTube videos as well on his personal YouTube channel with hundreds of math videos.
InterMath is a professional development effort designed to support teachers in becoming better mathematics educators. It focuses on building teachers’ mathematical content knowledge through mathematical investigations that are supported by technology. InterMath includes a workshop component and materials to support instructors.
Science
The Institute of Physics has a great YouTube channel of videos to share in physics classrooms. Easy and free access to online video is a game changer for the classroom.
Sun Motions is a Flash based interactive that allows users to see the angle of the sun from months, latitudes, and times of day. You can play an animation of the motion of the sun as well to help students see how the sun acts through certain time periods.
Explore Biology is a resource for teachers of high school biology and especially AP Biology. lecture notes, blogs, handouts, activities, labs.
Planet Foss is a Science Photo Sharing site. iLearn Technology blog has a great write up about the site.
2011 is the International Year of Chemistry has excellent resources for Chemistry teachers.
Social Studies
The History Teachers Channel on YouTube takes popular songs and changes the lyrics to teach various content in history.
THIS DAY from Nikon provides an image from history for the day you visit from various years in history. Free Technology for Teachers had a post about this site. Very informative.
Miscellaneous
PsykoPaint is a web based software that allows you to create and paint amazing art from photographs. Wow, this is just very cool.
DrawIsland is a free online version of Microsoft Paint. Easy to use.
Graphic Organizers.If you need a good online graphic organizer tool, here is a list of 30 to choose from.
Thanks to The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness by Michael Zimmer for sharing these resources on his blog.
Whether you are confused by multiplication, need extra practice with geometry proofs, or find yourself struggling to understand logarithms, you are sure to find a website from the following list that fits your math needs.
Guide to Online Schools has scoured the Internet in order to compile a comprehensive collection of resources for all math subjects, from the basics to calculus.
http://hoodamath.com/
Why Math Games?
Hooda Math believes in math learning through play. Mr. Edlavitch credits board and card games for his early enjoyment of mathematics. Hooda Math believes free online math games can do the same for students today.
Teachers
Hooda Math can be used in a number of ways. Our online math games can be used for computer lab activities with/without our free math worksheets. Our math games can also be used with your interactive whiteboards, check out our SMARTboard Games page. Middle and Highschool students can do Math Movie projects with xtranormal.com and submit them to us for publication. A classroom teacher favorite is our free online math tool, Math Timed Tests that emails individual reports back to teachers and students.
This wiki is for basic number facts and includes downloadable pdfs and web sites to support learning basic facts in her class.
To download your year level just click on it and it should end up on your desktop. Allanah (could not find her last name) promises she will add more links and levels as she find them. Mostly for Primary and Elementary teachers.
by Kevin Zimmer, The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness Kevin has a great selection of resources for Core Subjects. Check them out.
Math Web Based Resources – General, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, and Trigonometry
English Web Based Resources – General, Reading, Writing, British Literature, and American Literature
Social Studies Web Based Resources – General, History, Government, Economics, and Geography
Science Web Based Resources – General, Earth-Space Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Anatomy
Electives Web Based Resources – Foreign Language, Special Education, Art, Agriculture, Business/Marketing, PE/Health, Music, Practical LivingCroe Subject Resources
English
TES English provides and publishes printable and editable teaching resources, worksheets, lesson plans and ton of resources for secondary English teachers.
Paper Rater or Paper Grader paste your paper into the site. The software provides detailed reports of word choice, grammar, spelling errors, and more. No sign up is necessary and it will be “graded” in real time.
Mathematics
Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 has a graphing calculator that plots in 2D & 3D, step-by-step equation solving, and useful tools to help students with math and science studies. It is down-loadable software for students.
Math247 provides links and resources to various math screencasts and math videos. There are videos for all ages and grades and several are submitted by students.
Touch Trigonometry a simple Flash product that hopes to help math learners of all ages get an intuitive understanding of trigonometry. It aims to do that by letting you just play with the trig functions, with no buttons to get in the way.
Science
Homespun Science Tunes The following songs are parodies. I grabbed the musical nature of the song and created my own lyrics. They are all created for guitar….acoustic, electric….you name it. In my classroom, I have a “Guitar of Science” for playing such tunes. Sometimes students like to sing along and sometimes they don’t, but they are always smiling….and learning scientific concepts along the way. A couple of these song were written with the help of another science teacher Mr. Youngs. By writing and singing these tunes, I hope that I’ve struck a different “chord” in the students’ brains to help the realize there are many ways to learn new things!
The Virtual Lab from the ChemCollective provides interactive science experiments that will go through the steps of various science experiments.
Practical Biology provides teachers of biology at all levels with experiments that demonstrate a wide range of biological concepts and processes. Each practical may be used alone or as a starting-point for open-ended investigations or enhancement activities, such as clubs or open-day events.
Practical Physics is a website for teachers enabling them to share their skills and experience of making experiments work in the classroom.
Practical Chemistry is a website that provides all teachers of chemistry with a wide range of experiments to illustrate concepts or processes, as starting-points for investigations and for enhancement activities.
Physics Demonstration Films from the National STEM Centre provides 8 videos explaining various physics concepts.
Open Science Resources is an educational community that provides various resources for teachers. You will have to sign up for an account before being allowed access, but once you have an account you will be able to visit the repository which includes numerous educational materials (images of exhibits and scientific instruments, animations, videos, lesson plans, student projects and educational pathways with guidelines for interactive museum visit experiences).
Social Studies
An interesting video on the reading of the Gettysburg Address. Worth sharing with students, because the reader does it with some passion.
From the New York Times is an interesting “Times Machine” where you can have access to New York Times newspapers from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel.
Thanks to Kevin Zimmer for sharing these resources.
Mathematical Doodling: This is a series of videos about doodling in math class. Hopefully more info about the mathematics soon. Check it out. http://vihart.com/doodling/
Doodling Stars is a stream of conscious video about doodling in math class instead of learning about the process of factoring. As the video continues, you see that the student has actually learned all about factoring through the doodles she has made. It is a video that opens up your mind, and lets you know that learning can really be anywhere you are, sometimes without even any notice.
Doodling Stars, by Vi Hart, is just one of the many posts, including Binary Trees, Snakes + Graphs, Infinity Elephants and other number games. The videos all use real-life objects and topics to explore math. Her videos are helpful for kids to know that you can learn math, along with many other subjects, outside of the textbook and classroom. This may be an even more important thing to remember for those who do not stick to traditional rules of teaching or school systems.
This video also helps kids realize that they can start to make connections between some of the things they are learning in the classroom with things they see and encounter everyday, outside of the classroom. Check out her site for more fun math stuff, like how to make mathematical foods! Kids might even start thinking about and using math in a totally new way!
Recent college graduate Vi Hart is making a name for herself as a recreational mathemusician, who is hoping to help students see math as an art. She seems to be attracting more teenage girls to the subject. Hart began posting on YouTube videos of herself doodling math concepts, which have since gone viral. “I want people to feel they can do this. People can. It’s mathematics that anyone can do,” she said. Read the full story, The New York Times (free registration)
