Teaching Math with Technology

Taking math education into the 21st century, and bringing my students and visionary teachers along for the ride!

Posts Tagged ‘animation’

My Student Hyperstudio Projects

December 18th 2011 Posted at education, HyperStudio, Interactive Projects, Math Projects, Mathcast, Software, Teaching, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks)
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Student Hyperstudio5 Projects

The final project I had my Math For Elementary Teachers do for the course was to create an interactive Hyperstudio Project.


The projects are too large to be viewed well inside my blog, so I have created a website to house them. The website is best viewed using Safari if possible, if not, just ignore the browser warning, as I have used a beta version of Hyperstudio to export them into HTML5 .

I have many of my student’s projects posted on a THIS WEBSITE.    Enjoy!

 

Creating a Text Embedded Interactive Worksheet with a Livescribe Smartpen

September 20th 2011 Posted at education, Helping students, Interactive Projects, Livescribe, Livescribe, Math Projects, Mathcast, Pulse smartpen, Teaching, Teaching Online, Technology, writing
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EMBEDDING TEXT BEHIND A LIVESCRIBE PENCAST PDF

Recently I learned how to embed text behind a Livescribe pencast and it has changed everything!

I created a short interactive worksheet to show what can be created with this process.   The following is a screenshot of the text embedded pencast because I cannot embed a PDF file (yet) into a website.   A link to the actual pencast PDF is below the screenshot.

Pencast PDF with text in the background
(you must have Adobe Reader 10.0 or higher to view this interactive PDF)

If that does not work, I put a link on my website for you to click on OUTSIDE of WordPress
(I have some issues with opening PDFs inside WordPress – if anyone can help me to embed
a PDF in WordPress or a website I would really appreciate it!)

As listed in the pencast, the steps to embed the text in the pencast PDF are as follows:

1.  Print off the text file onto Livescribe dot paper (I used college-ruled dot paper in my printer)

2.  Record a pencast on top of dot paper that has the text printed on it (the text shows you where to write!)

(sorry about the poor photo quality)

3.  Connect your smartpen and upload your pencast as a PDF (use the “Computer” connector)

As you can see in this screen shot, the pencast looks pretty strange without the text behind it!

4.  Save the original text document as a .jpg (image file) – to do this you must first save it as a PDF and then you can use Adobe Acrobat Pro or the free online utility Zamzar (www.zamzar.com) to save your PDF as a .jpg file

5.  Open the pencast PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro or PDF Pro (http://epapyrus.com/en/)  so that you can add a watermark to the PDF file

6.  Add your .jpg text file as a watermark to your pencast PDF and re-save the PDF

7.  The new pencast PDF can be viewed by anyone with Adobe Reader 10.0 or higher

 

Please add comments on this blog if you know of other free ways to save a text document as an image file and also if you know of other (especially FREE) programs that allow the user to edit a PDF.

Please send me the projects you make – I would love to see them!

 

 

My Google Website From the ACTEaz Workshop

July 16th 2010 Posted at Animationish, Conferences, CPS Clickers, eInstruction Interwrite Workspace, Jing, Livescribe, Livescribe, Mathcast, Mobi, Presentations
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Today I gave a 3 1/2 hour hands-on workshop on teaching with technology, in Tucson, AZ

Looking at the screenshot of my website for the workshop above, you can see the major topics were:

  • Animationish (FableVision Learning)
  • Google websites
  • Jing (TechSmith)
  • Livescribe Pulse smartpen
  • Workspace (eInstruction – comes with the Mobi)

To see the full workshop, along with all the materials presented, you can visit my google website for the workshop. During the workshop I presented with the Mobi, and had the participants often answer questions using the CPS Pulse clickers (eInstruction).   It was really a lot of fun!

If you view the workshop website, to have it make more sense, scroll down on the HOME page to see the schedule and follow the links IN ORDER that are in the schedule.   When you make a google website, the side links are alphabetical, NOT in the order I presented them in!

The workshop was in a computer lab, so each participant was on a laptop.  My 13 (soon to be 14) year old son was my technical helper during the entire workshop, walking around helping anyone who had questions.  He also taught the part of the workshop on Animationish!   He did a fantastic job and I was very grateful to have him with me!  I hope he can help me during my 8 hour workshop I am giving in October!  :)

 

My Next Adventure in Teaching

July 5th 2010 Posted at Animationish, Conferences, eInstruction Interwrite Workspace, HyperStudio, Jing, Livescribe, Livescribe, Presentations
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In just a couple weeks I will be down in Tucson, AZ giving a hands-on workshop to teachers and administrators.  They will have full versions of software in a computer lab to play with!

A representative from the AZ Department of Education emailed me and asked me if I would give a workshop this summer on using technology to teach math, and I jumped at the chance!

I, however, did not write up the introduction to my workshop, as you can see below:

I am actually teaching more than the Livescribe Pulse smartpen in my 3 1/2 hours.   I am also going to focus on Animationish (FableVision) and Workspace (eInstruction), along with showing Jing and Google apps.    I hope to have time to share a little about Hyperstudio5 as well!

Here is a link to the conference details:

Arizona Career and Technical Education Conference 2010

Hopefully I will see some of you there!

 

Animation-ish Tutorials by Kestrel

May 22nd 2010 Posted at Animationish, Math Projects, Mathcast
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In a previous post I showed some of the animations my students made using Animation-ish, a wonderful software application created by FableVision.   All the artwork done inside the program was created by Peter H. Reynolds, author of The Dot and Ish (and many other great stories) and illustrator of the Judy Moody series.

In this post I thought I would share some tutorials for the program done by my son, along with some of the projects he created with it.   I hope this will give you some ideas for your own students on how to incorporate Animation-ish in your classroom.

Kestrel had just turned 13 when I had him come teach my college class: Math For Elementary Teachers, how to use Animation-ish.  He did an amazing job and my future teachers had their eyes opened to the fact that the students they will be teaching will have more computer skills than most of them!

The first video tutorial he created was on how to add sound to an Animation-ish movie (Make sure your sound is on!):

He also created a tutorial on using the “move” tool:

He created a tutorial on animating the background, to make it look like the object is moving:

In his latest tutorial, he teaches how to use some of the animation buttons:

PROJECTS:

He was asked to create an Animation-ish animation for two projects.   The first is a website called the Peace Dragon.  It is an amazing site, and great place to have students post their peace projects!

The other project Kestrel worked on was a submission to World Problem Solvers Agency by Peter H. Reynolds, where children create ideas on how to solve some of the world’s problems.  Here is Kestrel’s Animation-ish video:

 

Students Having FUN with Math!

April 17th 2010 Posted at Animationish, Math Projects, Software
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My great friends at FableVision Learning introduced me to the most FUN program I have ever played with:  Animationish!

If you have read the children’s books “The Dot” or “Ish”, both written and illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds, then this program will look quite familiar!  In his book, “Ish”, his goal is to teach children they don’t need to worry about drawing perfectly , just something  tree-ish, or boat-ish.  It is a wonderful story with a great message!  I love his illustrations as well!   Back to my point…Peter is also the founder of FableVision, the educational media company that created Animation-ish.   As you might have guessed, the program is used to easily teach children and adults to animate “ishly”.  All the button are whimsically drawn by Peter and the program helps even the most creativity-challenged become very creative!  Just ask my students!

For my Math For Elementary Teachers course, I always have the students write their own story problems.   This past year I took it one step further.  My 13 year old son came to my classes and taught my students to use Animationish.   They were very impressed that a 13 year old could easily teach them how to use it!     Their project was to write a story problem, create a story board, and then animate their story using the Free trail (15 day) of Animationish.      Their projects were AMAZING!!

This is the first time in my 23 years teaching that every single student (without exception) not only did the project, but did an amazing job on it!  Everyone actually earned 100%!   I got their permission to create a website to post their animations on the web.   Check them out!

I would HIGHLY recommend downloading their free trial and playing with it – you will love it, too!  The school my children go to has Animationish on every computer, where teachers use the program to make every subject more fun.   Kids are animating stories they write, math problems, scenes from history, biology cycles, etc.  The only limit is your imagination.