Teaching Math with Technology

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

Posts Tagged ‘arithmetic’

Learning with Gizmos!

July 19th 2011 Posted at education, Gizmos, Interactive Projects, online tools, STEM, Teaching, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks)
7 Comments

When I was at ISTE this past June, I had the good fortune to visit the Explorelearning booth.   I have seen some of their online math and science interactive simulations (called Gizmos) on their website before, but this time I really wanted to dig deeper.

I obtained a teacher subscription to their full site where I can create classes, and then add the Gizmos I want to each class.  The Gizmos even come with lesson plans and teacher created activities!  You can add your own classroom ideas to a Gizmo as well.

I set up my first class: Math For Elementary Teachers.   I then started adding some Gizmos for my students to view.

On the Explorelearning website the Gizmos are sorted by grade level and topic.   The first one I chose was an interactive lesson on factoring numbers.

A student can start with any number on the board they want, and then start factoring it by dragging the circles that are factors to the board.  There are great “how-to” videos that go with every Gizmo, in case the student (or the teacher) does not understand how to use the simulation.

When a student has run through the simulation as many times as they want, they can take the assessment at the end.   Some questions are visual, based on the Gizmo (like the example below), and some are numerical to see if they can go beyond using the Gizmo.

I will have my pre-service students evaluating and choosing their favorite Gizmos for different areas of Elementary mathematics this Fall semester.  I can’t wait to see their reactions to these amazing math and science simulations!

 

Visual Math – Creating My Own Flash Animations

March 24th 2010 Posted at Flash, Mathcast, Technology
0 Comments

subtracting Fractions

I have been teaching the Math For Elementary Teachers course for about 8 years now.    I love using manipulatives to help the students better understand WHY the “rules” work.   When the class was over, however, they didn’t have anything to look back on to see the manipulatives we used in “action”.   There were drawings and explanations in the textbook, but nothing that would simulate what we had done in class.   So, several years ago I decided to learn Flash so I could create my own animated tutorials to help my students remember the REASON behind the math, and not just the rules!

I learned Dreamweaver at the same time so that I could create a website to house the animations.     I decided to not only house the animations in their respective courses/chapters, but I decided that it would be beneficial to others if I created a separate website as well that housed the animations by topic.

Check out some of my arithmetic animations at:     http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~glascoe/arithmetic/arithmeticindex.htm I am still in the process of creating many more.    Eventually I will also create some that are interactive (where the students can move the objects around).   I have so much technology on my plate right now that I have to keep moving back and forth between projects!   I find it better to have too many passions in life, rather than too few!