Teaching Math with Technology

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

Posts Tagged ‘projects’

Summer Projects for Visual and Interactive Math

May 20th 2011 Posted at Algebra, Camtasia, education, GeoGebra, GeoGebra, HyperStudio, Interactive Projects, Livescribe, Livescribe, Math Projects, Mathematica, Photoshop, Teaching, TechFriends(Geeks), WolframAlpha
2 Comments

Visual Interactive Learning
I have been sitting here staring at my computer for the past week since I got back from an amazing time with a room full of extremely innovative teachers in San Francisco as part of the Livescribe Educational Advisory Board.

I keep staring at it not being able to decide where to start!  I have so many new ideas that I want to implement for the Fall, and now I have even more resourceful people to guide me when I get stuck!

Some of the big ones on my list I have already started working with, but I want to dig deeper and create projects for my students to interact with, and also projects for them to create:

Hyperstudio5 (Roger Wagner will be at ISTE this summer, so that will be fun!)
GeoGebra
Camtasia
Livescribe (new cool stuff coming next week!!)

The newest application I want to learn:

I have been playing with WolframAlpha for the past year, but I recently purchased Mathematica and I am excited to see what I can create with it! My goal is to create visual and interactive materials for Algebra and Geometry.    I will post as soon as I start building!  I am still watching the video tutorials for now.   I want to look further into the following links as well:

Wolfram Research STEM Initiative

Wolfram Faculty Program

Lastly, I NEED to learn Photoshop.   My oldest son currently creates all of my artwork for my projects, but in a few years he will be off to college and won’t be around to help me!

Hopefully between spending time with my family and attending ISTE and HI-TEC this summer, I will be able to dig deeper and create some projects for next Fall using some of these great interactive applications!

 

I Made My First Interactive GeoGebra Applet!

December 29th 2010 Posted at Algebra, education, GeoGebra, Math Projects, online tools, Software, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks), Technology
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Logo taken from the GeoGebra website – holiday version!

I have met several people in the past year (some only virtually) who have convinced me that learning GeoGebra would be a great addition to my tech tools for teaching mathematics. Since GeoGebra is FREE, it makes it an even better resource as a teacher and tech ed consultant, and also for student projects as well! Geometry is one of my favorite subjects to teach;  in the past I used Geometer’s Sketchpad, but in the future I plan on using GeoGebra!

I believe WordPress is not allowing me to directly embed the <applet> Javascript code for my first GeoGebra applet, so I created a new set of webpages on my Tech4MathEd site where I will be posting all of the GeoGebra applets I create.   I am just learning, so there is only 1 there now :)

To see my first interactive GeoGebra applet, which helps students understand graphing a line using the slope-intercept form of the line by interacting with the graph, go to  Slope Intercept GeoGebra Applet.

I am really looking forward to using GeoGebra, not only to create interactive applets for my Algebra students, but also to help my Math For Elementary Teacher classes learn more about Geometry!

To download  and start playing with GeoGebra, go to:  download GeoGebra

Image of my interactive applet:

 

Animation-ish Tutorials by Kestrel

May 22nd 2010 Posted at Animationish, Math Projects, Mathcast
1 Comment

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: