Several years ago I began my lifelong dream of learning to play the acoustic guitar. More recently, I added learning bass guitar to my music journey.
I am fascinated by the connections I am seeing between math and music and want to share my findings. I will be adding new content to this blog, which will include topics related to music, math, and teaching music with technology.
Join me on my mathematically musical adventure.
Schools across Arizona (and the world) are shutting down this week and requiring their instructors to take their courses online. For those who have never taught online, this could prove to be an overwhelming task to accomplish in such a short time. I want to suggest a way for both teachers and students to still feel engaged, while having to be separated physically.
Many teachers are turning to apps like Zoom and Skype to teach their classes. I want to offer another alternative for office hours and social weekly gatherings for your classes. Many students have never taken an online course and the lack of social interaction could be very detrimental for them. I suggest hosting office hours and possibly weekly gatherings in Virtual Reality (VR), where both the students and the teacher are “present” and can feel more engaged. During this time, teachers can answer student questions, without having to learn to use or even teach in virtual reality. The sense of presence is far more effective in VR than through video conferencing. Many free VR apps like ENGAGE (https://engagevr.io/), Rumii (https://www.dogheadsimulations.com/) and Altspace VR (https://altvr.com/) can be accessed in 2D on a Windows computer (or a Mac running a Windows emulator) for those who do not own a VR headset (which is most people at the present time). *I updated this post because I was just told by Mat Chacon (CEO of dogheadsimulations) that Rumii works directly on a Mac and on an Android phone.
Even in 2D, the sense of presence is very real, as you are actually able to move around and view the room from all angles.
I am sharing an article I recently came across that lists VR apps you might want to look into if needing to work or teach remotely for a while.
https://www.roadtovr.com/vr-apps-work-from-home-remote-office-design-review-training-education-cad-telepresence-wfh/?fbclid=IwAR0icKr3gwFIRXvRXI_zACgSuGCH4rB94gCGp_Okgwysi126YYLUPBJKQMg
I am happy to help out anyone wanting to get started in ENGAGE or AltSpaceVR, as I know those platforms pretty well. I am learning more about Rumii as well, and soon will be able to help there, too.
For the past few years I have been focusing on creating professional videos using Camtasia. Yesterday I stumbled upon the platform Engage for teaching lessons in virtual reality. I am really excited to explore teaching in the VR environment! I have reached out to the company to see if I can create a library of math videos in this virtual platform. I will keep you posted!
It has been over 2 years now since I retired from teaching. I taught math for 29 years with a passion for utilizing the newest and most effective technology. I bought most of the technology I used in my classrooms (and outside of them) with my own money so I could always be on the forefront, and could use it every day in my classes. Waiting until my college or district could check out the technology, then approve it for me, took too long for my taste. I actually had a side job to earn money just for this purpose!
Well, my home office is now FULL of that technology. All of it is in excellent condition, but most of it is not getting used, which is quite sad! I now do a lot of consulting from my home office, so I use some of it, but the items that were perfect for inside the classroom are just sitting around collecting dust. I have decided it is time to “clean house” and try to get those items into the hands of folks who will use them again. *Update – I donated many of the items shown here to two of my children’s previous teachers.
For many years I was an avid user of eInstruction’s mobile interactive white boards – MOBIs (and I still am). I have a classroom set of 6 Mobis that my students would use to share their group work with the class from. While they are not brand new, they are still in great condition. The students really enjoyed being able to participate from their desks. I placed a color tab on the edge so I could refer to a group by color. The photo above shows the “purple” Mobi. Many students admitted that they preferred being able to participate from their desk and not have to go to the board. The screen I was projecting their work to could be split up so I was able to show one group’s work, or all 6 at once.
These Mobis can also be used to teach from, as well. I disliked being stuck at the front of the classroom at the board, so instead, I would connect a MOBI to the my computer and then I was free to teach from anywhere in the room. This was especially helpful when students were in groups, as I could walk around helping and also writing something helpful for all students on the projected board from anywhere.
I did prefer to use an eInstruction MOBIVIEW to teach from, instead.
The main difference between the learner MOBI and the MOBIVIEW is that the MOBIVIEW has a large touchscreen that can be used to run student clickers as well as their learner MOBIs.
I have been asked about help for writing assignments. I am able to help with math assignments, but I have a guest blogger letting you know about a service he recommends for writing.
Guest Blog Post by: Vineet Maheshwari
In the US and the UK, academic writing has always been considered as an essential part of higher education. Modern students of all academic levels are assigned tons of written assignments that account for the most part of student grade in practically all classes. Students live under great pressure trying to complete several college papers every semester: essays on various topics, term papers, business plans, literature reviews, research proposals, etc., and the final most complex task – a dissertation. Where can you find time to complete them all and meet extremely tough deadlines, especially if your writing skills are far from perfect, or English is not your native language?
Due to digital technologies, today’s students can use innovative ways to solve their problems and to get professional assistance with their huge amount of coursework on numerous essay writing websites, the so-called custom paper writing services. For example, if you struggle with your arduous assignment and are afraid to fail, you can easily get high-quality paper writing help on paperwritinghelp.net, a well-known website among students that provides affordable sample papers for money, or you can buy a model paper on some other good site that offers essays for sale.
You can find a lot of such sites on the web practically in no time if you type a request ‘write my essay’ or ‘buy essays for cheap’ and use Google search. The number of online essay writing services has skyrocketed in the recent years, and now there are special sites that post reviews and rate custom writing companies so you can find information about the quality of their services that will help you decide which company you can trust.
It would be too risky to deal with the cheapest service. You should choose among sites with top ratings. First of all, you should browse these websites, analyze what they offer, what guarantees they provide, what writers they hire, look through their samples, compare their prices, and only then make a decision what option is the best for you. You may also join some student forums where they discuss online writing agencies and share their experience of using them to improve their grades and choose some of the sites recommended by the students.
What Kind of Paper You Get When You Pay for Professional Paper Writing Help Online
*The words in this post do not reflect my opinion on writing services; they are solely the words and ideas of the guest blogger.
As many of you know, I retired from teaching full time in May 2015. Since then I have started a new business.
The business is on my own and related to teaching. At www.ondemandcurriculum.com my mission is to help students, teachers, parents, and anyone needing help in math, by creating a personalized video or interactive to help them understand the concept in a manner that is best suited to their learning style. I also have been creating digital media to enhance ebooks for major textbook companies. This also fits my mission of helping students understand and visualize math concepts.
In closing, I want to stress that retirement does not mean staying home and doing nothing for me, but instead it gives me the opportunity to focus on things that I have a passion for: helping others through digital media creation, sailing, introducing others to sailing, and just having fun on the water with family and friends!
Since Livescribe took down the Echo community site where I had over 500 pencasts stored, I have completely quit using their product. Instead, I now use a much better product, which is a free app on my iPad called Doceri.
Doceri allows you to use colors (any color and any size), highlighters, graphics, and the best part is you can edit your writing!
I had created a work-around using my smartpen to place the test below the pencast to write test keys, but that was cumbersome and is no longer possible.
Here is a video where I took a screenshot to answer a student’s question and then wrote over the document using Doceri on my iPad to create an animation/video to answer their question.
If you don’t want to add sound, then Doceri automatically creates an animation from your writing. However, I strongly recommend adding audio. Once you add audio you can upload the video to YouTube to share with your students. In the near future I will try to find some time to write a How – To post on using Doceri to write test keys.
I just purchased a newer version of the TI graphing calculator emulator, the TI SmartView CE for the TI-84 family. Wow, it is really nice! It has 3 versions of the calculator: The traditional black/white TI-84 Plus version, the new TI-84 Plus C, and TI-84 Plus CE, which are both in color!
The calculator shows up well on the screen, with choices of using a light, dark or having just an outline for the calculator body style.
I have always liked the fact that the emulator will allow the user to make the calculator screen larger. This helps considerably when showing the students live during a class or taking screenshots of the output.
With the added benefit of color, it will help students see the difference more quickly when graphing more than one graph or plot at a time. They have a free 90 day trial if you have not already tried out the new emulator, I would highly suggest it!
I plan on using the new emulator to create tutorials that include the graphing calculator for On Demand Curriculum.
I don’t usually work on printed materials for textbook companies (only digital materials such as videos and Power Points), but several years ago I was asked to create a student workbook. It was a new and interesting experience for me!
Apparently it was revised recently to create a new edition, and it came in the mail. Pretty cool having my name on something! I have created about a thousand professional videos for textbook companies, but they don’t have my name on them. I don’t mind because I really enjoy creating digital media. It allows me to continue teaching students all around the world, and I get to work from anywhere, including my sailboat!
I recently wrote about the video series I created for Pearson, entitled Common Core in Action. I wanted to share one more screen shot from the videos and talk a little bit more about what using Hyperstudio can do to make videos more engaging and visually appealing for students.
Here is a screen shot from the video entitled “Common Core In Action: Adding Fractions”.
The screenshot above is showing the portion of the video where I am adding two fractions with a common denominator of sixths. The sixths are visually represented by purple one-sixth fraction strips.
I used Hyperstudio to create the stage for my video because I can move objects around the stage during the video. In this case, I used the stack of one-sixth strips on the bottom of the screen to show two-sixths plus five-sixths as adding a set of 2 purple one-sixth strips and 5 more purple one-sixth strips to obtain 7 of the purple one-sixth strips.
The point in the video where this screenshot is taken, is where I am showing how the improper fraction seven-sixths, can be turned into a mixed number by bringing a red strip to the stage, which is worth one whole. Lining up the purple one-sixth strips along the edge of the red one-whole strip, I am able to show that 6 of the one-sixth strips are equal in length to the one-whole red strip, leaving me with 1 one-sixth strip left over. Having the ability to move around the fraction strips during the video makes it easier to explain visually why seven-sixths is the same as one and one-sixth.
Using the fraction strips is important to the Common Core Standards for explaining WHY a common denominator is needed when adding fractions, and not just having the student perform an algorithm by showing them “how” to add fractions.
To give you a better idea of what the fraction strips can do for students when I use them in fraction lesson videos, I created a small video where I move around the fraction strips showing how to visualize equivalent fractions. You can see that HERE.
In the screen shot above, I have created all of my fraction strips so that they are relative in size to the red one-whole strip. For example, it takes 2 of the one-half strips to equal the one-whole strip, 3 of the one-third strips, 4 of the one-fourth strips, and 6 of the one-sixth strips. Another reason I use Hyperstudio, rather than real fraction strips and a document camera to create the videos I teach with, is because I can create any size and color fraction strips I want.
If you would like me to create a lesson for you, please send me details about the manipulatives (like fraction strips) you would like me to use, along with desired colors, and I will design and create a personalized video lesson for you, on demand!
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