Archive for Software

Mapping my Syllabus (again)

July 31, 2011 education, iPad applications, Math Projects, mindmapping, MindMeister, Mindmeister, Software, Teaching, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks), Technology One comment

I am rewriting a blog post from a year ago…

Last year I used a mindmap of my course syllabus to show them an example of mapping out something.  They will be mapping out at least one unit and bringing in new resources to share with the rest of the class this semester, so I decided to update my MindMeister mindmap to go with the new syllabus

Here is a link to the actual mindmap if you cannot see it above.

I will also be creating several other project samples for the students using the course syllabus – stay tuned!

 

Did I mention that MindMeister has an iPad app?!!

 

Summer Projects for Visual and Interactive Math

May 20, 2011 Algebra, Camtasia, education, GeoGebra, GeoGebra, HyperStudio, Interactive Projects, Livescribe, Livescribe, Math Projects, Mathematica, Photoshop, Teaching, TechFriends(Geeks), WolframAlpha 3 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!

 

Writing Math in Windows 7!

April 21, 2011 Algebra, Assistive Technology, education, handwriting math, Helping students, Math Input Panel, Math Projects, Teaching, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks), Technology, Windows7 2 comments

I was so excited to see a new window show up when I upgraded to Windows 7…it is called the Math Input Panel.  With a name like that I had to be excited before even trying it out!

 

I immediately started playing with it and was surprised and VERY happy to see how easy it was to handwrite math and have it insert the typed version into my Word document!  It does not always pick the correct letter or number, but you can easily edit an individual symbol.

 

I have tried writing some algebra, and it does a great job with that as well!


 

I am excited to see more tools for my students to be able to use to ‘write” math on their computers as well.   Although Word comes with Equation Editor, my students do not know how to use it.    Now, students can easily handwrite their math problems and have them typed up!

For students with disabilities – or anyone who wants to have the math read out loud to them, Word can then take the file that has the math equations embedded  and be saved as a MathXL document.   MathPlayer should then be able to read the math out loud….I will try that next and see how it works out!

 

Creating INTERACTIVE activities with HyperStudio5!

April 13, 2011 Algebra, education, HyperStudio, Interactive Projects, Math Projects, Mathcast, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks) 2 comments

Link to the official Hyperstudio website

In my spare time (ha ha) I have been playing with Roger Wagner’s Hyperstudio 5.   (Luckily Roger Wagner himself has been helping me!!)  What a fun program!    My goal is to create more INTERACTIVE activities and tutorials/videos for my students, without all the work of Flash.   Hyperstudio fits that goal amazingly well!   It is similar to PowerPoint, but far more incredible in my book!

I “finished” my first final draft (I keep “fixing it” so it is forever in draft mode) of an interactive tutorial on introducing combinations and counting, and posted the project on a new area of my website with the button “HyperStudio Projects”.

Before clicking on the link below that will take you to the Hyperstudio stack, you must first make sure you are using either Safari or Internet Explorer, because these are the only browsers that have the Hyperstudio web-brower add-on for now.   To get the browser add-on, go to:  http://www.mackiev.com/support_hs.html , click on the proper computer type, then get the browser add-in for either Safari or Internet Explorer, then you will be able to view and PLAY WITH the activity.

Here is the direct link to my first project: http://www.tech4mathed.com/HyperStudio/IceCream_SG.html

If you have the browser add-on correctly installed you should see the following screen:

Once the stack is finished loading, the screen should look like:

Now you are ready to click on “go to STORY”.

I created the story like a video, and I narrated every screen, so you can  hear the narration if you click on the button. The audio level needs some work, some of the narration is too quiet and I will need to redo those sections.  The most fun part of it, however, is the INTERACTIVITY that was easy to create!

In this activity, I created an Ice Cream Playground, where you can actually move around all the objects on the page to explore and find the answer before viewing the explanation of the solution.  My 14 year old son did all of the artwork for me!   It is wonderful having a live-in artist on hand!

Please give it a try and let me know what I can do to make it more interesting for my students.   I also need to know if you are able to view it on a Mac and on a Windows machine.  Some Windows machines can view it and some cannot, so I am trying to trouble-shoot which versions of Windows have difficulty to help find a fix for that.

I am excited to make more projects and play with Hyperstudio!

 

 

Training My Dragon!

April 9, 2011 Algebra, Assistive Technology, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, education, Livescribe, Mathcast, MathType, MyScript, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks) 9 comments

Dragon Naturally Speaking Web Link

 

I have started on a quest to make math more accessible!   I recently purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Premium ver 11.0.   It just came today and I have been playing with it to train it to trancribe my voice.     So far it has  done a great job in Word, but then I decided to have it transcribe the audio file from the Livescribe pencast below.

Link to pencast

 

When the pencast is still on your desktop, you can export the audio separately.  I then imported the audio file directly into Dragon and the original transcipt is shown below (I just cropped a small part of the transcript for you to see).  I still have a lot of “training” on Dragon to do, but it didn’t do a bad job for the first try!  It certainly has potential to help create a transcript for my pencasts for students who need one.


(click on the image to see a larger version of the text)

Livescribe also has transcription software you can purchase called “MyScript”.  Here is a link to the software.   It has some difficulty transcribing the math, but here is the first pass it made:

(click on the image to see a larger version of the text)

My next task it to to learn to use MathType,

together with Dragon, to create equations that can be read aloud for students.   I will post when I make some progress there.  🙂

 

Students Learning -AND having fun!

February 7, 2011 Algebra, education, eInstruction Interwrite Workspace, Group Work, Mobi, Student participation, Teaching, Technology Comments Off on Students Learning -AND having fun!

Today in class I passed out the Mobis!

I have had my students sitting in groups since the first day of class, but today I thought I would add more interaction and have them contribute to the board notes.   There were 8 groups, and I have 4 Mobis.    After putting a problem on the board (computer screen, writing with the Mobi and using software called Interwrite Workspace), I would give 4 groups each a Mobi and have someone from the group post their group’s solution.  At first no one wanted to try it, but after a short time, they were all wanting to have a chance to write with the Mobi!

Some of the students had more fun than others – drawing pictures and fooling around on the screen, but it was OK because they were ENGAGED!

The first four groups would hand off their Mobi to the other four groups and we would work another problem.


I have to admit, some students were able to write using the Mobi better than I can, and I have practiced longer!  You have to look at the screen while writing on the Mobi  – a little challenging at first.   For their first day, they did a great job!

They have really embraced the technology I use in class, starting with having 2 students take notes with Livescribe pens to share with the class on the website.

In a week or two I will introduce the clickers!

 

Off To A Great Semester With Technology!

January 22, 2011 Algebra, education, eInstruction Interwrite Workspace, Helping students, Livescribe, Livescribe, Mathcast, Mobi, Pulse smartpen, SnagIt, Student participation, Teaching, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks) One comment

A new semester has begun and I have added a few new ways to help my students succeed.

  1. I borrowed my colleague’s idea to have 2 students take notes during every class using a Livescribe smartpen.  I then upload the notes to their class website, and post a link  in the calendar on the day the notes were taken.

I created a webpage to house the daily notes for each chapter, starting with our first chapter:  Chapter 9

2.  I use a Mobi (from eInstruction) to present the lesson from anywhere in the room.   An especially nice feature of the Mobi software, called Workspace, is that I can save the board notes and export them to a PDF file.  I place on link in the calendar to the board lesson on the day the lesson was given.

*to see the actual board notes, you must go to the calendar and click on “board notes”, since they are an attached PDF file, I cannot link to it here.

3.  The students use an online program to do their homework, which sends me a screen shot when they need help on a particular problem.  Instead of trying to type back a response to them, I fully explain their solution using a Livescribe smartpen.  I then send them the link to the pencast, and I also created a webpage to house all solutions to student homework questions.

*here is the link to the page that contains all the homework solutions

Here is one of the solutions I wrote to my students just today:

SimplyNegativeExponentsEx2
brought to you by Livescribe
…
This is just the first week of class, and the students have shown a positive reaction to these extra support features I have included on my website for them.   I look forward to seeing how the semester progresses!
…
*To see more of my college website go to:  Glascoe College Website .  I built the website using Dreamweaver.
…
*All screenshots were taken using TechSmith Snagit
…

 

I Made My First Interactive GeoGebra Applet!

December 29, 2010 Algebra, education, GeoGebra, Math Projects, online tools, Software, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks), Technology 4 comments

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:

 

Mobile Whiteboards, Smartpens and Bloom’s Taxonomy

October 3, 2010 Conferences, eInstruction Interwrite Workspace, Group Work, Livescribe, Livescribe, Mathcast, Mobi, Presentations, Pulse smartpen, Student participation, Technology, Training Comments Off on Mobile Whiteboards, Smartpens and Bloom’s Taxonomy

What do mobile whiteboards, smartpens and Bloom’s Taxonomy have in common?   A great all-day workshop teaching high school teachers, and their students who are in a teacher education program, how to use mobile whiteboards and smartpens through the use of a hands-on project that focused on Bloom’s Taxonomy!

We started the day learning about Hybrid versus Blended teaching models, and then I introduced the Mobi, a mobile interactive whiteboard made my eInstruction.

Next up was a discussion about Bloom’s taxonomy.

Then, to get them ready to do their first project, we played “Blooms Taxonomy According to  Pirates of the Caribbean”:

I introduced them to the Livescribe Pulse smartpen and another colleague showed them how to draw stick figures so they could create a cartoon based on the pop culture area of their choice for the Bloom’s Taxonomy level their group was in charge of.

They had a great time creating their first cartoon strip and adding sound with the Livescribe Pulse smartpen!   After lunch I gave them a lesson on using the Mobi, eInsruction’s mobile interactive whiteboard.      Each group got a Mobi to use to recreate their cartoon on the Workspace software installed on their computer.   This time they could add color and crop images for their characters and turn it into a movie.

At the end of the workshop, we shared everyone’s finished products on the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy

We had a great time watching each other’s final projects! I had a lot of fun teaching with several of my colleagues for the ATLAST program, which stands for: Achieving Technological Literacy in Arizona Students and Teachers.

ATLAST is a project supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The performing unit is the National Center for Teacher Education (NCTE) in the Maricopa County Community College District. To learn more about the ATLAST project click here.


Clip to Evernote

 

How to Teach with a Broken Foot

October 1, 2010 eInstruction Interwrite Workspace, Mathcast, Mobi, Technology One comment

image taken from: http://www.footdoc.ca/www.FootDoc.ca/Website%20Metatarsalgia.htm

Somehow I managed to fracture the 2nd metatarsal (OK the image is NOT my foot, since the arrow is pointing to the 3rd metatarsal)  in my left foot the first day of class!  I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it, so after the first week I went to Urgent Care.  They couldn’t see anything, so I kept walking on it for another 2 weeks.   Finally I went to a podiatrist who saw on both the original x-ray and the new ones he took that I had a fracture that was getting worse.   He put me in a soft boot cast and crutches.

As time went on it became harder to walk and stand, but luckily, once I got into my classroom each hour, teaching was easy and still fun….I was SO glad I had my eInstruction Mobi!    If it wasn’t for my Mobi, I would not have been able to teach my classes these past 5 1/2 weeks!

I had a very difficult time getting to my classes (in three different buildings on campus) but once there, I could sit anywhere in the room (usually right with the students) and teach from my chair with my foot up!  I could interact with any program on the computer, and write all my examples on the board….without having to stand or walk during class!

Picture the teacher in this photo sitting down, with a cast on her foot, resting her foot on a chair….that would be me!

I would have continued teaching this way (and will for sure when I return), but I was forced to go on medical leave, as the walking from class to class (building to building) was just too much for my foot.

I will miss my students, and I KNOW they will miss learning with the help of great technology!

 
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