Archive for TechFriends(Geeks)

Learning with Gizmos!

July 19, 2011 education, Gizmos, Interactive Projects, online tools, STEM, Teaching, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks) 10 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!

 

Help For My Autistic Great-Nephew

July 10, 2011 Assistive Technology, Autism, FableVision, iPad applications, Livescribe, Livescribe, TechFriends(Geeks), Technology 3 comments

 Helping Children and Adults with Autism

Link to the video I’m Here (if it does not show up above)

“This short film, based on an original story and art by Peter H. Reynolds and produced by FableVision, movingly conveys the loneliness a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder often experiences, and the life-changing effect each of us can have in breaking through that solitude.FableVision created the film for SARRC (Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center).

FableVision CEO Peter H. Reynolds, NY Times best-selling children’s author/illustrator, illustrated the film. The film includes a powerful musical score by Ruth Mendelson. “I’m Here” is the precursor to the film and book “Wings of EPOH.” Both products are co-published by FableVision and SARRC.

Information: http://www.fablevision.com/wingsofepoh/index.php  ”
*Taken from the You-Tube video information about “I’m Here”


Personal Experience With Autism

I just got back from spending a great week with my mother, and my siblings and their families, in the beautiful Outer Banks!   My niece was there with her autistic son.   I showed my niece my Livescribe smartpen and what I thought it could do to help her son not only learn his letters and numbers, but also to speak.

I quickly put together a couple of demonstrations for her:

EthanAlphabet
brought to you by Livescribe
EthanNumbers
brought to you by Livescribe

My great-nephew is pretty hard on paper, so  he mostly uses his iPad.    I then showed my niece how her son will be able to view the pencasts on his iPad using the Pencast Player app!   She was very excited to try it out!    We talked about creating pages with just a single word on them with her voice.   This would allow her son to “say” the word when he touched it on his iPad.   Her mind started buzzing with ideas on how to help her son.   She couldn’t wait to show his teachers the smartpen, in hopes it could help other children in his class as well.

The next level of excitement for her came when I showed her the new Livescribe sound dots.   With these dots any sound can be recorded and then the dot can be placed onto any surface.   Her son has several picture books which the dots would be perfect for!   My niece also thought about recording herself reading every page of his favorite books, so he could “read” the book while she was doing her homework.  It would give her son more freedom, but he could still hear her voice!

I sat down that evening and ordered her a Livescribe pen, several sizes of paper and some sticky notes (to use until the sound dots are released).   She is going to allow me to track his progress using the smartpen and report from my blog on it.   My niece will be sending me updates on how he is improving at school and how she is using the pen with him.   I am so excited for her, but especially for her amazing son, who just happens to be Autistic   : )

 

 

 

 

Turning your iPad into a Mobile Interactive White Board!

June 24, 2011 education, Flash, iPad, iPad applications, Teaching, TechFriends(Geeks), Technology 2 comments

I am SO excited!   I download an app today that turned my iPad into a MOBILE interactive white board for $9.99!!  It seemed expensive at first (for an iPad app), but after I downloaded and played with it, and saw that I could even annotate over any screen, and control my computer from anywhere in the room, $9.99 seemed pretty darn cheap!!

The app is called Splashtop Whiteboard.  You can download it through the apple itunes store or learn more about it at the following link:

http://www.splashtop.com/whiteboard

 

I started off by first downloading Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad.  It is great!  I can finally run Flash on my iPad by running my browser through my desktop (or laptop in my case).  You can see a Flash animation I built running on my iPad in the screenshot above.

Then I decided to download the Splashtop Whiteboard app, too.

The iPad screenshot above is of some Flash animations on my website – before using the annotation tools available in the Spashtop Whiteboard app.

If you look at the screenshot below, you will see the annotation tools at the top of the screen.

I can annotate LIVE from my iPad onto my desktop!  If I am teaching a class, I just hook the computer up to the projector (like normal) but now I can walk around the room using my iPad to control my computer and annotate over any program!  If you want to annotate over your screens, then Splashtop Whiteboard is the app for you, but if you only want to be able to remote into your computer using your iPad, then the less expensive Splashtop Remote Desktop app will work perfectly.  You do not need to purchase both of them, though – it appears from my first use of them that the Splashtop Whiteboard does everything the Remote Desktop does, but also allows you to annotate.

I definitely feel like I got my money’s worth on the Whiteboard app!    I can’t wait to try it out in the classroom!!

 

Story Boards for Kids…and Adults!

May 30, 2011 education, Livescribe, Livescribe, story boards, TechFriends(Geeks), writing Comments Off on Story Boards for Kids…and Adults!

A recent trip to San Francisco connected me to some really fantastic teachers with amazing energy and enthusiasm!  Zoe is one such person.    To get to know her better, here is her website:

https://sites.google.com/site/zoebraniganpipe/

She also writes a  blog about smartpen uses:  http://livewithlivescribe.edublogs.org/*
*This site was developed as part of a joint Ministry of education and Ontario Teacher Federation funded project with a focus on teacher learning and professional development. In this project, teachers collaborate and discuss the uses of the Livescribe pen in the classroom.

Her family was lucky enough to make the trip to San Francisco with her, and her 8 year old son created this wonderful storyboard about his adventures in San Francisco using a Livescribe smartpen.  (Thank you Zoe for letting me share your son’s wonderful pencast!)

I think this is a fantastic idea for teachers to use with students who feel like they are not good writers, or don’t know how to get started!   If you have your students make pencasts, please share them with me at tech4mathed.sg@gmail.com

 

1-Subject A5 Notebook 4 p. 50 (click on this link if you cannot see the pencast below)
brought to you by Livescribe
 

Time to Connect!

May 23, 2011 Connect, education, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Google Docs, iPad applications, Livescribe, Livescribe, TechFriends(Geeks) One comment

Livescribe’s newest application CONNECT came out today: Monday May 23, 2011.   A few weeks ago I was part of a media event where Livescribe, Evernote and Google were present to help talk about the new application.

connect (click here to see the pencast on the Livescribe website)
brought to you by Livescribe

 

*click on the arrow in the upper right hand corner to make the pencast full-screen.  The pencast is best viewed with the preview turned OFF:

If the pencast above does not show up on your browser (Firefox seems to work the best) , then click on the link below to open up the actual pencast PDF:

IntroToConnectpencast

You have to click on the link and then it opens another window with only the link in it.  Click on the link again to open the actual PDF pencast.

You must have Adobe PDF Reader X (10 or higher) to see the actual pencast above completely contained in a PDF!

 

THE BIG DEAL ABOUT CONNECT:

  • I believe the most important aspect about Connect is the fact that a pencast can now be completely self-contained in a PDF.  This means that we can finally “own” our pencasts!   This will allow us to house them inside closed systems online or on DVD’s, rather than having to use a link to the actual pencast or embedding what looks like the pencast, while it is still housed on Livescribe’s servers.  This is HUGE!

 

  • I think it is amazing that I can now directly email a student from the dot paper, as soon as I connect my pen to the computer!  No more “uploading” the file and then finding it and sending it.   This will save a lot of time when answering student questions.  When the student opens the email, they will get an attached PDF, rather than a link to the Livescribe website.  The attached PDF will contain the entire pencast, sound and animation, with a play/pause/stop bar!

 

  • I also love the fact that I can directly upload a pencast PDF to GoogleDocs.   I can share a file easily with students or colleagues using GoogleDocs!   At my college, students have access to GoogleApps, so this will be a great new feature to use.

  • Sending to Evernote will be fantastic as well.  I host my ideas and notes from conferences on Evernote to keep them all in one place.   Although Livescribe was “connected” to Evernote before, the file was split into a static PDF and the sound file.   Now, with Connect, you can send the entire pencast PDF directly to Evernote when you dock your smartpen.

 

  • Connect will also send a pencast PDF directly to Facebook, which will be a great way to post your status – with sound and animation!

 

To download the FREE version of connect, go to:  http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/starthere/

To purchase Connect Premium for $14.99 go to the Livescribe store:
http://www.livescribe.com/store/20070723002/p-541.htm

 

*To quickly get the pencast from the paper to all of these new applications you will need to learn about LAUNCH LINES.     My next blog post will teach you how to use this feature of the Livescribe smartpen.

 

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!

 

Making Math More Accessible For ALL Students

April 25, 2011 Assistive Technology, bluetooth headset, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Droid, education, flexT9, Helping students, learning styles, Livescribe, Mathcast, taking notes, Teaching, Teaching Online, TechFriends(Geeks), Technology 5 comments

Reaching Different Learning Styles Through Technology

As you can probably tell, I have 2 passions that drive my teaching….technology and helping students.

My latest journey has been traveling down a path to find ways to help reach the different learning styles of my students. In turn this will help make my math courses more accessible to students who require either text, speech or visual aids because of physical or learning disabilities.

I started with the Livescribe smartpen to turn student notes into animated text with sound.  Then I tried to transcribe the text from the pencast using Dragon Naturally Speaking ,which works GREAT if I am speaking into my computer, but the student pencasts don’t pick up my speaking as well because I am walking around the room, so I am not near the pen most of the time.

Since Dragon cannot transcribe the text WHILE I am teaching from the Mobi software, then I needed to find a way to record my speaking during class and then download it into my computer so Dragon can create the transcript.  I spent some time today looking for options that would not require me purchasing a hand-held recorder.

I have a Plantronics Discovery 975 bluetooth headset that pairs with both my computer and also with my Droid X cell phone.   I use it with my computer and Dragon to ‘speak text’ into many programs on my computer, including Word and email (I still need to try it with MathType!).

I thought I found the perfect mobile solution…to be able to walk around the room and teach while wearing the bluetooth headset, but have the audio transcribe directly onto my phone!  I purchased the Droid version of Dragon called flexT9 …great idea and it works perfectly…except flexT9 does NOT support bluetooth headsets yet.   I can still use it for transcribing speech to text on my phone, but I have to be close to the phone mic.  It is an amazing app for $4.99!

I started looking for a voice recording app for my Droid that would support bluetooth.

I found Voice2Do (FREE).  It is the ONLY voice recorder I found that supports bluetooth.  I recorded a short message from my bluetooth headset to my Droid X (which was across the room) and then emailed it to my computer (to email the .wav file you must purchase the professional version).    Finally, I had Dragon transcribe the audio file and it worked GREAT!

I plan on playing with it for a couple more days and then trying it out in my classes.   My goal is to have the Livescribe pencast student notes and the Workspace board notes for visual learners, but then take the audio for the lesson and create a written transcript, which can also be read out loud by most computers, for students whose learning styles require reading or hearing the information.

I will post a link when I get it all put together.

 

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.  🙂

 
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