DyKnow

DyKnow is a brand of classroom management and interactive educational software that we have gotten to experience in Technology of Instruction. It can be used in a classroom where each student has a computer and is connected to a network. It saves a lot of effort on the part of students because the teacher can send slides to each participant's computer. The students can then take notes on those slides and save them for later. This can help focus their attention on the lesson. The students can send information to the teacher as well. There is a continuous poll for understanding and teachers may create polls or ask open-ended questions on the slide to gather information from the class. One particularly interesting feature is the teacher's ability to freeze all the computers in the classroom and view what is on the screen of each student. This obviously improves attention and accountability.

DyKnow is good for computer classes, but I don't think I would ever use it in math simply because of the lack of computers in the classroom. However, if all my students in a class had networked computers, I might try it. It would be useful for giving examples for the students to work on and assessing their comprehension. If for nothing else, I would use it to see how well the students understood the lesson through the polling feature.

Pascal's Triangle

Educational Podcasting

1) What is a podcast?


A Podcast is an audiofile that you can download from the Internet and transfer to your mp3 device. Podcasts are usually someone speaking about a subject and can include radio or news. The technology is not limited by time, so podcasts can be anywhere from a couple seconds to hours long. In order to make a podcast you need a microphone and recording software. Podcasting is different from an audio blog because it uses feeds and podcasting software.
(taking form gonepodcasting slide show in the network folder)


2)What podcasts have you found that are of interest to your discipline?


http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Science/Mathematics/Calculus-Podcast/31559/

This was podcast of a Berkeley Calculus class by F. Michael Christ. It covers material on functions of one variable at an introductory level.



http://www.mathgrad.com/

The mathgrad website gives 21 podcast shows and was created by a Colorado University Grad student on topics such as probability, complex numbers, and mapping.



http://www.mathfactor.uark.edu/

The mathfactor website has been running such 2004 and is also on the FM radio. It is a blogging website that contains math podcasts for each post. The most recent podcast post is about the book Mathletics.

3) We will be able to use podcasting in our future classroom in two ways.

Firstly podcasting will be a useful tool for the purpose of homework help. If students are having difficulty with homework problems we can give them podcasts that helps to take them step-by-step through the problem.

Secondly, we will be able to use podcasting as a way to get absent students caught up. Math is one of the subjects that is continually building on prior concepts that students have learned. This makes it extremely easy for students to get behind or become lost with even missing one day of class. Podcasting supplies a simply answer to this problem by allowing teachers to make a podcast of their whole lecture that they can put up online for students who have been absent to be able to listen to in order to avoid getting behind.

Mathematica

This week I am going to take the time to talk about Mathematica. Mathematica is a computer software program that is used to compute, graph, and simplify mathematical equations. It is used in most of the math classes here at Grove City College as a way to aid students in solving equations and graphing object that otherwise would be almost impossible by hand. It is an interactive way for students to learn about math principles. Mathematica has many useful properties such as its basic math assistant that is a tool bar that you can bring up which has all of the basic mathematical symbols and important functions such as trig functions and log fuctions as well as integration and derivative to name a few. Mathematica also has a help tab that takes you to a documentation center. This is by far one of the best tools that mathematica has. It helps you be able to look up how to write any mathematical phrase that you could possibly need in a language that mathematica can understand.

Although mathematica is used mostly at a college level, it will be very useful in my future classroom as a visual aid. With the help of mathematica I can easily show an accurate graph of what functions or principles that we are learning about. For instance if we are learning about equations for different curves and what part of the equation changes the amplitude or which part shifts the equation and which way does that shift happen, I review the material by putting up a graph, using mathematica, of the standard form of the equation in question. Then i could easily change the equation of the curve in the mathematica code and ask the students to predict what will happen [if i for instance change the equation y=x^2 to y=(x-4)^2] and then enter in the changed data and let the students see first hand how the graph changes. This will save a great deal of time of having the teacher graphing equations on the board as well as provide an interactive way for students to learn mathematical principles.

iCommunicator 5.0

On the textbook website in chapter 2, in the Assistive Technologies Corner, there is a link to a page all about iCommunicator 5.0, which is an amazing software program that converts speech to text or video sign language. This technology is for helping people with hearing disabilities. The page is the iCommunicator website, and it is a really useful tool for finding out everything you would want to know about this technology. There is a video presentation right on the opening page, and tabs on the top banner that take me to different pages within the website. People wishing to purchase this software can even do so right on this website! The great thing about this product is that it works both ways. You can translate speech to text/video, or text to computer-speech.

The iCommunicator would be a useful tool to have in my classroom if I had a deaf student. However, I believe that it would be even more useful in an elementary class or a secondary English classroom. I probably will not be making my math students write too many papers, but they will need to be able to use technologies in my classroom. I am aware the the software has a built-in thesaurus and dictionary, however I would be interested in contacting the manufacturers to see whether or not it has an equation editor within it, so that students can use math speech and have that be translated into equations. The new technologies being developed to assist in special education are astounding to me! I cannot wait to see what the future holds for further development, because I want to be knowledgeable about the best ways to help my special needs students have a great learning experience.

Banning Cell Phones in School

The main concern of this portion of the section of the book is discussing the growing problems of cell phones in the classroom. It is seems that students are capable of displaying etiquette in other areas of their lives at school, such as raising their hands in class to talk and not cutting in the lunch line, but this etiquette doesn't appear to transfer to the students new and most valuable possession...their cell phones. The main problem with this is that cell phones are answered during classes, meetings, and lectures without a second thought. This causes a problem because it is hard for people to filter out a one way conversion and causes a major distraction. Cell phones have even been utilized to start fights in schools and other forms of disturbances.

In my opinion cell phones in schools are a necessary evil. The reason for this being that a lot of kids do need their cell phones to communicate with parents about after school activities, however there is a way to avoid cell phone abuse by students. This can be done by having students leave cell phones in their lockers and turn them off so that they are capable of using them for after school plans. This could be a good compromise because they still get to have them but just not have them as a distraction during the school day. In addition to turning off their phones there should also be cell phone etiquette rules posted in the school rules on the proper cell phone use in and out of the classroom. This can help to further prevent and control inappropriate cell phone use.

Search Engines

(from Chapter 2, Teaching Today #2)

You have started using the computer lab to work on classroom projects with your digital students, which is a great opportunity for all students to get hands-on experiences with different technologies. Scanners, videos, CDs, DVDs, and many other technologies are available from which to choose. Students also can access the Internet. Managing your students in the lab while they explore these different technologies is a challenge. You decide to design a project so your students will work in groups to research a famous person in history. Before students begin their research your might reflect on the following questions: Do students need guidance on how to use a search engine to perform a proper search? Do they need help to avoid getting lost using the various technologies? Do they understand that asking the correct question or questions is an important part of the solution for finding the correct answer? What about searching reference materials? Are students using primary and secondary resources? How can I design research projects that go beyond the standard writing of a paper to engage your digital students in using many different types of technologies in a collaborative way?

It is important that students know how to use search engines properly before they begin to gather information from the Internet. If I assigned them such a project, I would take part of the period to explain the assignment and then the rest to show them how to use search engines to find reliable information. First, I would go over the differences between primary and secondary source material and how each should be viewed. Then I would list some indicators of scholarly and non-scholarly sources, for instance authorship, tone, and citation. I would then guide them through the types of websites they should look for and, if available, introduce them to databases of scholarly work. Showing them how to use these would likely take significantly longer than explaining Google, with which they would probably generally be familiar. Once the class understood how to find and identify reliable sources, I would go over basic search tips: using quotation marks for exact phrases, trying synonyms, and trying various search engines. During the project, I would have groups of students collaborate by having them divide up the areas of research, but assisting each other when anyone was unable to find information on his or her assigned topic. This would help them to discover for themselves and share search skills and strategies which they could then use later on.

Math in everyday life

For this blog I am examining an article that I found on the website associated with my text book for my Technologies of Instruction Class, http://www.learner.org/interactives/dailymath/. This article talks about the universality of math. It points out that it makes sense, when you stop to think about it, that math can be used in such a variety of different real world situations from decorating a room or buying some groceries to flying a plane. Math is a necessary part of life, because we did not invent math but merely discovered it. Also the fact that math deals with numbers makes it possible for it to span across language barriers. The main examples that this website goes through is math's usefulness in making a budget for shopping or remodeling a home, to buy the right insurance, to understand population growth, or even to understand which horse would have the best chance of winning a race.
The concept of the real world applications of math is very important in my future classroom because it is proven that students who understand why they are learning certain information and how it can be useful in their future and everyday lives tend to be more motivated in that class.

A Time Line of Mathematicians

The School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland operates a website called The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. Here they provide thousands of biographies of mathematicians throughout history, from the 17th century B.C. to present. A more user-friendly page, A Time Line of Mathematicians, provides a visual representation of the most important mathematicians and shows how their lifetimes overlapped. This can be an interesting way for students who don't want too many details to see an overview of the history of mathematics and compare when the most important researchers were alive. I would use this in class, when mentioning significant mathematicians, to better explain to my students just when they were alive.

Textbook Website: Math Anxiety Self Test

On the textbook website in the Chapter 2 Integration Corner, there is a section within the Math Corner entitled Math Anxiety Self Test. It is a link to a small page that has a 10 question quiz for math students. The quiz is only a page and it is not interactive. The students taking the quiz could easily scroll to the bottom of the page to immediately see what their scores mean, and could therefore change the scores after they see what they mean. The page also looks boring, and some of the text is off-center with the graphic and the rest of the text. I think that this anxiety quiz is a good idea, but maybe could have been done better.



The quiz would be useful, especially for math students, because children often approach mathematics with an unresolved fear or anxiety. I'm not sure if their fear comes from their own lack of confidence in math classrooms, or from listening to other people's fears. Regardless, I'm not sure if this quiz would be the best idea for my classroom or not. Although it would be good for me as a teacher to know how my students are feeling, the quiz might intimidate my students even more. What would keep the students from lying on the quiz because they are embarrassed? The best thing about this quiz is that if students score low on it (meaning they are anxious), there is a hyperlink to a page called "Ten Ways to Reduce Math Anxiety." This page is colorful, and gives students 10 tips to overcome their fears of math problems. I would definitely be able to use this page in my future math classroom if it seems as if my students are struggling.

Advanced Grapher

A new tool that can be utilized by advanced math students is new software called Advanced Grapher. This software can be used by students and teachers to graph complicated trigonometric functions by using their equation or by using tables to graph. The Advanced Grapher also has a tool called regression analysis, which is curve fitting. Advanced Grapher also allows a student to be able to graph 100 graphs on one document, it is easy to install, and it also allows the user to be able to use graphs that are already stored in the software within the graphs gallery. Also there are stylistic features that are very useful in making the graphing process easier on it's students. For example student are capable of changing the color of the lines, the width, and the style of the lines. The Advanced Grapher software works on Windows 95 and higher.

The Advanced Grapher software could be utilized in the classroom by students and teachers when working on projects involving graphing especially in Pre-Calculus classes and Calculus classes where graphing trigonometric functions becomes more complicated. However it can also be used by Algebra students so that the students can learn and see where and how you find the slope of a line and what equation is best to use when graphing binomials and trinomials.