I love using games to enrich the curriculum in my classroom. When I had to review for ISTEP I stumbled upon a website that has many math games on it. The website is called math-play.com. Math Play
There is a basketball game on this website that gives the students problems to solve. If they solve them correctly then they can take a three point shot. There are ten questions in total so students can earn up to 30 points. I found the students were really competitive in this game. Each student tried really hard to earn the most points that they could. I found them bragging with one another on what scores they have earned. Even though I find math very fun to teach and learn many students find it very boring. This website allowed me to make learning fun. There are some limitations though. On the second day when I used this I found that many of the questions repeat themselves and students remembered the answers from before so they were basically just playing the three point game instead of solving the problems. Overall though there are many games to choose from on this website. If you are looking to enrich the content you are teaching in math look no further than math-play.com. This is a very great website to incorporate our students competitiveness in education. You will be surprised on how engaged the students become when they play these games. The students I played these games with were the reteach group in my school. We use the eight step process that divides students into three core groups in the academic success class based on data from standards tested. The three groups are the reteach, maintenance, and enrichment groups. The reteach group are the kids who did not learn the standard tested. The maintenance group learned the standard and the enrichment group mastered the standard. I teach the reteach group and feel that the basketball game helped them learned the skills to solve equations. I am very excited to have found this site and use to help educate my students. Give it a look got to Math Play and watch your students shine.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Emerging Technology 2: Teacher Tube
I decided to do my second emerging technology on Teacher Tube. I have heard of it before but never explored it myself. What I found is a website that can be very useful. Since I teach a math class I decided to search for videos that would help me teach math I found some very interesting videos. The first video I found was a video on improper fractions by Mr. Duey. Mr. Duey turned a lesson on math into a rap song. I thought that was very creative so I decided I would show it to my students and see what they thought. After watching they laughed and said it was stupid but the funny part is many of them wanted to watch it again. Eventually they would sing parts of the song so that means that they were learning. They probably said it was stupid because they did not want their friends to know they thought learning could be fun. I wish I was as talented or creative as Mr. Duey. That is why there is teacher tube for teachers to be able to use other teachers creativity for the betterment of their own class. Some of the music videos on math a watched were not as good as the Fraction rap song. I will embed both videos below to show the difference. Either way I love the creativity. But there is more than just videos on teacher tube. You can actually find many documents that contain lesson plans on certain subjects. Teacher Tube has a plethora of material and most importantly it is free. I like how it is setup just like you tube. That mad it easy to navigate around the site and find different kinds of stuff. Just like podcasts I can see having students making videos for teacher tube a very fun project. All I would have to do is get some flip videos for my class and the students could begin making their own educational videos. Given the current economy and the limited amount of money it may be a while before I could obtain the flip videos. Teacher tube if has a blog list that can function like a forum. You can go on their and ask other teachers for ideas or for their help and they can leave you responses answering your questions. Even though Teacher Tube has a extensive amount of educational videos it has an equal amount of other types of media. Teacher Tube is a very useful website.
Mr. Duey's Fraction Rap
Song on two step equations that is hard to understand
Mr. Duey's Fraction Rap
Song on two step equations that is hard to understand
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Module 4-2 Digital literacy
In the beginning of these assignments we were supposed to view the 21 century skills framework and view the standards for technology education. The six standards are creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking, digital citizenship, and technology operations. I was not aware that there were actual standards for technology other than the standards that the state of Indiana has created for technology education. I feel that in my class I encompass all of the standards except one which would be the collaboration standard. All of the projects I do in my class are to be done at the individual level. I need to work to improve in this area as well as the others. The second part of the assignment we were supposed to watch a video of a real life example on the integration of technology and to read an article from edutopia's big list. The video I chose was Hula to High Tech.
I found this video very interesting because it showed what students can do at a early age. Elementary kids were broadcasting a school wide news show. The students ran into technical difficulties and the teacher was relaxed about it. Instead of going into the room to help them solve the problem he allowed them to use their problem solving skills to fix the issue. To me that is amazing. They also brought up a good point that often times schools are afraid that students might break the computers so they often have the mind set that only the good students should use computers. With that mind set you are limiting access to all kids education. This school definitely allows equal access to all students with a computer. In the first grade they tie in the outside world. The class adopted an endangered sea turtle and were able to track the whereabouts of the turtle through the internet. What an interesting way to teach the use of technology. My favorite activity in this video was the one where they used technology to monitor the water quality of the stream outside the school. That definitely relates knowledge to a real world problem and the department of health actually uses their data. These are elementary students and their work is actually used by the department of health. This definitely shows what kids can do.
The article I chose to read from the big list was Got a Sub? Team teach with Twitter.
Got a Sub? Team teach with Twitter
This article discusses how a teacher used twitter to be in the classroom with the students when she was absent. All the sub had to do was supervise the kids. The basic setup was that she would denote twitter captains who were supposed to facilitate the twitter posts. They would ask questions to the teacher via twitter on the days she was absent.I found it interesting that the students used it as a tattling media. I would not be the most comfortable in using this as a sub plan. Sometimes we need to take big risks to get big rewards though. Since my classroom is in a computer lab this is something I could easily implement if I could get the school to unblock Twitter. This is a great opportunity to keep instruction going when the teacher is not there. What a creative way to use technology to the betterment of classroom instruction when a sub is in the classroom.
I found this video very interesting because it showed what students can do at a early age. Elementary kids were broadcasting a school wide news show. The students ran into technical difficulties and the teacher was relaxed about it. Instead of going into the room to help them solve the problem he allowed them to use their problem solving skills to fix the issue. To me that is amazing. They also brought up a good point that often times schools are afraid that students might break the computers so they often have the mind set that only the good students should use computers. With that mind set you are limiting access to all kids education. This school definitely allows equal access to all students with a computer. In the first grade they tie in the outside world. The class adopted an endangered sea turtle and were able to track the whereabouts of the turtle through the internet. What an interesting way to teach the use of technology. My favorite activity in this video was the one where they used technology to monitor the water quality of the stream outside the school. That definitely relates knowledge to a real world problem and the department of health actually uses their data. These are elementary students and their work is actually used by the department of health. This definitely shows what kids can do.
The article I chose to read from the big list was Got a Sub? Team teach with Twitter.
Got a Sub? Team teach with Twitter
This article discusses how a teacher used twitter to be in the classroom with the students when she was absent. All the sub had to do was supervise the kids. The basic setup was that she would denote twitter captains who were supposed to facilitate the twitter posts. They would ask questions to the teacher via twitter on the days she was absent.I found it interesting that the students used it as a tattling media. I would not be the most comfortable in using this as a sub plan. Sometimes we need to take big risks to get big rewards though. Since my classroom is in a computer lab this is something I could easily implement if I could get the school to unblock Twitter. This is a great opportunity to keep instruction going when the teacher is not there. What a creative way to use technology to the betterment of classroom instruction when a sub is in the classroom.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Changes Edutopia Digital Generation
I chose the video on grading with games. This video is very interesting in that James Gee reflects on how games can be used as great education tools. In a game you are constantly being assessed and given feedback on how your doing. That definitely sounds like education to me. Look at how people started using the stairs after they built the staircase into a keyboard. It shows us that if we can make it fun people will be engaged. I liked how the professor discussed how when he first bought a game the manual was hard to read but after he played the game a little bit he was able to use the manual to help build his skills in the game. He also brought up the idea of modding a game. Modding a game is basically creating your own version of the game using the source code provided. This is a great way to get students to create something of their own. I know of one large scale instance in where videogames are used to teach material and that method is a game called Americas Army. The US government spent millions of tax dollars to create a game that could effectively teach soldiers the in and outs of combat. I am not sure how well it solved that task but I do know that it is a great recruiting tool because anyone can download and play the game. I do not think that games can be used to teach everything but I believe that they can be an effective enrichment tool provided that the game is actually fun. I have found many educational games but a lot of them are just like doing worksheets but you may get a reward at the end. If schools put an emphasis on gaming maybe the video game industry would start to create games that are fun and be a great teaching tool. There also is the problem of certain teachers not being comfortable in using games to teach. Just like the first video I watched in the module. It is funny how the skit used a book. That is a great example on how people are more comfortable in what they know. I like how James Gee taught that learning with someone is a very effective learning tool. Students today are well versed in all computer medias. We should try to use their skills to effectively teach them to be productive citizens. I wish we used video games for learning when I was in school.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Emerging Technology 1: MakeBeliefsComix
Emerging technology 1: MakeBeliefsComix
I chose to do my first emerging technology on MakeBeliefsComix. This is a website where students are able to create their own comic strips. It can be an innovative way to get kids to tell a story. There are pre-made story ideas for teachers to choose. I believe MakeBeliefsComix can be an innovative way to enrich the curriculum.
When you create a comic strip the first choice you have to make is how many panels you want to use. The creator can choose two, three, or four panels to make their comic strip. Once you have decided that you can change the backgrounds of each individual panel. There are twenty different characters to add into your story. Each has four different emotion looks. There are twenty objects that can be added and four sizes of talk and thought bubbles. When you are adding the characters into the panels you can resize them with the scale button or move them to a different location with the move button. One can also flip the images after they have placed them. With all of the premade objects and characters it allows someone who has trouble drawing the ability to create their own comic strip.
To test how kids would react to this way of learning I had my students create comic strips after they had finished their other work. I allowed the students creative freedom in how they made their comic, however I made them choose a story idea from the site. Creating comic strips were very exciting to many of them, even though there were a few that struggled with it because they felt they were not very creative. I randomly selected to include a few comics to show what the kids in my class created. After testing this out I felt that this website is a great way to tie into other curriculums. After kids read a passage from a piece of literary work they could make a comic strip about what took place. This is a great way to get kids out of memorization and into creating something. Even though this is a great way to get kids creating there are some limitations.
There are a few shortcomings on this site, however they are minor and do not take away from the experience as much. The first is that you cannot save the comic strips after you create them. You can only print or email them. Sometimes when creating the comics the text bubbles would not allow the user to put text in when there were multiple objects on the panel, however it can be corrected when you use the bring to front button on the left side. Students also need to be careful not to click any links or the back or forward buttons because if they do they will lose all of their hard work. The biggest limitation from this site would be that the biggest comic you can create has a max size of four panels. I would have like for the students to be able to make larger comic like a small comic book. I also found that just like anything some kids can create things faster than others so that can lead to disruptions in the classroom unless you have a plan for the students who finish early.
Since I teach in a computer lab in the related arts department I would like to work with my fellow English and social studies teachers to try to get kids creating comic strips on what they learned. From my experiment with having the kids use this website, I found that most of them really enjoyed using it. With the help of my colleagues I believe we can utilize this resource to educate kids. After all learning should be fun.
Below are some of the comic strips I chose at random to post in my blog:
All comics were created at
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com
I chose to do my first emerging technology on MakeBeliefsComix. This is a website where students are able to create their own comic strips. It can be an innovative way to get kids to tell a story. There are pre-made story ideas for teachers to choose. I believe MakeBeliefsComix can be an innovative way to enrich the curriculum.
When you create a comic strip the first choice you have to make is how many panels you want to use. The creator can choose two, three, or four panels to make their comic strip. Once you have decided that you can change the backgrounds of each individual panel. There are twenty different characters to add into your story. Each has four different emotion looks. There are twenty objects that can be added and four sizes of talk and thought bubbles. When you are adding the characters into the panels you can resize them with the scale button or move them to a different location with the move button. One can also flip the images after they have placed them. With all of the premade objects and characters it allows someone who has trouble drawing the ability to create their own comic strip.
To test how kids would react to this way of learning I had my students create comic strips after they had finished their other work. I allowed the students creative freedom in how they made their comic, however I made them choose a story idea from the site. Creating comic strips were very exciting to many of them, even though there were a few that struggled with it because they felt they were not very creative. I randomly selected to include a few comics to show what the kids in my class created. After testing this out I felt that this website is a great way to tie into other curriculums. After kids read a passage from a piece of literary work they could make a comic strip about what took place. This is a great way to get kids out of memorization and into creating something. Even though this is a great way to get kids creating there are some limitations.
There are a few shortcomings on this site, however they are minor and do not take away from the experience as much. The first is that you cannot save the comic strips after you create them. You can only print or email them. Sometimes when creating the comics the text bubbles would not allow the user to put text in when there were multiple objects on the panel, however it can be corrected when you use the bring to front button on the left side. Students also need to be careful not to click any links or the back or forward buttons because if they do they will lose all of their hard work. The biggest limitation from this site would be that the biggest comic you can create has a max size of four panels. I would have like for the students to be able to make larger comic like a small comic book. I also found that just like anything some kids can create things faster than others so that can lead to disruptions in the classroom unless you have a plan for the students who finish early.
Since I teach in a computer lab in the related arts department I would like to work with my fellow English and social studies teachers to try to get kids creating comic strips on what they learned. From my experiment with having the kids use this website, I found that most of them really enjoyed using it. With the help of my colleagues I believe we can utilize this resource to educate kids. After all learning should be fun.
Below are some of the comic strips I chose at random to post in my blog:
All comics were created at
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com
Saturday, January 30, 2010
First post
I look forward to posting my first technology experience. I am new to this but it seems very interesting.
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