Thing 20

Google Docs are a useful tool for creating documents within a group. It allows all of the contributors to work on one document without the trouble of having multiple documents all over the place. I would like to use this service to allow students to create review documents for their classes over a chapter or even for their final exam. It would also be nice to see presentations created through this service. This might also be a useful way to keep up with our basketball stats. Currently, I have many documents with lots of different names floating around our network. This may prevent this problem, if I can get this spreadsheet to do everything that I want it to.

Thing 19

I have use youtube in many ways for the last two to three years in my classroom. Before that time, I had never heard of the site. Once I found it, I have used it in my geometry lessons, summer reading discussions, and leading bible studies. It is a very useful tool and there is nothing that you cannot find on it. I have also had success in using Godtube which is a video site with Christian videos. I could not find much on teachertube, but I did see some good lessons as well as some nice presentation ideas from other schools. It is a site that I would like to investigate further. I really like the use of videos to help introduce, expand, or to give a word picture for my lessons. One interesting video that found interesting was this video involving a rhombus. Be sure to listen closely to the music.

Thing 17

I listened to some of each of the podcasts in the math section. My favorite was the MathGrad Podcast. I enjoyed his description of this famous problem and its solution. I would like to hear more from him and find podcasts like this one that I could use in the classroom. I am not quite sure how, but maybe I could use them in a problem solving unit or to introduce problems in my classes. Other than the previous, I did not enjoy the other choices in the math area. I have recently bought an ipod and have really enjoyed podcasts in all of my areas of interest (golf, home improvement, woodworking, home theater, and even some Christian comedy) for the drive to and from work when I am on my own. I love the feeling I get of learning in an otherwise wasted time, so if I can find some math content for that time in the car then I will be quite happy.

Thing 16

I examinded Library Thing in detail. It seems to be a great place to find books and people that match your reading interests. If I am ever looking for a title or ideas for something to read this would be an excellent place to start. I found several suthors and I even looked at a member's page to see what it is like. I am not too sure how to use this in a mathematics classroom, but I do see it as a useful educational tool and especially useful personal tool. It also appears that you may trade your books with others through many different serives, but you have to be willing to give up your own books. I might be willing to try that depending on the shipping costs.

Thing 15

I think delicious is a wonderful tool and it is really a nice way to keep an accessible list of my favorite websites. I have to change computers often at school and my links to websites do not always follow me so this will be beneficial for me. Also, I can use and add to the same links at home and at school. I often find myself emailing links between home and school and this should save me some time. The use of tags narrows your search down tremendously. I even imported my links (about 300) and spend time tagging them for future use.

Thing 7b

I found some interesting articles in the edublogs magazine. This teacher discusses his use of technology in a fourth grade classroom. In this blog, he focuses on the benefits of PowerPoint software and how it adds to the learning of his students. I use PP in my classroom and have found it to be very beneficial to my students. It really helps to bring visual ideas into the classroom through pictures, videos, and it helps relate the class to the world of my students. PP really helps me do this on a daily basis and I am constantly trying to better my lessons each year through its use.

Thing 14

I chose quizlet as a tool to investigate. I really like the idea of having on-line notecards. I would much rather type than write and you do not have to worry about losing your cards. Once you put them on the site, they are there forever. Also, you can share your cards with others and have others add to the set making it a very useful tool for a class. As a geometry teacher, I am always trying to find tools for my students to master the vocabulary necessary to be successful in my class. I think that quizlet would be a great tool for students in my class and any other class that has a large amount of vocabulary like a foreign language.

There is a study mode and several ways to test your knowledge that gives you automatic feedback. If you are into a concrete set of cards, you may print them to look over instead of studying on the computer screen. Also, there is a way to share them on myspace and facebook and you can discuss the sets if you like. That way if there is an error on a group's set of terms, the group can discuss them and find an acceptable solution to the error. I would highly recommend this tool for teachers to link to on their wiki page as a student resource.

Thing 13

I chose a presentation on Games in Education. I learned several things during the 23 minute presentation. I thought I was going to get some games to use in class, but I ended up beginning to think more about why I want to have games in class. I like them because they are fun and a nice change of pace. The presenter, Sylvia Martinez, believes that games are more than that. They are tools, if used the right way, that can promote learning at a high level. She feels that games are misused in education and that they can do so much more. After her presentation, I would tend to agree. She even suggests "taking it up a notch" and having the students produce their own games. As a geometry teacher, I think this might be something I can attempt to do in my own classroom. I will look into her wiki and some of the websites she recommended (scratch and etoys).

Slideshow links

Here are the links for the photos that a chose.

basketball request by ratterrell

IMG_0995 by Bruno Girin

Cameron Indoor Stadium by scbluedevil

IMG_1285 by Bruno Girin

Basketball team 1909 by j3net

Team A Color by Tom Leuntjens Photography

Thing 12

This was a lot of work, but I think I learned a great deal through the process. I created three different shows and lost the first two because I just did not have enough time in front of the computer. Once you step away for an hour or more, you lose the show completely or at least parts of it. I chose to do mine on basketball, just for a little something different.

Thing 11

I enjoyed using Flickr to search for photos and I found much more than I expected on the CC portion of the site. I searched for Geometry items first just to get used to the process and see how helpful it was. I then tried to specify tags such as isosceles, quadrilateral, midpoint, etc. I found a nice selection and I plan to use this instead of Google image search in the future. I really like the fact that the images are of higher quality than most images on a standard web page. Also, it seems that the pictures are a little easier to seach through since they were tagged by the photographer. In other words, I got less junk in my searches than I usually do. Here is an example of a triangle that I found.

by yui.kubo

What do you think? It is titled as "an impossible triangle"?