I love checking my blog stats. Above are just some of the many search terms which cause people to end up here on the blog. You search, I listen. Armed with Camtasia (provided by my friend and barbecue savant Jason Valade from TechSmith) here is a tutorial I hope you find helpful as you start your school year. Resolve to make Desmos part of your classroom culture this year, then check out the Desmos File Cabinet of graphs to get you started. Also, check out classroom strategies for using Desmos to explore function inequalities in the second video below.
Another great week with Discovery Education is over, and I was happy to share some fun math resources to the Fellows at the Siemens STEM Institute. But being a team lead doesn’t mean that I’m not learning as well – here are 4 great online resources I had a chance to try out this week, and look forward to using in my classes to increase engagement.
Kahoot – create fun quizzes for your class with this tool. You broadcast the questions one at a time, and students earn points based on their speed on correct answers. Keeps class-wide leaderboards.
ThingLink – annote pictures with information, and share your works digitally. Provide information about key aspects, or external links to share additional information. Here is my first attempt, using a sampling distribution example as the context. Click the link to try it out!
Plickers – load the applet, print out the pre-made response cards, and prepare for a quick, engaging formative multiple-choice assessment. By scanning the room with the app, you pick up student responses, which can then be linked to students if you choose.
Answer Garden – billing itself as a “minimalistic feedback tool”, Answer Garden allows students to share briefs thoughts on a topic you choose, then gathers the results in a word wall. Here is how I used this as a potential class bell-ringer in a talk I gave earlier this week:
Students can them respond on a laptop or smart phone, with multiple responses allowed. How could these responses then allow us to start a class discussion?
It’s the beginning of August. I’m sitting with 50 fantastic educators from across the country. I’m at Silver Spring at Discovery Education Headquarters. This must mean it’s another year of the Siemens STEM Institute! During the week, you can follow the goings-on through the Institute Website, or visit the site often as we populate it with resources and come back often!
Tonight’s Keynote speaker is Dr. Lodge McCammon, follow him on Twitter, a pioneer in not only using video, sound and motion to enhance educational practices, including classroom “flipping”, but also encouraging low-cost, simple-to-implement solutions. Check out Lodge’s YouTube Channel and enjoy his work, especially his series of 50 States Songs.
Today Lodge shared one of his catchy songs, this one featuring planetary motion, moons and their orbits. His kinesthetic lecture technique challenges us to apply movements with meaning by finding simple movements to represent otherwise complex topics.
Well, to be honest….I made lots of videos last year and some of them suck. Some I really, really like, and were on-target for my classroom expectations. Others…not so much. My goal this year is to review all of my videos and assess their effectiveness, then edit, re-shoot, re-format…whatever it will take to make my videos work best for kids. You can check out my many algebra and stats videos on my YouTube Channel.
SO, I NEED YOU YOUR HELP TO RIP APART MY VIDEOS!!!
Below are 3 examples of videos I used last year to “flip”instruction. Each of them was made using a different device or format, and while there are parts of each that I think are effective, none of them are perfect. I invite you to leave comments about any or all of my videos here, or in the YouTube comments.
Video 1: Completing the Square. Made using Doceri.
PROS: Content is clean. Mostly on point. After assigning this video, was able to quickly dive into problems the next day.
CONS: Probably too long. Tried to cover too much in one video.
Video 2: Random Variables. Made using SMART Notebook
PROS: These are not easy example problems. Students can go back and “rewind” to think about processes.
CONS: These are a lot of rules in this section. The different format types may make it difficult to identify the “big ideas”.
Video 3: Samping Distributions. Recorded live in my dining room.
PROS: After some initial discomort, I find I have the most fun doing these live videos, and that perhaps they do a better job in engaging students with the ideas.
CONS: Am I clear? Are the visuals good enough?
So I invite you to rip apart my videos, provide guidance, comments, and share your success stories with flipping!
Tonight’s Keynote speaker is 
mathcoachblog 