Technology+in+Math+Classroom


 * Technology in the Math Classroom ** ** K-12 Technology Applications Conference October 27, 2011  **

Photo courtesy of Felipe Ibáñez Guzmán (c) =Technology in the Classroom:=

There was a time when use of computer, projector and document camera in the classroom was considered technology integration in the instruction. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. Now we are expected to use web 2.0 tools in the classroom if we claim to integrate technology in our instructions. [] =Math Tutorials by Khan Academy: = [] I have found Khan Academy to be the most effective math tutorials. He has created a tutorial on every single math topic. It can be used in the classroom instruction or you can assign homework which requires students to watch tutorial video before completing the assignment. =Online Tutorial Creator - Tildee: =

[] Tildee is not very famous but I found it to be very useful for Math classrooms. It can be used in the Math classroom to clear the Mathematical procedure and integrate literacy in Math. Students can create their own tildees explaining How Tos… in Math. For example, How to find GCF? =Wiki: =

Wiki is becoming very famous in education nowadays. There are several ways it can be used. Some teachers use it as a website, some use it to collaborate with other teachers and some use it to create a collaborative project with students.

Wikis in plain English
[] =Blogging: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Blogging is the most effective learning tool for teachers. Sometimes, we learn something new or get a new idea and want to work on it but get caught on other things and forget about it. If we blog about it then chances are we will not forget about it and sooner or later we will go back to our blog and get more ideas on the topic and learn from our own reflection. Blogging is like parking your thoughts and get back to it.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Blogs in Plain English
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">@http://www.commoncraft.com/video/blogs =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Blogs For Educators: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">A lot of teachers use Edublog to communicate with students and parents and it is a very effective tool specially if your school does not provide you with the teacher webpage. It can be used for announcements and reflections on current school events. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yolasite Website Builder: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yola is so far the best free domain and website builders for educators. There are teachers and professors who are using Yola website as main source of information for students and parents for the course. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Face Book for educators – Edmodo: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Social Networking in Plain English <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">@http://www.commoncraft.com/video/social-networking =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Google Reader: =
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Edmodo **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">is an online classroom communications tool for teachers and students to share Notes, Files, links, and assignments similar to FaceBook. It even looks and feels like FaceBook

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Google Reader is your window to the world from where you can control what you want to see when you go online. It allows to subscribe to the websites and blogs you want to follow. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">RSS in Plain English <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">@http://www.commoncraft.com/video/rss =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Delicious: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Del.icio.us uses a non- hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms. Even though, it’s public but you can also make your bookmarking private where you don’t share with anyone. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sharing Presentations using SlideShare: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">SlideShare offers users the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolios. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Perzi: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Prezi is a Flash-based presentation system that allows users to create incredibly dynamic presentations. Presentations where you can zoom in and out across a large area (no slides), create motion paths, embed images and video, all without Flash programming knowledge. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Prezi differs from PowerPoint in that it is a web-based program that allows you to create more of a canvas presentation instead of a sequential slide presentation. Think non-linear. It allows you to incorporate not only text and pictures, but videos and other presentation objects. You can create your presentation online and then download the final product so that you don’t require an internet connection to display the presentation. Students and professors can get this application for free. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Wordle: = <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I have found Wordle to be very useful in teaching vocabulary. Once, students play with the vocabulary and their meaning they never forget it, and the printed wordle displayed in the classroom reminds them every day, and they look forward to do this activity again. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Futures Channel: = <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The most wonderful collection of short educational videos for teaching students the real life application of Math and Science concepts they learn in the classroom. Since the videos are only 5 minutes long you can use them as warm up everyday. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Texas Education on iTune: = <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">iTune has thousands of free Math tutorials which can be used in the classroom as reinforcement. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Online poll using cell phones: = <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This tool can be used in numerous ways in the classroom. You can use it to get instant feedback, or as a response system. Best of all, students like it if they are allowed to use cell phone in the classroom. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Online Scrapbooking: = <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This is a cool online Scrapbooking tool which can also be used for educational purposes. Students can create their projects using pictures and information as scrapbook page. Once you got the creativity juices flowing through your brain then the sky is the limit. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Create Videos using Animot: = <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Animot lets you create a 30 second video for free using your pictures, captions and music. This is best for the beginning of the year activity when you can ask students to introduce themselves via animoto. An Excellent Ice Breaker! =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cool Text Creator: = <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Forget about all those expensive software for fancy fonts. Now, you can create cool text online for free and download them to your computer and use them as you want. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Glogster: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Glogster is a revolutionary way of expressing your mood, feelings and ideas, and it goes miles beyond text or video! Just choose a background, throw in some shapes and characters from our galleries, add text, your own videos or photos and perhaps a pinch of music and there it is! In just a few minutes, you can make a digital poster, a colorful medley of ideas, reflecting your own special style. = = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">GlogsterEdu: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">GlogsterEdu is an academic-friendly version of regular Glogster. It contains a series of teamwork mechanisms to allow users to publish and share their creations and to collaborate with other users on joint efforts. Also includes secure, private, safe platform that can be monitored directly by teachers. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">TeacherTube: =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Best of Teacher Tube =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Secure Passwords: = <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">With so much online work we all must know how to create secure passwords to secure our identity as well as our information. Common Craft has explained it really good in this video. =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Richard Byrne: =
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">TeacherTube **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is a video sharing website similar to, and based on YouTube It is designed to allow those in the educational industry, particularly teachers, to share educational resources such as video, audio, documents, photos, groups and blogs. The site contains a mixture of classroom teaching resources and others designed to aid teacher training.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This blog by Richard Byrne is my all time favorite resource. All you need to do is to subscribe to his blog and he will bring all the news about technology for teacher to you. = = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mobile Technology: Cell Phones as Teaching Tools =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">If you think you can teach students to use cell phones in the class only when you allow them and the way you want them to then cell phone is a handy resource for several kind of classroom activities.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Calculators:
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I sometimes ask them to calculate their test score percentage using their cell phone calculators and it teaches them to use cell phone calculators whenever they need it in real life.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Digital cameras:
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">You can give them a Math real life project which requires pictures. They can go to stores, take pictures of price tags and create a Math project. Students can also use them to document a variety of things for multimedia presentations or reports. Fieldtrips can be documented and incorporated into digital travelogues.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Internet access:
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Many phones have wireless Internet access, thus opening up a world of possibilities for class use.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dictionaries:
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Students quickly query the definition of a word. Additionally, students who are English learners especially can benefit from translation dictionaries which are becoming available on cell phones.