Great Math sites

Math seems to get left out the "the equation"(ha!)when we talk about interactive sites or "fun" activities. The reality is that there is plenty out there by and for math teachers. Following are sites that might be useful(Thanks to Richard Byrne and others).

The Math Factor is a good podcast website for students finding interesting and challenging mathematics problems. Math teachers may also want to play the podcast in class then have students discuss and work on solutions to the problems. It has been created and maintained by the Math department at Univeristy of Arkansas. Much if it seem very interesting and challening to me.

Going global, NZMath is created and maintained by the New Zeland Ministry of Education. Algebra, Geometry and Statistics are among the areas covered, by level/ability. Looks interesting!

The Harvey Mudd College Math Department maintains a site called MuddMath Facts that allows for searches by topic. Again, lost of information

Kind of a fun way to begin class is with a video clip. Math in the Movies is a fun way to create an anticipatory set. The site is created and maintained by a member of the Harvard University Math department. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THE STANDARD FOR APPROPRIATENESS AND LANGUAGE IS DIFFERENT AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL-PREVIEW ANYTHING FOR LANGUAGE AND CONTENT

Here is the latest application that I am hooked on: The Eyeballing Game is such a fun way to learn and interact with geometric theorems and shapes. It would be great on a SMARTboard! I've found that I am obsessed with trying to create the perfect parallelogram! The game rotates through the seven tasks three times and then provides you with an overall average of your accuracy along with where you rank with the last 10,000 people who have played the game. Think of class team competition using this application!

If you are a SMARTboard user at all you will appreciate Mr Vizza's site. The best I can figure, this gentleman is a math teacher with lots of time and experience with SMARTboards. He has a "gallery" of SMARTboard lessons and resources that is pretty amazing

Finally, there is Jim Reed, a Canadian math teacher who's page makes my head hurt. But if you are a math teacher, you will probably find some good information.

Great Science Sites

One of my favorite and probably the most informative blogs that I read is one written by Richard Byrne, a teacher in rural America. His "Free Tech for Teachers" blog is a wealth of information. This week- he is recapping resources by content area. Following are great SCIENCE sites(other content areas will follow) :

The Forces of Nature website provides a nice list of complete lesson plans for teachers of students in grades K through 12. The site is based on a film produced by National Geographic designed to educate students about volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes. The film apparently is still available on Amazon.com. But even without the movie, most of the lesson plans and activities are still very usable. You can even "create" volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes - very cool!

The US Department of Energy has a good collection of resources for teachers and students. The lesson plans found on the education page range from simple one page, ten minute activities to lesson plans that will take a day or more to complete.

Science Buddies is a great resource for science teachers and students. The site includes, project ideas, "ask an expert", resources and competition tips. It is worth the time to check this one out.

A research facility called Jefferson Lab is a great place to find educational online games and puzzles. The games from Jefferson Lab are great practice for applying science and math knowledge to problem solving. The site also has a great Teacher Resources page full of lesson plans for hands-on activities, study pages, and reference materials.

Phun is a project of a graduate student at Umea University in Sweden. The idea behind Phun is to create software that can used to create 2-D animations of physics concepts. The software allows users to create simple animations to demonstrate physics concepts. The playful synergy of science and art is novel, and makes Phun as educational as it is entertaining. I had fun watching the demo video and would love someone to "test" this with kids- It is a free download-If there are any "takers" out there, let me know.

The United Nations Environment Program has constructed a Google Maps mashup to displaying more than one hundred examples of environmental change. Each placemark on the map has close-up views of the land and a story about environmental change at that location. For example clicking on a placemark will reveal close-up imagery of the site and detailed information about the environmental changes taking place. Users of the UNEP Changing Environment Map are also able to download the imagery or view the sites in Google Earth.

The Fantastic Contraption may be my favorite game- An interactive opportunity to "build" working machines. It is addicting and would be GREAT on a SMARTBoard.

March is Women's History Month

I recognize that we are halfway throught the month, but there is still time to recognize March as Women's History Month. The Library of Congress has great information on their site at http://womenshistorymonth.gov/. The site includes a tab "For Teachers" that includes lesson plans, activities and research aids. Hope you and your students find it interesting

Here is an interesting web page that provides lots of ways to use WORDS.

Go to rhymezone.com. A search engine of sorts, allows you to type in a word and receive RHYMES, SYNONYMS, ANTONYMS, DEFINATIONS, QUOTES USING THE WORD, PICTURES and USES OF THE WORD IN SHAKESPEAR.
Kind of a cool way for students to find and use vocabulary. The site also includes a number of interactive games that would be useable on SMARTBOARDS. Check it out!

Thanks to Mr Albright for this one!!

Geek Brief 030409 - Google-411

Today's brief is with thanks to Mom Frango, my partner in crime here at PSHS.
Leave it to Google to come up with something like this!!!

I'm not sure this is necessarrily a classroom tool, but a great tool nonetheless:

Here's a number worth putting in your cell phone, or your home phone speed dial: 1-800-goog411 or 1-800-466-4411. This is an awesome service from Google, and it's free -- great when you are on the road. Don't waste your money on information calls.

Here is the information page and a video--Unfortunately it is on Youtube!

WORD OF THE DAY IS BACK!

It's been a long couple of weeks and we are all in need of some laughter. It's Friday! That means that it's time to use our Words of the Day in a sentence. We are combining the 4 words from last week with the three words from this week.

Here are the words and definitions:

Validate: to declare legally valid; legalize
Voracious: an insatiable appetite
Exonerate: to free from accusation or blame
Maritime: near the sea; concerned with shipping or navigation
Carrion: dead or rotting flesh
Maladroit: clumsy; inept
Tome: a large book

There are a lot of words, so we will accept 2 related sentences.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!

LEagen:
After being lost at sea for three months, the crew felt validated in relieving their voracious appetite by feasting on the carrion of the maladroit deck-hand who had died. They justified the act based on the code in the Maritime Tome, which stated that in a life and death situation, sailors would be exonerated for any activity deemed absolutely necessary for survival of the crew.

LKubik
A page from a pirate's diary:

The maladroit pirate tossed the prisoner's carrion overboard to hide his voracious need to murder and also exonerate his vindictive image before returning to the captain's cabin to validate the maritime tome of treasure maps discovered there.

JHavlicek
In order to validate my voracious longing for the maritime wars of the last century, I took to the tome of "Victory at Sea".
In my maladroit way, I could not conceive of the destruction of human carrion sacrificed to exonerate the enemy who began this war.

CBelcastro
Noticing a carrion smell coming from the refrigerator in Student Services, the maladroit Counselor immediately lost her voracious appetite. She threw her tome to the floor in a rage and demanded to validate whomever caused this to not be exonerated before they left for their maritime vacation.

BWilliams
The maladroit cruise ship agent was refusing the validate the ticket of the voracious man with the rotting carcass, but after searching the tome of maritime regulations the man was exonerated, as there was nothing that prohibited him from bringing a carrion aboard the ship.

MNeugebauer
I was called to room 1903 as a student had thrown a large Tome at a teacher's head. The student asked me to validate that the teacher had a Voracious appetite and enjoyed eating Carrion squirrels. Hearing this statement, I all of a sudden became Maladroit and had to Validate the student's statement. The teacher could not Exonerate themselves from the statement and was thus taken away to the dean's office! The dean then told the teacher to find a house located next to the Maritime and buy it and never come back to PSHS

MHarring
A voracious vulture boarded a plane with two dead raccoons, and was reprimanded by the maladroit flight attendant, who claimed that FAA regulations allow only one carry-on per passenger; the vulture was then exonerated when he pulled out his own TSA regulations tome, which validated his claim that one carry-on and one personal item - in this case his carrion - are allowed when flying to his maritime destination.

Magnetic Poetry

Here is a fun idea for encouraging kids to write. Magnetic Poetry is an online version of the refridgerator magnets that you may have seen that allow you to make up your own sentences, phrases, poetry, slogans or whatever else you can think of.
There are four versions at this site and inspite of the names sounding "elementary", there are great words and phrases in all of the online "kits". The creators also have a TEACHER tab with lots of ideas. The online "kit" allows users to SAVE to their online gallery-but there would be no reason why something that is created in class couldn't be printed to turn in as an assignment.
Finally, this would be a GREAT activity on a SMARTboard because of the interactivity-
How about a class project to create a poem, a slogan, a protest, song lyrics--the mind reels...
Lots and lots of ideas.

ENJOY!

Back from hiatus!

The combination of 2 days of SAC and 2 days of IHSA State Bowling(Congrats Cougars girls!!) took me out of the loop last week.





This week's information is kind of cool-- How 'bout a "Doodle for Google" contest?!!
I imagine that this will mosly appeal to the artists among our students-but none the less it is a cool contest- and ---everyone doodles!

A little history:
"Google doodles, the drawings that are designed on, around and through the Google logo on their home page, have long been part of Google's history. As a Google intern in 2000, Google Webmaster Dennis Hwang began celebrating and marking worldwide events and holidays with doodles. Since then, the work of the doodle team has been seen by millions and reached cult status, with fans waiting with bated breath to see the next creation on the Google homepage."


Here's the deal:
Have students play around with the GOOGLE homepage logo and see what new designs you can come up with. The theme is: "What I Wish for the World."

Entries need to include:
A doodle
A title for the doodle
A supporting statement explaining how the doodle relates to the "What I Wish for the World" theme .
I have registered PSHS. We can only supmit 6 entries as a school - so if you are interested in doing this as a class project- we will need to do some judging as a school.

Here are some doodle examples.

Here is contest specifics

Let's have some entries from PSHS!!

Word of the Day - Week 2

Once again, sentences using the 5 words of the week.
1. Tenacious
2. Incontrovertible
3. Prehensile
4. Winnow
5. Commodious

Fsmith
The prehensile CEOs of AIG and Wells Fargo should be winnowed out of their jobs because they are sitting in their commodious homes and offices, tenaciously justifying their bonuses and lavish surroundings in the face of incontrovertible evidence they were responsible for the downfall of their own companies.

PAldis
The monkeys with the prehensile tails were being very tenacious about their commodious zoo environment ever since theincontrovertible aggression ensued when all the monkeys became upset and the keepers had to winnow out most of the artificial
components of their exhibit that were causing the upsetting behavior.

METesten
We have incontrovertible evidence that it was the monkey who used her prehensile tail to winnow the wheat and not the elephant, because the winnowing room is not sufficiently commodious for the elephant.

T Smith- (meant for fun and with NO MALICE toward anyone)
Unable to adjust to no longer living in a commodious home, Michael J cries himself to sleep every night; however, one night, his nose, which incontrovertibly had been winnowed away to next to nothing, fell off while he was blowing it, and unable to find it through his tears, Michael's new pet chimpanzee had to use his wonderfully prehensile hands to pick it up so it could be reattached.

JJarot
The tenacious man found that the money he had winnowed in the commodious room by using his prehensile hands was incontrovertible after all

GeekBrief 020309 - Newseum and Today's Front Pages

The Newseum is museum of news located in Washington DC — it offers visitors an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits. It also has a terrific web site. Today's Front Pages is a part of that web site.It accesses the front page stories as they appear in the papers of the US and the world. The "dots" on the map indicate cities and a click gives you the front page. It is interesting to see what is important enought to appear on the the front page of newspapers in different US cities as well as all parts of the world. The site even has an archive of front pages. As an example, it is interesting to take a look at papers from around the world as written September 12, 2001.

(As an aside, it was also very interesting to see the country's take on last week's Blago stories!)


Application in the classroom:

English:Compare and contrast writing/reporting on specific events
ESL: Find a newspaper from a country/region of student's origin/language; write in English about the front page stories.
History: Take a look at historical events and how they were covered in different parts of the country/world.

A week's worth of WORD OF THE DAY

This week's WORDs of the DAY are: accountable, brouhaha, philippic, dishevel, mawkish. The challenge: Use them all CORRECTLY in ONE SENTENCE.

AAllen:
My husband accused me of being mawkish after my philippic when I got back to my disheveled home and realized that nobody was held accountable for the brouhaha that took place while I was at work.

CFloros:
I feel accountable for the brouhaha that ensued after my mawkish philippic about the disheveled appearance of too many of our students.

FSmith(modified for publication):
The Principal emerged from his office a bit disheveled and mawkish for the calmer days at his school after the many philippics he had to endure from parents who held him accountable for the brouhaha on Tuesday.

MJones:(TECHNICALLY DISQUALIFED- INCORRECT USE OF PHILIPPIC)
I was quite disheveled, feeling rather mawkish and prepared to begin a philippic attack yesterday as I realized just how fed up I am with the group who refuses to be accountable for their actions and continues to participate in creating a brouhaha in the staff cafeteria.

MEtesten:
The brouhahas of the past week resulted in much wailing and disheveled hair among the students followed by mawkish displays of contrition, as those accountable for said brouhahas endured loud philippics from their deans.

JJarot:
I was held accountable for the brouhaha that my disheveled appearance caused at Rod Blagojevich's mawkish philippic.

DBrown:
The disheveled student mawkishly walked down to the dean's office because he was holding himself accountable for the philippic he made and the brouhaha that ensued.

CThorson(not ONE sentence- but very clever!)
So during the season openers of LOST, a lot has happened. Jack Shepard is holding himself accountable for all the bad things happening to the people back on the island after he spoke with Jeremy Bentham. Jack finally cleaned himself up after his dishevelled self tried to jump off a bridge from this guilt of leaving the other Oceanic survivors behind. Meanwhile, back on the island, the time is skipping and it's making Sawyer so angry that he is throwing a philippic at Dr. Daniel Faraday since he's not explaining it properly. Eventually, the Others captured the remaining survivors and brought them back to their camp. At the camp, there seemed to be a brouhaha since there were a lot of Others hanging around. Faraday was told by Richard Alpert there was an H-Bomb on the Island. Faraday told Richard he would dismantle it, and Richard questioned him thinking he'd go there to activate it. Then, Faraday said he was in love with Charolette Lewis, and he would never hurt her. It was a very mawkish moment. But the best part was that we found out Charles Widmore is an Other!!! Total shocker!

BYanello:
Given my disheveled living style, complete lack of accountability, a mawkish wife, and my boss's constant phillipic, I need a brouhaha!!!

TFox:
Those who delivered the philippic were accountable for the brouhaha that left many disheveled and somewhat mawkish.

LKubik(TECHNICALLY DISQUALIFED- INCORRECT USE OF PHILIPPIC)
I will not be accountable for the brouhaha caused by my philippic response when I saw that someone had disheveled my mawkish Valentine display.

MHolubik(TECHNICALLY DISQUALIFED- INCORRECT USE OF PHILIPPIC)
I am feeling mawkish and me mind is desheveled from all the brouhaha that happened due to the philippic behavior this week, and I feel the students should be held accountable for their actions.

LScanlan(TECHNICALLY DISQUALIFED- INCORRECT USE OF PHILIPPIC)
A mawkish teacher reflects on the students who were held accountable for the philippic language they used during the brouhaha they started that left the halls of the school disheveled.

SStashak:
I hold my children accountable for their brouhahas, disheveled appearances, and apathetic attitudes, however, their mawkish responses to my philippics cause great exasperation.

Geek Brief 012708 -Comic Strip Creator

Make Beliefs - Comic Strip Creation

Think about the opportunity to have your students create a 3 pane comic strip as an alternative to conventional writing. MAKE BELIEF is your tool.

Make Beliefs is a free comic strip creation tool that provides students with a variety of templates, characters, and prompts for building their own comic strips. Make Beliefs provides students with a pre-drawn characters and dialogue boxes which they can insert into each box of their comic strip. The editing options allow users all kind of flexibility. You can change the size of each character and dialogue bubble, bring elements forward within each box, and alter the sequence of each box in the comic strip. AND, here is the best part: Make Beliefs allows users to write their comic strip dialogue in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portugese, or Latin.

Think of the options for any content area. A really fun way for students to be creative The program is internet based and allows for an easy print option- Allowing for a one class period activity. It is very cool-- Check it out!

(Thanks Freetech4teachers!)

GEEK BRIEF 012109 - WORDLE

Wordle is a free 'word art' tool that takes a group of words and creates a visual representation. Originally designed as a fun maker of word clouds, Wordle is being used in interesting ways to provide compelling summaries of anything word related.
As the site says, " 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."
I have used it to create a cloud of our WORDS OF THE DAY for the semester


Following are a few ideas to consider(thanks to Rod Lucifer of the blog "Clever Sheep"):

1] Convert a sonnet or Shakespearean play;
2] Key people in historical events
3] Combine student 'Who Are You?' introductions, to develop a class composite;
4] Condense survey data by dumping content of questionnaire responses into the Wordle engine;
5] A new take on "reflecting" or journaling.
6] Turn an essay into a poster;
7] Automate the creation of word poetry;
8] As an introduction to a unit or course, combine key words; themes; curriculum expectations to provide learners with a visual overview of content;
9] Convert nutritional content of one's weekly diet or of a group's menu preferences
10] Paste the results of a Google search (Can you guess the keywords I used?);
11] Enter keywords from weekly weather reports to obtain a seasonal picture;
12] Distill song lyrics
13] Find out what you've been up to by summarizing To-Do lists;
14] Represent the results of a brainstorming session or the minutes of a meeting visually;
15] Show "This date in History" stories in a new way;

Try it- it really is fun!

GEEK BRIEF 011209 - WIKIS

Today's brief is a WIKI- Information about WIKIS is a conversation for another day(I will have several posts on "wikis" at a later date) Essentially, wikis are based on the same concept as "Wikipedia"-- an online space where people can collaborate/share information. A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content. Basically, anyone and everyone can share and CREATE the information on the page- The implication for education is how correct/factual/ reliable is the information? That said, wikis that are created with activities are often good resources as there is no research or statistical reliability involved. So-here is today's BRIEF

Teampedia - A Wiki of Team Building Activities

Teampedia is a wiki of team building activities. On Teampedia you can find games and activities for groups of all sizes and ages. They call themselves "a collaborative encyclopedia of free team building activities, free icebreakers, teamwork resources, and tools for teams that anyone can edit! The site is designed for a wide audience including: team leaders, trainers, teachers, managers, camp directors, counselors, and youth groups. Teampedia is a wiki so, as you would expect, you can add your own suggestions to Teampeida.

Ideas for the classroom
Teampedia could be a good source of ice-breaker and "getting to know you" activities,as well as team building, collaboration, diversity and team strategy activities.

As we begin a new semester, take a look and see if there is anything that you might use on those first days of getting to know your class. As with blogging, don't be afraid to share or add any of your own ideas/activities on the wiki-- It is a simple process.

GEEK BRIEF 010609

Good morning-- Here is this week's GEEK BRIEF.

GOOGLE NEVER STOPS RE-INVENTING ITSELF.

Google has made it a little easier to refine image searches. Until now, if you entered a search term in Google Images you would get all kinds of images:photographs, drawings, paintings, and clip art. Now you can refine those results by selecting "faces," "clip art," "line drawings," "photo content," or "news content" from a drop down menu or select the type menu.




I know that personally, this will be a help to me as there are times when I want a certain type of image, and would prefer not to have to look through everything else.

Applications for Education
Google calls the new image search options "search-by-style", I call it just plain helpful. Any tool that can help students focus their searches is useful in my book. Less time struggling to find appropriate search results can translate into more time spent thinking, writing, and creating.

Check it out!!

Everything is fine in 2009!

Greetings-- It's back to school and a brand new year. Wipe the slate clean, start anew, make those resolutions, plans and try to keep them!

Florida was great- 3 rounds of golf, too much food and laughter and plenty of great friendships!

But, now, it's back to work. Given the great response to the 12 days of TECHristmas, I plan to continue with a weekly GEEK BRIEF. I will post the "briefs" on this blog as well as the group email route. Hopefully we can all keep a resolution to continue learning and growing. Posts will appear on Tuesday or Wednesdays

Off to the Warmth!

Amidst rain, fog and TORNADO warnings in December, I pack to go south. Florida here I come. Can't wait to chase a little white ball for a few days and enjoy the company of friends. Koz, I will miss being with you - but this time I get to play while you work.
I hope that the really bad stuff stays away until my plane gets up. Looking forward to seeing Sue and Gayle and the Villages.
It has been a very nice Christmas-now the R & R starts. NGKA headed home today- Godspeed and be safe.

Christmas Marathon

202 miles, 6 stops, 4 dogs, 1 cat and plenty of food and drink made for a GREAT Christmas! The day began at 8:30am and ended at 11:30 pm -but we saw everyone, talked to those that we coudn't see and thoroughly enjoy ourselves. That is what Christmas is all about

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ~Norman Vincent Peale

Two of my favorite days of the year-Two frantic days of travel, visits, gifts and joy. NGKA made it safely from MN-a 9 hour trip in lot of snow. Looking forward to seeing everyone tonight and tomorrow. Sorry that Ed will be in China-we'll miss you cous!
Happy, Happy, Merry MERRY

The push to Chritmas

I awake this morning to a new blanket of snow and the news of a Bears comeback. I admit it-- I was frustrated and went to bed.
Apparently the offense and the good luck fairies woke up and the Bears won in overtime-YIPEE!!

Beautiful snow overnight-thank goodness we bought a new snowblower last year! Lots of wrapping to do today. NGAK driving in from MN today-it will be a slow trip I'm sure. Final prep for the holiday. I love this time of year and all that it brings: Snow, Love and Miracles!