So we got into the gold finalist for the active maths digital resources. I am proud to say these were based on strands 1 and 2. I worked on them! Rolling dice, constructions and card selections. It was great.... check out the camtasia I made for the entry.http://www.folens.ie/videos/dma2012/I am glad we took part. I believe it was Folens first award ceremony and entry so it was great to be a part of it. We had stiff competition but I kept optimistic throughout. It was a great experience and I'm glad we took part in it.
I downloaded alice.org recently and it's really good. I managed to import a few projects that I already had in 3ds max. It allows you to download a few other 3d models that are made in google sketch up and other software as well. There seems to be loads out there.
Scratch is good but I think alice.org is great. You can manipulate the images in 4 screens similar to 3d manipulating software. Really good... working on the tutorials at the minute but looks great so far. Scratch was limited in functionality for what I needed it for and at the minute alice seems to import a lot of the images that I want as well... we'll see!http://www.alice.org/index.phpHere's where to get more images too....http://www.tech4dreams.com/AliceWorlds/f31.php Found this as well which is pretty cool... dynamic drive.http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ Dr. Patrick Felicia's workshop at CESI this year was great and gamemaker is a great tool. I had a look at scratch too and for some reason I am drawn to alice.org. It was sponsored by EA so it looks like the graphics are really good and the fact that I can import some of the 3ds max files that I have is brilliant... I'm putting together a few useful links:http://www.mangahigh.com/en_gb/
Geogebra in a tube! http://www.geogebratube.org/ It was a challenge to say the least but I think I finally have it working.
Only three devices later! I bought one when I bought the laptop a few weeks ago and I got the guy in PC World to throw it in for free. (I love bargains!) It was on the list of devices that were compatible and then I tried it and only a day later it was up on the site that it wasn't infact compatible at all! Second bluetooth device, this one I went to Rathgar and bought myself. It came with a WIDCOMM driver CD so no need to go looking up drivers online. This is the list for the wii compatible devices:http://wiibrew.org/wiki/List_of_Working_Bluetooth_Devices#Summary It is GREAT, I couldn't do without it, I'd have gone through more if I didn't come across any that worked! Finally, the best thing of all is the image below! This is a better result than last time! I went to the CESI conference on Saturday. It was great. I met Catherine Cronin who had taught me in the IT department at NUI Galway. She did a great presentation on social networking.
I must admit, I didn't know what to expect upon arrival. I thought I was going to arrive in and there would be a disjoint between teachers and technologists. I was happily surprised to find many people on the same wavelength. I thought the main theme was 'technology is coming, you cannot let it pass you by, the kids will use it even if you do not condone it in your classroom'. There was a lot of guidance given to teachers with regard to digital citizenship which is becoming increasingly important with photos and videos being uploaded and tagged immediately. This could impact your career in later life if these photos are still on the internet and they remain searchable. Stephen Howell, IT Tallaght, gave the keynote (Steve Wheeler missed the beginning of the CESI conference and as a result Stephen stepped in in his place). It was very interesting. He spoke about using 'Scratch' a program that is developed by MIT that enable people to program without having the programming language. He was very interesting. I found his site: http://scratch.saorog.com/ This is great, he has already hacked is way into using the camera from the kinect, although a little pricey at €150 approx.http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_1.4_Download Claire McInerney, was the next piece that I attended, she was showing 'An Introduction to Scratch'. This was mostly covered by Stephen Howell and I had completed the sheet that was given out in a few minutes. I attended Patrick Felicia's talk on 'Game Based Learning in Irish Education: A Case Study'. It was very interesting and he showed the results of the study and the disparity between age groups and the perception of improving social skills. Myself and Catherine joined the queue for the lunch time buffet and ate together. It was great to catch up and find out how the IT department was getting on. She's doing great research into social networking and in her talk after lunch gave a great insight into digital citizenship. The presentation was on "Social Networking with our Students: Considering digital identity, authenticity and privacy". She had both the 2nd year IT students interact with 4th year LIT students. The NUIG students seemed more reluctant to use Twitter with the LIT students because they simply didn't know them. As with all years in University, I think you gain more sense later on. The 4th years in LIT got the ball rolling and there was a past pupil at the conference talk. The important thing to note was that you can be a multiple person online, you can have many personas that you adopt in different environments, one of the twitter account that your lecturer is in and another for your friends. Many accounts for the different sides of the same personality.http://catherinecronin.wordpress.com/https://plus.google.com/u/0/109255566939470729953/posts Patrick Felicia's workshop "Teaching with Games: understanding games and their educational potential" was excellent. He used a simple program (similar to scratch) to make pac man. He used 'Game Maker' as the game maker and it was great. I swapped in and out the images and all of a sudden I made pacman.http://patrickfelicia.wordpress.com/ 3D eLearning www.3delearning.com Steve Wheeler gave the capstone and it was very interesting. He spoke of the different courses people take now and the different ways that students will learn. He even used the famous Bob Dylan quote 'Times they are a changing'. He spoke of twitter and all the other types of social networks that are taking up so much air time. Digital literacies, applying the literacy from the print world into digital. Just like driving in the US, you can come to a crossroads and people go in sequence. You can still drive, just like you do at home but you need to apply the skills elsewhere. Bloom's Taxonomy appeared, it's now become Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom to transformation. Knowing that, knowing how, knowing why.We can't bombard students, goal is deeper learning, creativity and problem solving abilities. A final word, never give up on your students, become a part of their success stories.He tweeted that evening a few recipes for later!http://www.elearninglearning.com/ Scoop.it http://www.scoop.it/ Steve Wheeler's blog http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/http://steve-wheeler.net/ I'll add more after I find my notes! This is the software that is v.similar to Geogebra and shows the points/slopes etc visually.
http://education.ti.com/calculators/timath/ Some of the activities are almost the exact same, only colours are different. Dr. Gail Burrill was at the conference yesterday, she was very interesting. She was telling us about the new curriculum in the US that is being rolled out in 2014 for maths. 47 out of the 50 states in the US are participating in the new common curriculum for the first time to be rolled out by 2014. http://issuu.com/leahjensen/docs/smarter_balannced_assessment_design?mode=window&pageNumber=1 http://www.corestandards.org/ adoption by state http://www.k12.wa.us/SMARTER/PressReleases/MathDraftContentSpecs.aspx http://www.k12.wa.us/smarter/ http://www.ode.state.or.us/news/announcements/announcement.aspx?=7587 She showed a lot of textbook examples and how the trend is changing, you don’t give lists and lists of problems to solve at the end of the chapters anymore. We give a few that need to be thought about that are selected very carefully that need to use most of the rules. Introducing algebra was a topic that she covered along with showing some technology from texas instruments.(where she is an advisor) tea and coffee problem, you are the waiter, you collect the orders, when you collect the orders, you summarise from three tables that table number one wanted 2 teas and 1 coffee, table two wanted 3 teas and 3 coffees and table number three wanted 4 teas and 4 coffees. teas gets summarised to t coffees gets summarised to c total now is 9t + 8c, that is now your algebraic expression. ‘oh by the way… this is algebra’. Catherine went into detail about the two types of ways people meet other people the ‘oh by the way’ and the formal ‘this is’. Usually people remember the ‘oh by the way’ after they hear the detail about the people. The student teachers are now learning this way of introducing topics. Introducing slopes... graph... combination of x + y... the goal is x+y = 10 the students will choose (5,5) (7,3) (3,7) etc to make up x + y = 10. URN problem, height of an urn and water inside. the shape of the urn changes at a point so the line increasing / like that on the graph will be jagged. Black Scheduling is another topic... blocking off time for teaching students by topic for a number of hours. This is one of the ways of teaching maths that will extend the lessons from 40 minutes to up to 90 minutes and cover a topic from simple introduction. South Korea and China are being used as examples of introducing topics and the focus is on a few problems to solve and think about them rather than being given a list of equations to solve. Cost of filet mignon problem, 5oz cost 14.95, 8oz cost 19.95, there are many ways to solve this to figure out how much you would charge for 20oz. You could say 8 + 8 + 5 = 21oz is 14.95 +14.95 +19.95 minus 1 oz You could figure out how much 1 oz costs You could say 8oz is worth 5/8ths of the cost of the 5 oz etc etc as shown in her slides. Another problem, if you had a triangle... where would you put a light in the triangle for it to shine most efficiently around most of the area? Another problem, mast on a ship, you have a 5ft mast and an 8ft mast, most efficient way to put the rigging! Very insightful in looking at ways it can connect to real-world problems and activities which is one of my research questions. I’m waiting on the slides from her presentation. They were really very good and will give us a ‘heads up’ for what to expect in Ireland. A lot of policy makers attended the event and I can see a ‘summer seminars’ being held in Project Maths as well for up skilling teachers that are already teaching and not qualified to teach maths. Gail directs the summer schools for teachers in the US which is held for three weeks over the summer. http://pcmi.ias.edu/ |
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