Mathematics Resources

I have been researching different Mathematics resources and found some great resources that I wanted to share. At Illustrative Mathematics you can find PDF illustrations, drop down/ color coded illustrations and also videos of standards K-12. I think that the best part is the example problems, especially as I am a non-math teacher, it is important for me to get a chance to see how the math standards are layered.

Khan Academy has changed and developed a lot over the past few years. So, instead of just thinking, "oh, yeah... I've heard of Khan Academy." I'd suggest giving it another try. You can now create your own learning account or coach students through a program and see how they are working through their problems and moving from level to level. The coaching aspect that Khan Academy has now is much more exciting than just the videos. So, you have to go back and revisit Khan Academy... you can teach yourself coding, all levels of mathematics, chemistry, biology, organic chemistry even world history and finance! It is definitely a way that you can personalize your teaching/ learning for students as you can see where the student is struggling or advancing.

Desmos is another web app that I think has developed a lot as well. Make your graphs dynamic with interactive sliders, data tables and even challenge your students to replicate or create their own student art! You can do a lot with graphing calculators, plat circles and quadratic formulas, but how do you have them explain what they just did? Here's how: 1) Have students install Chrome Extension "Awesome Screenshot" to take a screen shot of their graphing, 2) Students can save the screenshot on their Google Drive, 3) Import the image they took of their drawing on a Google Doc, and 4) Have students explain on the doc the steps that it took for each of them to work through their problem and solve it with the graph. Students can go back to their Desmos problems to change them if they are incorrect, but it is a good way to have them do the explanation of their work and also integrate writing into the classroom.

Geogebra and it's supplementary video site, Geogebratube, are both great resources. Geogrebra is a construction piece to create three-dimensional or plane shapes. Geogebratube has tutorial videos that could be used just to be a bell-ringer activity, flipped classroom activity or even more!

Socrative is something I have used before, but I recently read a new way to use it in your classroom. First off, create your Socrative account and start creating your quizzes. The quizzes are self-graded and you can use this with iPads or Chromebooks. I have read some teachers use Socrative and have students log in with their device, choose about 5 different problems and have students just answer the problems with their final answer. Socrative self-grades and then you have just a good "check" on how students are progressing. I could see this being used easily for vocab quizzes, quick "check" for reading quizzes or even surveys. It will work well for exit tickets or there is even a feature for "space rocket races" where you could project the results on the board as the students are randomly put in groups and race to the finish.

Here are just a few ideas... for the math classroom. Hope you get a chance to try them out!

Google Updates for October

Tomorrow for Professional Development, I will be updating the Middle School and High School on some of the Google updates that are coming down the line for us. We are on a "scheduled release" not "rapid release" so we will have time to update staff prior to changes coming out. If you can think of some others that I haven't mentioned, please let me know by commenting below!

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Log in Updates:

• Still Red Sign in Box still in upper right hand corner

• Before Sign in:

• After Sign in:

• Google Plus (Google’s Social Media Equivalent)
• Gmail - This will take you to your Deuel GMail account
• Images - This will take you to a Google Image Search
• App Launcher icon (similar to what the students see on their chromebooks in lower left hand side- similar to windows start menu)
• Here is where the main apps are located and you can go to “more” to find the others
• You can also put shortcuts on your Chrome bookmarks bar to make this work as well
• Notifications
• “Share” (works with Google Plus) and Your Profile Image

A new place for Settings and Advanced Search in the lower right hand side of your screen.

• Search Settings can help you with filtering, voice search (the microphone icon in the search bar on the right side of box), and results opening in a new window, if you prefer.
• You can also save your search history, if you prefer.

• Advanced Search will allow you to add in search parameters, if desired.
• Search History will help refine your searching- Think of it like personalized searching… for example, the suggested results you see on Amazon.

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Google Drive Updates:

• Docs/ Sheets/ Slides/ Drawing/ Forms all changed the document header to make more compact and with a new icon in the upper left hand corner
• Icon also is an active link that takes you back to Google Drive in a new window

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Other Updates:

• If you are a mobile device user, you can see that the new login interface is very much positioned to be for the mobile device user.
• The new update to the Google Search Algorithm (now called Hummingbird) is more question-driven and mobile based. They are really pushing the ability for voice integration. Social integration, location and previous search activity will help to build your search query now, instead of just key words, like previously.
• This will make it all the more important to choose a search engine, stick with it and be signed in at all times. For example, my searches probably have a lot about technology, google, curriculum, geography, babies… and Google will start to anticipate exactly what I may be looking for.
• Previously, the more words that you add into the search bar, the more difficult it was to get what you really wanted, now, they are moving away from that.
• Learn more about the Search Changes in the video below
  
  

  
  

• When in Chrome, right click on an image on the web and search the image.
• For Chrome 30 users, update this by opening chrome, going to the three lines in upper right hand corner of browser, selecting “About Google Chrome” and updating to Chrome 30.

• How can I use this?
• For finding what website the image was taken from if embedded into a project/ document.
• Finding the image in another size/ color
• Finding similar images

• These updates slowly roll out to students.

Auto Reloader For Chrome Broswer

During in-service on Friday, I had a great question and now I great answer! As a district, we are using Hapara to more easily manage our Google Drive and Chromebooks. A great "add-on" feature of this is the ability to see a screenshot of the current screen on our students' Chromebooks. Unfortunately, Hapara doesn't refresh this automatically and, as teachers, we all know that students can get off task in a blink of an eye, so it's important to see the students' computer screens at any given time.

Here is the answer: "I've got an Extension for That!" 

Auto-reloader is an extension that you can set to automatically reload a page at set intervals. If you do this every two or three minutes, you will surely be able to refresh what you see on your Hapara monitoring screen in a timely-enough fashion and not feel like you are clicking crazy waiting for it to reload.

I hope this helps and, thanks Cindy, for the question and now solution!

Hapara List for Launch!

Here is the link to the Google Doc as well.

Our school district is using Hapara Dashboard to organize our Google Accounts and Chromebooks more easily. Here is the document from our first training. It was good to have this to go with as we were starting out our training and, so far, Hapara is going well. We all want MORE than it does, (instant updates on Chromebook screens, interactive chatting and remote control of Chrome desktops, multiple smart copy location choices, etc.) but what it is supposed to do has been working well.

Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium and Chromebooks

In South Dakota today, there was a conference call with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) in regard to the technology standards and recommendations for the future SBAC testing. For our school district, this is particularly important as we are almost finished with our decision on new computers for the next year. We do not know what we are going to do, yet, and are looking at all options. While making this decision, there were a lot of considerations, but testing compatibility is paramount.

They have said that for the 2014- 15 and 2015- 16 school year (the first two years of the SBAC/ CCSS tests) that the Chromebook will be compatible. I'm excited for the implications that this may bring across the country and what Google may do to help with SBAC testing. As the Common Core State Standards Initiative is not going away, I am sure that the Google Chrome browser and, subsequently, the Chromebook will have to follow.

There was also talk of the iPad being used for testing. SBAC said that they did a beta test with 800 students (no word on the age of these students) testing on the iPad and students did not like using the virtual (on-screen) keyboard. These were iPad 2s using iOS 6 and the iTester App. The discussion from SBAC about iPad minis was solidly a "no" for testing purposes as the screen was too small. (On a bit of a tangent, I was unsure how I would like the iPad mini, but once it was in my hand... I am a believer that the iPad mini has a place in our schools.) Our district had 4th graders and 5th graders testing on the iPad 2 during a Benchmark testing pilot and had no troubles with the keyboard. I think that testing on the iPad with a virtual keyboard would only be an issue with students that do not use the iPad on a regular basis.

Also, I think that it also matters what age the students were that were in the pilot. If it was 800 Juniors testing that have only had access to iPads for an hour a week or only one class a day, as opposed to students in a 1:1 iPad environment, it may be a more serious impediment to the validity of the test. I think that we will find this a question of testing validity as other testing goes online in districts that do not currently have a 1:1 environment.

I am glad that the SBAC is looking into all types of operating systems and hardware options. I hope that no matter what, students are able to test on what they currently feel comfortable using regularly.