Math and Tech: Fri

Last day of school!   Where's the joy? As Maria asked: "I know you're tired, but didn't you have fun?  It's because you were learning!"  If you're interested in the whole week of notes, try mccmath.

Friday Morning

Playing to Learn - Maria Anderson

Don't let me tell you, see for yourself.  (Link goes to Maria's famous Prezi.)  Other suggestions:

• If you assign a game, can ask them to play to a certain score.  Or post a screenshot of their high score in the discussion board.
• A good game gets harder as you get better.
• Look for when the math is the game.  Not just practice.
• Line Gem
• Factortris
• Manga High - several games with good content and game play, and superhigh production values.  I signed up yesterday, and I've already gotten unsolicited emails asking to help me upload students name.
• Waker - this is a wicked fun game of graphing that also has nice situational problem-solving.  (That's the screenshot at right.)  Compare to Woosh.  (Nice learning experiment: does narrative help? It must, right?)
• Jane McGonagol on gaming for a better world. (TED)
•  Support the development of good math games.  Say you'll use them, describe what makes the good ones good.

Friday Afternoon

Presentations.  Our assignment: 5 min, 20 slides, (quick, how long per slide?) to share what we learned, resources to share, and our goals going forward.

My Prezi. Pretty lame for such a good week.

From the presentations:

• Big impact:  things that allow us to share  what we do.  Jing, Squidoo, Mindomo, Mindmeister, Prezi, Google sites, blogging, ...
• Better life: Using tech to organize ourselves and improve efficiency.  Eg. Using PBworks for class materials and not having to repeat them for each section/class, MathType, Symbaloo, Doodle, Tablet PCs and Wacom tablets, Soluto, Organize Your Digital Self (Maria's mindmap), Dropbox for sync, backup and storage, SpacedEd, ...
• New tools: Search-Cube, Cool Iris, Virtual Magnifier, SnagIt, Animoto, WinPlot, showmewhatswrong.com (Jing with no install), TodaysMeet.com, HootCourse (uses existing twitter and facebook accounts), Wolfram Alpha, Zoomerang, clickers, Camtasia, Online Stopwatch, Zotero research tool, bitly URL shortener, Vpython 3D python programming made easy (?), PrimoPDF free PDF maker, ...
• Fun: avatar editing (VOKI even), Imagination Cubed,  ...
• Resources: Cyberchase activities, National Library of Virtual Manipulatives, Cool Text graphics generator, InterActMath a supplement to college textbooks, PhET simulations, ...
• Collaborate: Twitter, GALE,  ...
• Goals: presentations, innovations in teaching, sharing with colleagues at home, establish online presence, ... In short, go forth and do stuff.

One person even used DimDim to present remotely!  How tech is that?

Was a good week.  If it's open next year - you should consider it.  We could all use a little change.