What's on My iPad - Summer 14 Edition

What does a math ed prof keep on his iPad?  I thought I might as well just show you - though I did tidy up a bit before having company over.

Main Screen

Nothing too unusual here. Evernote is amazing even though I am a novice user. Really enables me to leave the laptop in my office a lot. Google Drive completes that picture, especially since I can make things available offline.

Main calculators: MyScript for computation and Desmos for graphing.

GeoGebra, OF COURSE.

Sketchology is a drawing program with near infinite zoom. You can really scrunch in and add detail.

Threes is my current game for a minute. Two Dots is the other one. Both have me stymied. iButtons is because I am still a class clown at heart.







The new Google apps are better, but still only for use in a pinch.

Paper is gorgeous.

Notability for marking up pdfs.

Skitch and Halftone for marking up photos.



Serviceable stuff here. Some of these would be more useful in a K-12 classroom than at university.












I go back and forth amongst Educreations and Screenchomp. Do you have a favorite app for this?

Voice Record integrates well with Google Drive, which has been handy for sharing and archiving interviews.

Three ring is interesting. It allows you to photo document student work and include it for a particular student in a class list. Feels like a piece of the SBG puzzle, and I'll be experimenting a lot more with it this year.

Tara Maynard and Caitlin Grubb have impressed me with their Nearpod and Socrative use. Need to be 1:1 for it to work, though, and we're not yet at the university.

When MyScript and Desmos aren't enough, I'll pull out Wolfram|Alpha. It needs wifi for full power, though. Sage does not, and can handle even bigger jobs. I think if I taught more upper level math I'd be using that a lot. It was handy for Number Theory, and can execute Python code, among other languages.  Quick Graph is a nice 3-D grapher.

The Common Core app is helpful and easy to use. Necessary these days.

Numbers is a gorgeous interactive book from Ian Stewart.

xFractal is a versatile fractal viewer with Julia and Mandelbrot sets.

Golly is a particularly nice implementation of Conway's Game of Life.

The Rekenrek (Number Rack) and GeoBoard are not as good as having a real one, but useful when needed away from the supply cabinets, or for recording demonstrations off the iPad.

I recommend all of these, but especially iOrnament, Isometric and Mandalar. Great feel and capabilities.

Now we start with the games!

24 and 6 numbers are both for computational fluency with good structures.

I'm a fan of all of the Motion Math games. Meaningful representations and actions that helpf for constructing number concept.

Whole is a recent game which has a nice game context and mechanism for adding fractions to 1. The two Teachley games, Addimals and Mt. Multiplis, emphasize strategies for computation and have outstanding production values. (Think Cyberchase-level voice acting and animation.)

Devlin's Wuzzit Trouble is good game and requires problem solving.

The NCTM apps are good puzzlers and free.

I am not a huge fan of DragonBox or Math Evolve, but think both are as good as drill games are going to get.

ParabolaX is our GVSU quadratic game app. Not bad!

These are separate because their goal is not to explicitly have the students do math. However they are essentially mathematical in structure, context or process.

I have spent way too much time over the years playing 2048, Entanglement, Flow Free, Number Addict, Dots and Two Dots. Thank the tech powers that there was not mobile Tetris when I was younger.

Scratch, Jr is a particularly nice, new coding app suitable for the quite young. Of the other three I think Hopscotch shows the most promise.

Of course, I do have just games on here, too.

Lines of Gold and Deck Buster are two great Reiner Knizia one person strategy games.

Ticket to Ride is a solid implementation of the board game (which is an all time great) which actually gets rid of the scoring (which can be onerous) and has pretty good AI to play against.

Risk is better in the app than on the board. There, I said it.

Doodle Jump I got when we were designing ParabolaX. It and Little Galaxy are are interesting combinations of dexterity and strategy. After taking Malke Rosenfeld's embodied cognition session, I think there's more here than I realized.

If you haven't played Plants vs Zombies, you're missing out. Fun game, surprising amount of intuitive math and strategy. It's all about rates!

Way too much sharing. If you're still here, I'd love to know what I'm missing, or what you find essential.

Mashup Artists

As I'm here at #edcampgr, I am struck over and over today by the idea of teaching as a mashup art. People talk a lot about teachers 'stealing' from teachers or other equivalent expressions, but it's more creative than that. It is amazing listening to these edcamp teachers.  The kind of teachers that give up a Saturday for free professional development, are willing to present when they didn't come here to do that, are here explicitly to take control of their own PD - these are amazing people.

It's really cool how much these teachers have in common, and yet have so much of their own to add, also. They share so many values, yet are implementing them in different ways. Being such a twitter-savvy conference, you see ideas intermingling from concurrent sessions.  Over the course of several sessions, you see people applying immediately what they heard from multiple sources in the next conversation.

Not actually math-positive.

Someone was talking with Dave Coffey and I about Khan (that happens), and that essential nature of teaching was part of the conversation. Constructivist teachers get frustrated with students asking us to tell them what to do, but then those teachers can ask that same thing. Tell me what to teach or how to teach. Or, worse in my eyes, teacher educators tell novice teachers (or, arrogantly, inservice teachers) Teach Like This.

Not the teachers at edcamp. Even when they hear something amazing, they think 'how can I adapt?' or 'what will this look like in my classroom?' or 'how does that relate to what someone else was talking about?'

A persistent idea for me is the student/learner distinction (if you haven't, watch these videos, please. I went there, used caps), but I feel like we need a similar distinction for teacher of students vs teacher of learners. This relates to another word-confusion, the Skemp idea of instrumental vs relational. We need a way to talk about these different ideas in a way that supports all teachers in improving.

That happens at an edcamp.

Some of the resources from the day:
Sessions I was in:
@benrimes Tech Savvy Ed website
Video Story Problems vimeo channel
@kiemanha's Inquiry Google site
Project Zero's resources
Thinking Routines for Numeracy
Neato Comprehension Continuum framework (pdf)
Edward Burger, Williams prof, author of 5 Elements of Effective Thinking
Burley School's iPad blog
K-12 open source eTextbooks 
@anthonydilaura's Innovative iPad blog

Others: (twitter lets you eavesdrop)
@taramaynard shared @kfouss' GeoGebra and Google Forms
@delta_dc shared Project Based Learning explained (YouTube)
@sjunkins How Twitter is reinventing collaboration among teachers
@Packwoman208's Flipped resources

More? Check out the #edcampGR twitter stream.

Math+iOS

By Samuel Hansen from Flickr

I've been asked multiple times this week about good iPad apps for math... so time to put together a list. I have not had an opportunity to use most of these with students yet, so I'm going on my impressions and recommendations. Many of these do have android versions. I'd love for you to add your experiences or recommendations or opinions in the comments. I have a previous post about iPad for teachers, too. My first response to people was to send this list from mathxtc, which has a lot of goodness on it. I'm particularly interested in  Solids Elementary HD (explores nets and solid geometry) and the Mathination touch solver or Algebra Touch.  Also note the official Apple collection of iPad math apps. (ITunes link. Most of the links in this post are web links.)

The big question to start with is "wifi or not wifi?" On the web, start with Wolfram|Alpha and Desmos.

I also have to give a shout out to GeoGebraTube which on a mobile device automatically optimizes sketches for mobile use. Input boxes and some other features don't work. It's worth noting here that there's a Kickstarter for a free GeoGebra for iPad app. I think they're having difficulty because it's hard to perk something which is going to be free. Very worth of our support as a community.

There's a lot of video lesson archives, such as ... you know, but I'm not going to cover them here for fear of terminal irony.  Vijay recommended Fraction Basics which does interactives plus video and has some free samples. (There are a few with the model of free video app, buy the content.)

The Calculator
If you have an iOS device, you should not need a calculator anymore. However, I have yet to see a calculator that combines regression with the nice graphing and computation that's available. Who will finally save us from TI's decades of benevolent tyranny?

1. Wolfram|Alpha - the reasonably prided app. I also like the course focused variations that make the interface more direct for students. This I have used with students and it is powerful.
2. Quickgraph - free, also Quickgraph+ for 1.99.  Good computation, nice interface, good touch interaction. (Worked with one of the authors, Alejo Montoya, on ParabolaX when he was at GVSU.)
3. Free graphing calculator - upgrades to Scientific graphing calculator. Both very serviceable.
4. Calculator Pro -free scientific calculator. No graphing but faster for computation than the others. Simple and clear.

Curriculum
Note that there are games here, but they are pseudo-games. The game structure is gamified content, as opposed to be a game that also addresses content. I obviously don't have a good way to describe this yet. I'm not against gamification, but think if it's overused it will have a short shelf-life.

Secondary

• Dragon Box - winning awards and notice left and right. $3 or $6. Content: solution of linear  equations. Should help students learn which manipulations are permissible, and maybe even choose which manipulation is desired, but I have qualms because there is no algebraic reasoning as to why we can do these things. My 8th grade daughter even noticed that she could figure out how to solve anything, but didn't know why anything worked. Transitions kids from pictures to regular algebraic notation. Clever and really well executed, but possibly dangerous as instruction. I'd use it as an alternate representation after some inquiry. Christian Bokhove is a big fan and pointed out that it's multi-platform.
• ParabolaX - our GVSU contribution to algebra games. Content: factorable quadratics. Designed by Alejo with Char Beckmann. The idea of the game is to use game conditions to gain students experience that supports later symbolic understanding.
• Sketchpad Explorer - free. Let's you explore Geometer's Sketchpad files on the iPad. Key Curriculum was nice enough to send along the link to their sketch sharing site: Sketch Exchange

Elementary

• MathEvolve - Lite and $2. The Dragonbox of elementary number operations. I wrote a post about it already.
• Everyday Math Games like Top It. Usually $2. Love it or hate the curriculum, they have some excellent number games for computation practice. They were an early leader in putting them online, but that was only accessible to schools using the curriculum. Now they're apps, so everyone can have access. Follow the iTunes links from Top It to see the full selection. (No easy way to link to that.

Tools

• Protractor 1st - free. A super-protractor.
• Geoboard - free. Infinite rubber bands. Finally.
• Number rack - free. Rekenrek with clicking beads, even. Great number representation.

Games

• Motion Math - $2 each. Really a stand out in this category. Get the feeling of a game, use the full range of input of a mobile device and they're making several games that are new and great. Try starting with Motion Math fraction game.
• 24 game - $1. Great IRL and just as good as an app.
• Set - $5. Remember that's cheaper than an actual set of Set.
• Entanglement - $2. Graph theoretic reasoning that's really absorbing.
• Pick-a-path - free. Interesting computation and estimation game from the NCTM.
• Concentration - free. Early number representation matching game from the NCTM.

Wonder

• Jeff Week's Geometry and Topology software. Great, free stuff. Here's his iOS stuff. All free and multiplatform. Josh Bowman pointed this stuff out - thanks!
• iOrnament - $1. Great reflection and rotation symmetry art program, including all 17 wallpaper groups. I cannot stop playing with it. Kaleidoscope Drawing Pad is similar in spirit but more limited and free. (Still very fun, with different drawing action.)
• Minds of Modern Mathematics. Free. Interactive timeline of great mathematics achievements. Must have.

Future

• Soulver - $3. Interesting effort to blend verbal and symbolic representations ... not sure if it's there yet, but I like where it is going.
• Mobimath - Lite or $1. Needs cellular to do distance, but still does angle of elevation. This kind of real-time data collection will be awesome once it's smoothed out. Even just the angle of elevation bit is neat, though.
• Loopy - free. Trying to push the boundary of an interactive virtual manipulative, but it doesn't quite work for me yet. They're onto something neat, though. Free, so give it a try.

In addition to all this, there are a lot of excellent puzzles that echo both classical math problems (like tangrams) and newer archetypes (rush hour).  You might start with some of the neat Think Fun games, like Chocolate Fix.

This also doesn't get into the tools that students can use to record or create their own content. Paul Macneil recommended Explain Everything ($3).

Hopefully this is a good starter selection. What's missing? For what objective or classroom activity would you like to see an app? Do you know somewhere where the various instructional materials are written up?