We can work IT out

There’s nothing new about flashcards or having students memorise their tables (once they understand the concept of multiplication), but I thought this was, at the least, a possible way to have students willingly use their iPods to learn their tables.

I was reading the October newsletter from ISTE SIGML group (which I admit, I don’t often read) and happened upon “Podcast Picks (presented by Tony Vincent)”. The name sounded familiar so off I went to “part 1“. [One interesting podcast shown was the BBC Podcast 'World News For Children' - I'd recommend subscribing to it.]

One of the people that Tony was talking to via Skype was Brent Coley. It sounded like Brent was doing some interesting things with students, so I wandered over to his web site: Mr Coley. There is a lot on Brent’s website, ( it may even have been mentioned in Tony’s podcast) and what caught my attention was the way that Brent was using ‘iPod Flashcards’ for his students to learn their spelling words. Being a maths teacher, I immediately translated this to learning tables. (In writing this post, I re-visited Brent’s site and did find examples of tables flashcards. He also has a tutorial on he makes them – they are basically PowerPoint slides exported as images.)

My daughter finds memorising tables boring and recently received an iPodtouch – so I jumped into Keynote and randomly started making slides for the 7 times tables. I exported them as photos and then imported them into iPhoto into an album called ‘7tables’. The final step was to sync them to my iPhone and then I went to show Jamie.

There were 12 photos in the album and each one showed the table (with answer) and an array to illustrate the multiplication. Jamie thought it was good but wondered what she should do with it – her response was “Can’t you make it into an app?” Well, if I spent the next 6 months learning how to make an app, I probably could.

Instead, I thought of doubling the amount of slides with each new multiplication having a blank answer. So, back to keynote – it was quite quick to duplicate each slide and then cover every second slides answer with a background coloured box. (I did try deleting the answer, but then the text re-justified and meant that the transition from one slide to the next had the text jump.) Another export as photos, import to iPhoto and sync to my iPhone and I had a set of 24 images.

Clicking on the arrow to advance each photo allows the user to scroll through – or you can do the finger swipe. Now all I need to do are the 6, 8 and 9 tables. The set of 24 photos for the 7 times tables can be found on flickr.

This post was written for a PD Session

What Comes Next?

Below are 5 different number patterns.

Choose one of them and write a comment that includes:

• Your name (first name only)
• the pattern you choose
• the next three numbers in the pattern

(1) 1, 3, 8, 18, 38, …, …, …,

(2) 301, 289, 277, …, …, …,

(3) 1, 4, 9, 61, 52, …, …, …,

(4) 1, 8, 27, 64, …, …, …,

(5) 1020, 500, 240, …, …, …,

Image: source

This is hopefully the first in a series of posts about using Edmodo.

You may recall from earlier posts that I was wanting my maths class to have an online presence.

In the Help! post, I was wondering what tools to use to be able to manage and interact with my class. I started a maths blog last week (which will develop as we go along – and to be honest, I’m not really sure what I actually want its functions to be, yet) and will show the boys for the first time on Monday.

I had signed up to Edmodo towards the end of the 2008 academic year, but didn’t think it was worth starting at that stage. I had some inkling of what it was and looked at the edmodo blog but I wasn’t confident what would happen when I used it.

So, this morning, I have explored.

Setting up an account is quite straight forward, so I won’t delve into that. It was also quite easy to set up a group. Click on ‘create’, type in the name of the group and click “create”.

When you create a group, you get a code to give to your students. They go to the Edmodo home page and create a student account, where they will need to enter the code to become part of the group.

What I wanted to find out first, was who gets to see whose messages.

To test this out I created two different student accounts – it was handy having access to three computers to do this.

When a student creates an account they have a username and also their own name. The username is what they use to log in with, but when the write messages (posts), it is their real name that you see. I was hoping it may be thier user name and that this would help keep them anonomous, but it isn’t really an issue, as I’ll explain shortly.

The student window is basically the same as the teacher’s window but with a few less options. It has the central message box at the top and any messages appear below this.

One of my reasons for wanting an on-line presence, was so that students could communicate with me at anytime. We know that some students don’t like asking for help in front of their peers, so using Edmodo can help with this.

When a student types a message, they then type who they want the message to go to, in the box below. In the image, my test student typed the letter ‘B’ which brought up to choices that contain that letter: (1) Colin Becker (teacher) or (2) Year 7 B1 Maths (the name of the group they belong to).

If the student chose to send the message to the teacher, then no other student would get to see that message – this is great for anonymity. If the student chose to send it to the group, then everybody gets to see it. As far as I could tell, students are unable to send messages to students.

Last pointer: I continually forgot the usernames and passwords of my ‘test’ students, and forgot the invite code for the group. A single click (left-click) on the little pencil brings a pop-up menu where you can access some admin options and change the colour associated with the group.

I hope to write further posts on how I’m using Edmodo with my class – I really aren’t sure where it’s going to go.

So, you might like to subscribe to my blog to keep up with my Edmodo journey.

To subscribe via RSS click here.

Photo: source Some rights reserved

What Web2.0 tool should I use?

What Web2.0 tool would you use?

This year for my Year 7 maths class I want to have a learning management system – but without using commercial software ie no Moodle (takes too long to learn); no Sharepoint (need access to set up on servers) and no Blackboard (cost too much).

This is what I want to do with it:

• set tasks and have students reply that they have completed them
• put course materials online
• have students ask questions online
• have video lessons that I make available for each teaching moment
• have parents see progress of their child and make comments
• be accessible from home
• have some assessment data viewable
• have students use it to profile some of their work
• and a few other things that I have probably forgotten to mention
• have it semi-private so that students and their parents are the main (only) users

These are some the options:

• Edmodo – can I do most of this in edumodo??
• A blog
• A Wiki
• A ning
• other suggestions?

So, what would you use? Which tool will make it fairly simple, keep it organised and not be too hard for parents to interact with?

Photo: source Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Side-note: Wasn’t sure what to expect when I typed “help” into the Flickr Creative Commons search engine but there were an interesting range of images.

This could be an interesting task for students to do: with a digital camera take an image that depicts ‘help’, add it to VoiceThread (or blog page), describe your thoughts and invite others to respond.