Online Community

TeAchnology is an awesome website and resource for all teachers. Among the variety of educational resources, they have an open forum under the teacher message board where anyone is welcome to add a question or comment about an ongoing discussion, whether you are a member of the website or not. There are interesting discussions every day on the message board. Usually if your question is sort of open-ended, you can expect to get multiple responses which are helpful. They break it up into groups: k-2, 3-5, middle, and high school. It’s a great way to narrow the focus and keep yourself within the right age group and level.

Aside from the message board, there are tones of useful information a teacher could take from TeAchnology. There are lesson plans, tips for and helpful hints for just about any sort of teaching situation, a cool rubric generator, articles, a variety of worksheets that are content specific, great themes for all subjects, and lots of links to other great resources as well as plenty of other great resources for teachers. They even have a huge list of links to all sorts of different math websites if you want to look beyond Teachnology. I guess that’s why the website is called the online resource for teachers.

Programming a Graphing Calculator

As this final project comes to a close, I wanted to share with you all the progress I've made and the goals I've met through my IEP. I now understand the language of the TI-83 Plus graphing calculator, and I'm able to use it to compile meaningful programs with minimal difficulties. I often laugh to myself in embarrassment that I never new how to do this stuff before, even though I'm been using the TI-83 for over 10 years. I'm not proud of that fact, but now I know.

As part of the IEP, I've created a unit plan on how to use the TI-83 Plus with an emphasis on programming which consists of 5 lesson plans; however, each lesson varies in length and may take several days. I also have links to the 4 worksheets I created as part of the unit.

If you wish, you can read a self-reflection of my journey establishing an IEP, setting objectives and goals, and meeting them through a unit plan applicable to any algebra class. Although this unit sounds like it focuses on 8th grade math, it can really be applied to all secondary levels of math, including advanced placement calculus. Please check out the links below to view more details about the IEP.

Self-Reflection

Unit Plan

Worksheets for Unit Plan:

• TI-83 Packet
• Beginning Commands Worksheet
• Writing Programs Worksheet I
• Writing Programs Worksheet II

IEP Proposal

As a way of enhancing my own knowledge about the TI-83 graphing calculator-a device I've been using for many years as a math student-I've decided to create an individualized education plan for myself to improve upon the skills I already have and broaden my knowledge about the calculator even further.

For my proposal, I will be creating a mini unit for my students, approximately six lesson plans, that teaches students how to use a graphing calculator. The students will ultimately learn the technical language of the calculator which will allow them to write programs that can perform operations with the press of a button. I'm very excited to learn the language myself, and I'm really looking forward to meeting my goals of my IEP.

My Favorite Educational Websites

As a teacher, I find myself constantly trying to learn more, find new ideas and keep on top of all the current, latest methods of teaching. Right now, these are my three favorite websites as a math teacher. The NCTM website is a good resource for looking up the latest ideas in mathematics, current research, national standards, etc. NetTrekkers is a great resource for lesson plan ideas, teaching strategies, etc. But out of all three, Discovery Education is my favorite. I'm always looking for new, creative ways to present concepts to my students. This is a video archive which has an educational video on just about anything. You name it, they have it. The videos range from about 5 minutes to 1 hour. Some of these videos are a great alternative to the traditional ways of explaining concepts.

• Discovery Education
• NetTrekker
• National Council for Teachers of Mathematics

The only slight problem with these websites is that you have to be a member in order to access all the useful information they have. I was lucky enough to have access to them either through UAS or the school I work at. However, don't worry. Chances are your school may very likely have access to these websites as well. A good person to ask would be your department chair or maybe even the librarian.

Digital Storytelling

The Story

As part of my classroom curriculum, I would require my students to create a digital story detailing a concept in mathematics. The stories would include details of methods which lead up to a new concept, and then the students would be required to introduce the new concept on the video.
Some concepts which would be appropriate for digital stories are:

• using the zero property
• graphing non-linear equations
• solving linear systems using substitution.

After the digital stories were complete, I would post the stories onto the class website for other students to view as a reference guide or resource for out-of-class tutoring.

Click the Link to view my story map.

VSP Story Map

Putting Everything Together

For an example video, I chose to use the quadratic formula as my mathematical concept. Since my students recently learned the quadratic formula, I thought it would be very appropiate. Plus, I was confident that the students would want to help me out because they love singing "the song." So I enlisted some students' help for the video. I explained what was going on and let them take charge under my supervision. Soon we had a working recording.

Without myself taking an extreme executive role in the recording process, there were a few minor glitches with the recording. However, after recording the video more than 5 times over a two day period, I could see the students getting frustrated. So the students and I settled on our best recording before the desktop of the computer was completely covered in videos. Then, I took the video home to do some minor editing and added in some credits.

After completing the digital story, there were some key mistakes that I made sure to accommodate for in my grading rubric. Some of these points included:

• Educating students on how to clearly speak into a microphone
• Requiring students to use a contrasting color of pen with their background so that the content is easily followed and visible to the viewer.
• Rehearsing lines if necessary so that silly mistakes aren't made during recording.
• Being very organized before starting the recording process.

Overall, the digital storytelling project was so much fun. Depending on the resources I have in the future, I would love to incorporate this into my curriculum. I think it would be a great opportunity for alternative peer tutoring.

Check Out the Final Product:

Click on the link to view the grading rubric which would assess future students' digital stories.
Grading Rubric

The Overdominance of Computers

In the article, “The Overdominance of Computers,” the author, Lowell Monke, defends the idea that computers are dominating children’s lives; we are loosing sight of the concrete (the real world) which will always be present when technology will be forever changing.

Click here to read more.

Assistive Technology for Reading

In their article, “Assistive Technology for Reading,” Hasselbring and Bausch discuss new ways of helping students with learning disabilities through the use of computer programs.

Click here to read more.