I'm ashamed to say that I have nearly lost all knowledge of Math.
It's not like I didn't understand it once upon a time, nor did I ever hate it. Quite the contrary. Despite the fact that my obsessive love with politics and history won out as my major in university, I still adored all things Math. Why? It's objective, it's factual, it explains phenomenons in the world and you can get a "right" or "wrong" answer -- the latter being something that I thirsted for as a Type A personality who had written over 100 subjective essays in my university career. I even willingly took Calculus as an "elective" in university, just because I needed to reconnect with my old friend, Math. (for the record, I killed in that class).
But here I sit, years later, with same vague recollection of terms like limits, derivatives, logarithm, and inverse trigonometric functions floating around in my head. So it comes as no surprise that I had to reach out to my PLN to get assistance with a basic Trig problem earlier this week. And no, I'm not going to rehash it, since I'm already embarrassed that I had to show a lack of Grade 6 skills to as many people that did see those tweets! Let's just say, I owe it to the 28 people who looked at my Google Document with the Math problem and assisted me with my answer :)
Since I've been re-living my Math glory days and coming to the sad realization that those days are long gone, I thought it was only fitting to feature a Math-focused website for today's Fresh Look Fridays post.
Enter GeoGebra. Available as both a free download, or an online applet, this fantastic Math resource allows students to interact with Geometry, Algebra and Calculus in a dynamic way.
As their QuickStart guide states:
"In the most simple manner, you can do constructions including points, vectors, seg- ments, lines, and conic sections as well as functions, which can be altered dynamically by mouse afterwards. On the other hand, also the direct input in school-notation like g:3x+4y=7orc:(x–2)2+(y–3)2 =25 is possible, including differentiation and integration are at your disposal. The most remarkable feature of GeoGebra is the dual view of objects: every expression in the algebra window corresponds to an object in the geometry window and vice versa."
What does this mean? I have no idea, but it's super fun to play with. I encourage all of the math teachers that are part of my PLN to explore GeoGebra's functionality and I'm confident that you will see immediate application in your classroom! A big "thank you" to Shawn Urban for showing me this website in a recent workshop! I can't stress the importance of experts sharing areas of their expertise with their group, and I, for one, am hugely in debt to the great teachers that I work with every day!
As with all Fresh Look Fridays websites, I envision the most successful usage of this website as a center-based activity for a small group of students around a SMART Board. What a fantastic way to explore, create, question and practice either new concepts or old standbys crucial to their Math curriculum.
Who knows? Maybe this site will help the next generation of Math enthusiasts retain their knowledge just a bit longer than I did :)
No really, I do. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and let me tell you it takes a village of educator types on Twitter to raise my awareness of the mass amount of technology resources, ideas and potential for application in the classroom.
Enter Exhibit A: the sound files request.
Long story short, I was interested in compiling a list of free sound files to share with teachers that they could use in their lessons (specifically, within SMART Notebook). Being a complete lover of all things Google, I immediately googled my inquiry and voila! I garnered a bazillion pages (42 million, to be exact) responding to my request. The catch? Not all of them were "free" or even close to being public domain to sidestep that nasty copyright issue that keeps plaguing good intentioned folks like myself. I was able to find one or two websites that sufficed for my purposes, but I was interested in creating a bigger list.
So I turned to the biggest resource I have -- my PLN.
And as with all other cries for help, they responded almost instantaneously! A HUGE thank you to the following tweeps for helping me out with my request last week: @Mr_W@butwait@pobrun@pookyy@mpondu@lynnjeffs and @jdornberg! All of these great folks were a huge help to me, and responded in less than 24 hours!
So without further ado, here is the list of resources that I've compiled for copyright-friendly audio/sound files. Some of these were recommended to me, others I found all by myself lol.
- For adding music to your YouTube videos, try Audio Swap:
- For a website with a community of music published under Creative Commons licenses, try Jamendo:
- Scroll down to find a list of sites with royalty free music on this Wiki:
- For links to 3 royalty free websites, look on this Wiki:
- To get more sound clips, try Free SFX (please note some clips are licensed under Creative Commons while others are NOT for public use)
- A GI-NOR-MOUS list of copyright-friendly music and sound websites is found on the following Wiki:
- Another great list of audio websites is on this Delicious account:
I hope this helps all of you have been looking for a bank of sound clips, music and various audio files to help supplement the lessons in your classroom! I know that the uses for these clips and songs are endless.
"Cancel that, I'm exactly split between my PC side and my Mac side."
Nope, wrong again.
"I'm a Mac."
This brilliant internal dialogue voiced by moi has been taking place over the course of the past year. I grew up in a Windows based environment (well, after an initial introduction to the computer world in a DOS environment...C: prompt anyone?). This was followed by a brief blip in my University days, where the Faculty of Education insisted we use Macs for our main projects since "every school will have Macs by the time you are out in the real world".
Then came my 4 student-teaching practicums, followed by 5 years in my teacher career where none, I repeat, NONE of the schools that I taught in had Macs. In my current role, I've been forced to revisit the Mac side of myself, which has been buried deep inside for many years -- mainly because there ARE school divisions that have completely changed over to Mac operating systems.
At first, it was a struggle, both externally and in my internal dialogue (see the initial commentary above). For example, I had to learn that "Finder" was the Apple equivalent of "Start", "Applications" was like "Program Files" and "System Preferences" was the translated version of "Control Panel".
Luckily, unlike my experience learning French growing up, I haven't had to reverse the order of words in a sentence (Panel Control?)
Don't get me wrong, I still consider myself a recent Mac convert, and definitely one who still has traces of a Microsoft accent in my computer speak. But I do consider myself well on the way to recovery.
I thought perhaps there were others out there like me, who have recently been thrust into Apple's world of glitz, glamour and Garage Band (either by free will or dictatorship) who would like to learn the little tips and tricks that I have.
But before we can get to where we're going, we have to know where we've been. I've found the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" commercials to pretty much sum up how I've felt this past year. Here are a few of my favourites that document my journey thus far.
One of the First Original "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" Commercials
South Park Gets in the Mix with a Funny Spoof
Just Because I Loved the iPhone 4 vs. HTC Animation -- an I'm a Mac, I'm a PC Spoof, Cartoon Style
Exactly How I Felt When We Got Windows Vista. Made The Transition to Mac Shortly Afterwards
Watch for Part II of this little mini-series, coming soon to my blog!
First of all, I'd like to thank all of the amazing teachers, substitute teachers educational assistants, principals, vice principals and division office members who attended one of the 19 SMART Board workshops I've led over the past 2 weeks! This includes, but is not limited to, folks from Southern Alberta, the Calgary area (northern and southern perimeter including Airdrie, Okotoks and Cochrane), Calgary, Red Deer, Camrose, Edmonton, Lloydminster, Wainwright, Victoria, Vancouver, Abbotsford, Duncan, Cowichan, Langley, Surrey, Mission, Chilliwack and the million other places that I'm sure I'm forgetting.
I'd especially like to thank those who have taken the time to mosey on over to this little blog of mine :)
Oh, and I would also like to extend a huge thank you to all the people who have shared their resources with me, provided me with amazing links to great interactive websites and given feedback on my sessions. I. Love. Teachers. (after all, I was one in a previous life!)
Today's Fresh Look Fridays post is about a website one that I've seen before, I've used in workshops before and I've promoted verbally before. But every now and then one of my favourite interactive sites gets pushed to the back of my mind when I see a new and engaging website...(Look! Shiny object!)
But luckily one of my workshop attendees yesterday reminded me of this FANTASTIC site for Science simulations! PhET is a website spilling over with a million interactive simulations for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Math, Earth Science, etc., etc.
I can't even begin to list all the reasons why this site is awesome. Mainly, it is exactly the type of interactive website that works especially well on a SMART Board or other iwb in the classroom -- it encourages exploration and experimentation, it's perfect for a center type activity with 3 or 4 kids at the SMART Board, it provides visual references to abstract ideas and it's a nice extension or introductory activity.
Some of my favourites are found in the Physics section. What? You're surprised that deep inside this history geek there's a math-brained geek who's fascinated with the inner workings of this natural science? Just because I watch CPac and C-Scan doesn't mean that I'm not interested in the properties of a pendulum swing! :)
Just thought it was time to share a little info for Science colleagues of mine! Happy Friday and Happy Labour/Labor Day to the Canadian and American educators reading this!
Many things in my life changed when I made the switch from "classroom teacher" to "education consultant". These include:
1. I lost the ability to walk in high heels for hours on end
2. My house is much cleaner on a regular basis
3. I've spent more time on an airplane or in a car in the past 11 months than the previous 5 years combined
4. Apparently, I've lost my ability to effectively multitask
What happened to the girl who used to be able to reply to a parent's email, schedule a bus for a volleyball tournament, catch up the student who was absent for 7 days and introduce the next topic in our unit, all while carrying on conversations with 3 separate students regarding behaviour, questions and direction?
Whew! The fact that that was my life every day for the previous 5 years makes me exhausted!!
So I guess I've been a bit babied working with adults -- they're polite, quiet at the appropriate times and generally do not interrupt the task that I'm working on. I'm going to blame this coddling I've received as being the reason why my Fresh Look Fridays posts have been a bit late these days :)
Anyhoo, sometimes being 72 hours behind the eight-ball has it's perks. For instance, today's cool site is something of a recent phenomenon that I've seen lit up all over Twitter this afternoon:
The Wilderness Downtown is an experimental music video using HTML5 (hence, the reason HTML5 is trending today). For those who haven't been immersed in the tech world for awhile, HTML5 is what is supposed to replace Flash on websites. Apple says HTML5 is the next generation of interactivity, hence the reason it won't support Flash on it's devices. Confused? You should be...
I recommend trying out this little experiment by clicking the link below. **Please note** This ONLY works in Google Chrome (not Firefox, not Internet Explorer, and certainly not Safari).
Prepare to be amazed, confused, awestruck and amused all at the same time ;)
Maybe you could show this in class and get your kids to explain to you how they created this!
Today is officially the first day back to school. Well, not for me, but for my former colleagues.
I can't believe that this marks the SECOND first day back to school that I'm not officially a part of. Perhaps it's time for a reflection on how my life has changed in the past 14 months in the P.T. era (post-teaching...not to be confused with "T.P." which stands for something entirely different...)
But alas, this reflection on my new direction in life will have to wait another day. I'm heading out to the Battle River Learning Institute this morning to lead some SMART Board workshops with various people in their school division. Can't wait!
So in honour of today's "Back to School" theme, I thought I'd share one of my favourite new commercials that centres around this topic. Enjoy!
