Baseball is a funny game…so is thinking about Math class
Jul 1st, 2007 by Mr. Higgins
On Saturday, I was at Jacobs Field to watch the Cleveland Indians play the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Indians pitching ace, CC Sabathia, is now 12-2 after an 8-6 Indians victory. The Devil Rays made it interesting in the 9th inning when Rafael Perez gave up 3 runs in the bottom of the ninth before Joe Borowski came in for the save. Life can’t get any better than sitting watching a baseball game and just enjoying the great weather. There was only one problem…I couldn’t stop thinking about the math classes for my new assignment this upcoming school year.
I am very happy to now have 4 preps including AP Computer, Algebra II, Algebra II-H, and Pre-Calculus. Being my second year of teaching, I have to adjust from my first year when I had nearly all computer classes. For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’m going to involve technology in all of my math classes. I am not ready to take a giant step like Darren Kuropatwa (A Difference) and fully utilize blogging in my higher level math classes. (By the way, click on his link to see the great masthead he has created) There is a great desire from my standpoint to implement projects which link to the web, I just don’t have time at this point. Maybe if the school was on a 4 or 5 period day, but not with 7 periods. However, let me brainstorm a few things I am interested in trying out.
- First, and most obvious, is to utilize my Tablet PC using a wireless projector to present notes along with the use of a whiteboard. The major choice I have to make it whether to use Microsoft PowerPoint, SmartBoard Software, Microsoft OneNote, or Microsoft Journal. Once I decide on which software title to use to present notes, I will be much more at ease.
- I could record using many software titles my presentations to the class. My tablet even has a microphone attached so I could also record the audio. The size of these files would be incredibly large for the most part.
- My school website, Mr. Higgins’ School Website (under construction now), is still going to be used to post assignments and updates for the classes. I hope that I get more students to visit the website and find more ways to provide students some useful links.
- Is there really an effective way to use a wiki in a math class? If there is, I still have not found it. I will continue to research this topic.
I have a lot of information to cover in all of these classes so I’m not looking for “fillers”, but alternative assessments which are aimed closer to Web 2.0. I hope that fellow bloggers, teachers, or students will comment my thoughts as I hope to implement at least a couple of these approaches in my classroom this school year.
This blog is going to bat for Web 2.0. My name is Chris Higgins and I am a high school mathematics and computer science teacher at Norwalk High School in Ohio. I am a lifetime learner, Web 2.0 advocate, blogger, tennis coach, and a huge sports fan. Go Browns! Go Cavs! Go Tribe!
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[...] Baseball is a funny game?so is thinking about Math class I am very happy to now have 4 preps including AP Computer, Algebra II, Algebra II-H, and Pre-Calculus. Being my second year of teaching, I have to adjust from my first year when I had nearly all computer classes. … [...]
Can I recommend you look at Ubiquitous Presenter (up.ucsd.edu). It provides:
Ability to annotate slides live with multi-colored ink
On the fly, create whiteboard slides (blank slides)
Shrink the slide (to provide more space on which to write)
Saves slides & ink to the web for later review by students
Add instructor notes to the slides (displayed only on instructor’s monitor, but not on projected monitor)
Student submissions (students can submit text, and/or ink from laptop, or short text from cellphone
Hey. I’m interested in what you’re doing w/ Moodle. I’d never heard of it before hitting the blogs like mad this summer. I’m trying to post assignments, grades, and calendars all through Blogger. As for tablet presenting, I use Agilix GoBinder. It’s a little slow at times and the support is questionable. I don’t know what their plans are for this product. All I know is that I still like it more than OneNote. OneNote employs boxes of ink (i.e. writing is grouped into paragraphs; hard to explain). GoBinder is much more free-form. I like like these versus slide-based apps because they provide an infinitely vertically scrolling workspace (ideal for Math). It doesn’t have a presentation mode so what you see is what your students see. GoBinder also publishes to *.png while OneNote publishes to *.mht (embedded *.png within; very annoying). I’ll check out UP as mentioned by Neil.
Let me know what you use for screencasting and where you publish. I’m also looking into that. Perhaps CamStudio and TeacherTube.
Renjie,
I have decided to use SmartBoard Notebook Software. My school district is looking to purchase the full license. As for screencasting, I have never really done it for classroom use, but I have used it for college courses I have completed. I used CamStudio to do the recording and thought it was very easy to use.
As for Moodle…
Once you figure out the rigid structure, you will realize that you have a great platform for posting assignments, grades, calendars, etc… I really think you are making it difficult on yourself using Blogger; however, I have not attempted to post grades on a blogging platform. My hosting package allows me to easily install moodle without any trouble and I’m going to use it this year for AP Computer especially. I have seen the gradebook in action. It is very powerful.