Ramblings of an ICT teacher

In a never ending effort to make Maths meaningful, I set my Year 10 students the task of designing a dog kennel for my dog.  Armed with his dimensions, they set about designing their kennels in Google Sketchup.  Armed with a drawing and the dimensions of their master piece, they then had to calculate how much timber would be needed to actually build the kennel (surface are).  As the kennel had to be painted, they then researched paint coverage on the Internet before working out how much paint they would need and the cost of the paint.

Copy of the actual assignment is here

Below is an example of one of the responses

Timber (surface area):

2(0.65*1.00) – (0.60*0.40) +2(0.65*1.50) + 2(1/2*0.30*1.00) +2(0.58*1.50) =5.0.m²

After some research I found a litre of paint to be able to cover about 15m².

The dog Kennel will have three coats (To make it more durable) and thus I will have to buy a litre of paint.

For four litres paint it costs $52.99. I could not find any paint that comes in a litre so this is the final cost. Might be able to use the other paint for when all the paint is worn off.

I recently discovered a website where students can create their own comic strips.  http://comeeko.com/  In a never ending endeavour to engage my students I decided to give this a go, both in my Yr 10 maths class and my Yr 11 IPT class.

The students were instantly keen on the idea of creating their own comics, and as you can see below, were very creative in their task. 

In Maths, we were studying fractions – a topic they have been doing since Primary School.  Rather than reteach the material again, I decided to use the comic strips to find out how much they already knew.  I gave them the task of creating a comic strip that would explain to Yr 7 students how to perform an operation with fractions (Eg addition, subtraction, multiplication or division.)  In IPT we had been studying the 7 processes, and again I asked the students to use the comic strip to explain one of these 7 processes. 

Although the comeeko, allows students to upload photos, most of mine decided to draw their own so they could have exactly the pictures they required.

I will definitely use this activity again.  Next time I will allow students to take their own photos to document a process and then turn it into a comic strip.  Printed in colour and laminated, these cartoons make great decorations for the walls and a great reference for other students.

Through Twitter, I have discovered this amazing app for my iPod touch.  At only $7.99 through iTunes app store, it is well worth the investment.

Educate 2.0 is an iPhone/iPod Touch app designed to support teaching professionals in schools, universities and colleges. It features in-built timetabling, student tracking, teaching strategies and eLearning tools.

So now with my rolls and timetable on Educate and my course outlined in Moodle, I am going to attempt to start the year paperless.

I am a bit worried about losing data, so will be backing up my rolls daily to Google docs and possibly via email once a week – just to be safe.

Up until about October last year, I really couldn’t see the point of Twitter.  I was an avid fan of Facebook, but thought Twitter was only for those who cared what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast. (By the way, Aston has more followers than the population of New Zealand).

In October I attended a computer coordinator’s meeting and listened to an address by Stu Hasic.  He persuaded me to see Twitter for its educational and Professional Learning Network possibilities.

I immediately set up my Twitter account and since then, I have been compelled to check it at least once a day.  I have found lots of fantastic resources and am starting to contribute my own resources and links.  The contacts I have made, have been invaluable.  I already have plans for a Maths Challenge Day with Coffs Harbour High School and have been able to enquire about issues with the DER laptops.

So, if you haven’t already, open your mind to the possibilities Twitter presents and look me up http://twitter.com/meaganrodda

I have given up on the blog idea for the moment until DET releases their version and make life easier for me. I have decided instead to create a moodle for my Maths class and to use the journal function instead. This way, students can get use to sharing their thoughts, with me as the only audience. We can then graduate to the DET blog when they become available. I would also like to use Adobe Acrobat Pro to create portfolios of their work. Combining notes, homework sheets, tests, assignments, problem solving etc into one file for each topic. Hopefully this will make it easier for the students to see what they have achieved and what they have learnt. With a bit of luck they may even look back on it when it is time to study for School Certificate exams. I will continue to use One Note for their theory work, but am toying with the idea of putting partially complete notes on the moodle site for them to download. This way, I am hoping we will not waste so much classtime typing up theory work, but they will still be able to learn how to use OneNote effectively. I have also found out today, that Clickview offers a wireless version that should work on the student laptops. I am keen to give this a go, as I believe, the that student’s being able to stop and rewatch parts of the video when necessary, is more effective, than me projecting the video from my machine.

After attending a Computer Coordinator’s meeting in Wagga yesterday, at which, Stu Hasic was the guest speaker, I have been inspired to take a new direction with my teaching – especially in Maths.  I always thought that what I was doing – using IWB’s, computers, graphics calculators, was fairly interactive.  According to Stu, this generation of kids need to be actively creating and publishing content.  So I am about to embark on a journey to try and make my Maths teaching more technologically interactive. 

I have decided to try and get them to set up their own blogs where they can reflect upon what they have learnt in Maths at regular intervals.  I have already asked them to create a quiz using Adobe Presenter, which the rest of the class can then play.  Although I have been using Stu’s Quiz Boxes software and the kids have loved it, I am going to extend them to creating their own quizzes and not just playing mine.

I will endeavour to keep you posted with how these adventures are going – good or bad.  If anyone has ideas of other things I can do with my kids, or things that they have tried, I would like to hear about them.