Attempting to set up a link.

I am trading links with a lady and this is an attempt.  The other reason I am working on learning to set up a link is simply that I hope to set up a blog at school that will be for my students only.  I am thinking of doing it to let students see what we are doing in class that day so they can work their way through it.  This would be great for when I have a sub who does not know math.  This way I can post a QR, send them to the blog entry they need and place examples, links, etc so the sub does not need to know high school math.  I am trying to figure out if a blog or a wiki is going to work better.
The lady is Shelley Rolston and she writes the Perks of Teaching Primary Blog with some nice info for primary school.  Since I am a resource for the elementary teachers when the iPad minis are rolled out in the next couple weeks, I can refer them to her blog.  Enjoy

Using Free web based tools

I try to read communities on google plus to get more ideas and information.  Someone shared this link: elearningindustry.com/321-free-tools-for-teachers-free-educational-technology  and I promptly headed off to take a look.  The tools are divided up by topic such as infographics, text to speech, etc.
First thing that came to me as I looked at the list was the question "Will these all work on the iPad?"  I found a website that allows you to create cartoons and I think I could use it in my class as part of the end of the unit learning menu but I have to make sure it will work on the iPads, otherwise I have to plan to use the computer lab if I want to use it or I have to find a cartoon app for the iPad so students can do that.  Yes I know there is a paid app to do comics.  I also saw Wordle there and I've played with it myself but if I use it, I have to ask the question of "What is the purpose of having the students use the app or website?" 
So now I am going to spend part of the weekend establish criteria for any apps or websites that I use to see if they have a real educational purpose.  I know that not every educational site or app is actually educational.
I'll report back early next week to share the criteria I have come up with and how I plan to use them in menu learning.

Algebra Equation Builder app

Stumbled across this nice app.  It has 4 levels which increase in difficulty and requires people to take four terms and arrange them with two terms on each side of the equal sign so the equation itself is true.  Level one only uses numbers and when done, you move to the next level which includes a variable and tells you the answer.  Thus as students move through the levels, the difficulty increases until you have to come up with some rather complex problems.  I found some of the problems to be rather challenging and I think this game would give students a chance to practice without it being too easy.
Change of subject.  I got trained in Apple configurater so that next week I can start getting my iPads and the elementary school mini's set up and running.  So my prep periods will be spent getting the iPads up and running so I can actually begin using them in the classroom.

Origami

I sometimes include Origami folding in my geometry class for two reasons.  First, it makes students pay attention to the directions and second it uses angles, bisectors, triangles, and other such geometric shapes and terms.  I found a nice app called animal origami and downloaded it.  It has several different animals that  you can make following the step by step directions.  I picked it up the day it was being offered for free.  I did a quick check and there are several free to very low cost origami apps which show how to fold the paper step by step.
The ways I work origami folding into Geometry is to have students:
a.  follow directions and then write a paper  on all the geometric shapes and figures they used in the process.
b.  unfold their creation to use a protractor to measure the angles of all the folds off of certain lines.
c.  label and identify geometric shapes and figures on the paper itself.
d.  Write a set of directions on making the figure.

After they've had some practice with fun shapes, I pull out the origami book I have for geometry and have them follow directions for specific items such as their own specialized angle reader. 

The iPads themselves

I am in the process of creating a list of apps to put on the iPads later this week.  I plan to have subtext, nearpod, and showbie on them as a way of creating a more paperless classroom.  I've thought about Showme or Educreations so they can create their own presentations as part of the project at the end of certain chapters.  I have several interactive games that will be put on because they will reinforce student learning and will actually provide scaffolding for the students who might be slightly behind.  I also plan to include the my script calculator because it can do most math calculations and I want the graphing calculator program so they can graph various equations.  I need to do some looking for a trig app for my College Prep math class.
On the other hand, I will probably put on a notepad type program or a word processing program so students can do more writing in this class.  Our school, due to lower scores, is emphasizing literacy as a way of bringing the scores up. This means I need to consider that as I choose apps.  I know subtext will allow me to create and use digital graphic organizers.  The only issue I have to overcome is the one where the iPads are being shared.  I am going to see if I can have it set up so each student must log in to use the iPad and a place to store his or her work inbetween.  I do know about Dropbox but the tech dept would not let us use it last year so I am trying to find an app or place that would allow each student to store his or her work under their own name from a shared iPad.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Finally

We have someone coming from Apple to teach us to use apple configuator so that I can get the iPads ready to use by next week we hope.  It was set up last year but then we had to change a password and ended up with key change issues and it never worked correctly again.  I have plans of using Subtext, Nearpod, showbie, etc to have a more integrated math classroom.  I can see some ways that it will be helpful since I know that I can use subtext with pdf files.  I can set up some pre and post tests online and have my students take the test so I know where they are at.  I want the nearpod so we can go through some presentations.  I am ready to use these and other apps.

Including literacy

I have been working on figuring out how to include more literacy activities in my Mathematics classrooms and integrate the iPad at the same time.  I found some graphic organizers that can be used such as an anticipation set of comments/questions, a summery writing chart, a semantic map, possible sentences and a reading log.  I know I can scan these and use them via an app like subtext but I am wondering if I want to have students do all of these graphic organizers on the iPad.  The pros include the students sending finished work directly to me via e-mail, the typing is more legible than their handwriting, they do not loose the paper and they do not need to have a writing implement.  In addition, it uses less paper at the copy machines.  The con's is that they have to type the answer rather than write, the iPad can sometimes be more awkward to use than a paper and pencil.
This is something I have to work out and make a decision on.  I suspect I will end up splitting the times I use the iPad and have them write things out. 

More on navigation

I gave further thought to my thoughts from yesterday and the reason I looked at maritime navigation is simply that we live on a river about 15 miles from the ocean.  People here go to the ocean and up and down various rivers to go fishing, etc.  So there are apps for mobile devices and the boat captain said he has seen people using the navigation apps on their ipads to navigate on water.  This lead to the thoughts of are there GPS apps for mobile devices.  I checked and yes there are so that means students can have GPS access with them at all times.  So as part of our navigation unit, we plan to have the students learn and use GPS in a geocaching activity.  I am thinking for the math portion of the activity, students can calculate the distance between stops and write that down.  We can also give them a map with longitude and latitude to mark down the stops and show the distances between stops.  That is going to be awesome.  We probably won't do it till the end of the year, after state mandated testing is done.

This and That

I am back at school doing the inservice training.  Since my school needs to work on literacy that will be the focal point this year.  They are having us create a thermatic unit for the high school and we chose navigation so I am starting to research navigation apps that could be used on the iPad during the unit.  We are going to do it at the end of the year after testing.  I found one plan2nav that is a marine navigation app that allows people to plan journeys, look at high resolution photos of harbor entrances and, check tides and currents.  I will run this by one of our teachers in the high school who used to work as a boat captain for fisherman.  He is willing to work with both the science teacher and myself. 
I think I'll download this app tonight and run it by him tomorrow and we'll see what he says. If anyone knows how decent this one is or has used others, I'd love to hear from you.

• Plan voyages on the fly, chart your route, set waypoints and measure the distance for each leg of your journey.
• Check tides and currents and the weather with our free weather service for forecasts up to five days out.
• View high-resolution photos of harbor entrances, see your charts with shaded depth areas and detailed depth contours.

- See more at: http://smart-navigation.net/download-free-marine-navigation-app/?gclid=CPabjLOj_bgCFbF_QgodF2YA9Q#sthash.AL9ImCy8.dpuf

• Plan voyages on the fly, chart your route, set waypoints and measure the distance for each leg of your journey.
• Check tides and currents and the weather with our free weather service for forecasts up to five days out.
• View high-resolution photos of harbor entrances, see your charts with shaded depth areas and detailed depth contours.

- See more at: http://smart-navigation.net/download-free-marine-navigation-app/?gclid=CPabjLOj_bgCFbF_QgodF2YA9Q#sthash.AL9ImCy8.dpuf

Plan voyages on the fly, chart your route, set waypoints and measure the distance for each leg of your journey.

Check tides and currents and the weather with our free weather service for forecasts up to five days out.

View high-resolution photos of harbor entrances, see your charts with shaded depth areas and detailed depth contours.

- See more at: http://smart-navigation.net/download-free-marine-navigation-app/?gclid=CPabjLOj_bgCFbF_QgodF2YA9Q#sthash.AL9ImCy8.dpuf

• Plan voyages on the fly, chart your route, set waypoints and measure the distance for each leg of your journey.
• Check tides and currents and the weather with our free weather service for forecasts up to five days out.
• View high-resolution photos of harbor entrances, see your charts with shaded depth areas and detailed depth contours.

- See more at: http://smart-navigation.net/download-free-marine-navigation-app/?gclid=CPabjLOj_bgCFbF_QgodF2YA9Q#sthash.AL9ImCy8.dpuf