Talk about a learning experience

I put a problem on the board for most of my classes to do and was shocked at the results.  I put 2(x+3)-3(x-2)=18 up and many of my upper level students had trouble doing this problem.  Only one student in the Algebra I class could do it.  I discovered this using the favorite bad assessment I talk about in yesterday's post.  It is a great assessment that takes all of 5 min and gives a good view of the topic.
Yesterday, I had students work on standardized problems alone on their iPads using gloss.  Over all it went pretty well but I think I'll have them help each other so each group gets all the correct answers.  If a student asked what perimeter is, I told them to look it up.  I think by helping each other, they will actually learn it better and it involves peer tutoring. 
Instead of giving finals, I am assigning projects to three  of my 5 classes using Haiku Deck.  I said they had to use their own words, make their own diagrams and they had to use complete sentences.  One of the students objected that this is a math class not an English class.  I laughed and told them there is English in Math.....LOL.
Next step is to figure out what type of flipping I can do with the limited or no internet my students have on their mobile devices.  Actually, I should think of homework assignments they can do using their mobile devices or assignments my traveling students can use mobile devices on.

Ways to help students learn material.

Today in Geometry, I had the students work with parallelograms and their rules.  I am toying with a couple ideas to help students learn the rules so they can apply the rules.  I have thought about having students take pictures of each problem, show their work and then import the problem into Haiku Deck and then explain which theorem allowed them to solve the problem.  When they are done, they will show me the presentation.  This will give them the opportunity to connect the various theorems to the actual work.  I've noticed in the past my students do not always connect the theorems with what they are doing.  I should have things done and able to report back in a few days.
I came across something in yahoo news about landlords in San Francisco who are offering people money to move out of their rent controlled apartments so the apt can be rerented for a higher amount.  One family who lived in an apt for 24 years was being offered $50,000 to move out of their $549 a month apt.  This is enough for me to write some neat problems and to educate my students about rent control.  This is something they may never run into so I hope to expand their horizons.

Haiku Deck

Last semester, I had most of my students use Haiku Deck to create some awesome mathematical presentations.  I just read in one of my groups that Haiku Deck is giving access to some of their paid themes to people for free.  It is under their random acts of kindness.  If you go to this link you can get the information necessary to do it and they will be offering various themes every day, Monday to Friday of this week.  I am going to try downloading some tonight when I go back to work. I'd love some extra themes for my students to work with.
I need to have my students play with Algebra Tiles.  It is an app with x^2, x and 1 times but the tiles appear to be the same size and I haven't had the time to fully explore this app.  I need to figure out if you can cause the tiles to change size, split them up or even figure out why the app states that the answer is wrong even when it is correct.  I am thinking that it has to do with the app is set up for people to check at certain points in the process.  I am off to play with the app to see if I can get it to work.

Presentations

I organized a choice of projects and backed the number down from 3 to 1 because my students are not used to creating anything.  The students tend to freeze when faced with what they see as something that is insurmountable.  I am giving them a bit of time once a week to work on it and they are very much into the "Am I doing this right?" and "What do I do next."  Overall, some of the students are starting to take small fledgling steps.  Since they are easily frustrated, I put most students on Haiku Deck to create their presentations.  Haiku deck is free and it allows them to change the theme, text, make lists, add pictures and has pictures available for use.  It is a good app to start students in creating a digital work. 
This project is also allowing students to learn how to write their own material and learn it better.  It is another way of presenting it to them.  I went over plagiarism and explained that if they take anything off the internet, they must give credit to the person who originally created it.  My students are so used to being allowed to cut and paste anything they want in their computer classes that it is a fight to get them to understand they cannot do that without proper acknowledgement.
I do not need to run the text through anything because so many of my students are ELL and if the phrasing does not sound like them,  I simply ask them to clarify what they wrote and usually they can't tell me what it means so they have to rewrite it.
This is also the first time I have assigned something like this so I am trying to help them learn the app, learn to create something that will match up with Blooms Digital Taxonomy, and teach them about paraphrasing and plagiarism.  Did I mange it?  I don't know but I do know this is a learning experience for both the students and myself.

Nearpod, Haiku deck.

The training sesson on Nearpod went well yesterday afternoon.  I had elementary teachers who came in to experience it and take their first steps towards creating their own presentations.  Everyone who attended signed up for their free account and that is about as far as we got so we decided to continue the session next week Thursday after school.  I expect to create a page of instructions so they will have both audio and visual instruction during that session.
I have two classes working on presentations using Haiku deck.  This is a nice free app that allows students to select a theme, add text and pictures to create a slide show/presentation. The kids are enjoying working with it because it comes with its own photos.  One class is using Haiku deck to create presentations on classifying triangles.  One girl found a wonderful picture of triangular slices of watermelon to illustrate isosceles triangles.  This is the first time I've had them work on any projects and they did a great job getting started.
The kids love using the iPads in class.  Several students snap pictures of the warm-ups on the board and then copy the material from the photo to their warm-up sheets.  They do the same thing for standardized test questions and for notes so the whole class does not get held up because they copy at a slower pace than others.