Planning units

I decided I needed a change in my lesson planning.  Rather than looking at things in a weekly unit, I need to plan my teaching through the use of units.  For instance, I need to look at polynomials as a unit where students learn what is a polynomial, use of operations with them, synthetic and long division, roots, end behavior so students see the whole topic for a change.  By planning the material as a complete unit, I can create interactive ibooks, assessments, activities and assignments and plan the use of apps in advance instead of waiting till I get home. 
I hope by creating the lessons in this manner, my students will be more interested and willing to learn the material.  I hope this helps them keep up, rather than giving up.  I see the students taking a pretest before beginning the unit so I know exactly where they are and several quick quizzes to monitor their progression through the unit.  I need to make sure I have differentiated instruction written into the unit perhaps as a menu or as a choice of so many problems out of the total.  Something I have to work on.

Gamification

Jeopardy Template

While cleaning my desk today, I ran across an assignment from a CILC activity I had done with my students earlier in the year.  The assignment was to create a game with certain elements.  My mind saw this and wandered around before stopping on Jeopardy.  I have a template on my computer for the smart board but is there one for ipads?  After doing a search, there appears to be a jeopardy webiste  which allows you to create your own template without using powerpoint.  I am going to explore this to see if I can have students create jeopardy games to play in class as reviews.  Rather than having me create them reviews, maybe I can have them create the games.  Then the person whose game I use is the person who runs the game.  Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.  I"ve included a screenshot which is rather large but You see how you can put the answer in and the question.  Looks easy and only needed a password to set this up.  It did not require me to join anything.  I plan to explore it more.

Blabberize

I just found out that Blabberize has an iPad app called chatterpix.  I am wondering if I can use it to  make mathematical equations talk about how you solve them.  I am wondering if the novelty of such an activity would keep their attention and make it so they learn.  On the other hand, I wonder if it would be too "cute" and not meet the needs of student learning.  At what point are we including technology just because its new and fun to use rather than see if it works. 
I think a better use would be to use it on a comic strip so that students can make the characters talk in the comic strip.  It would be a way for sharing information without as much writing for some of my ELL students. 
I am trying to find ways to have my students write without feeling overwhelmed or shutting down and this might be a way to do it especially if I have them write down the script of the people speaking on the comic strips.

Lesson plans for class

I belong to several groups on google communities which provide me information to help improve my teaching and knowledge to create better lesson plans.  In one of the communities, someone posted an article on making mobile learning implementation more effective.  The five major points in this article gave me a lot of thought because the first point is that content should be short and concise due to the shortened concentration spans of the mobile device users.  This made me wonder how practical it would be in a classroom with integrated mobile devices if the students are classified ELL. 
The second point on keeping the information simple and interesting is quite true.  Unfortunately, as classroom teachers we will have to strike a balance between keeping it simple and interesting and meeting the goals of the activity.  For instance, beginning next year all state mandated testing is being computerized and students need to be able to take it seriously and not just rush through because they get bored. 
The other three points have more to do with using proper multimedia, collaboration and tools. I am working on deciding what app to use so that I can have the students collaborate more often in class as a way of implementing a different type of peer tutoring.  I am also going to pull out some books I have with collaborative activities to see how I can modernized them for use with the mobile devices.  This requires that the app used for the collaboration be the proper tool.   I still have to do some research on the proper collaborative app for my needs and I need to work on learning to write good rubrics and to have students learn to utilize them when creating the final product. 
School ends Thursday and I am done on Friday so on Monday, I begin doing prep work for fall.  I will post ideas and lesson frameworks over the summer.

Using spreadsheets in Math class

Yesterday, I did a quick search on using spreadsheets in the mathematics classroom and most of the activities dealt with finance or something similar.  I did not find much on using them with various functions so I was a bit disappointed.  Then about the same time I went to bed, I wondered if I could use a spreadsheet to prepare tables for graphing linear equations or systems or inequalities. 
I noticed that my students seem to have a disconnect between the equations, the tables and the actual graphs so I got to thinking if I could use a spreadsheet to form a link between calculating the points by hand and using a table on a calculator or app. 
This type of activity might help students see a connection between the equation and the results in the table by going through this middle step.  My students often have trouble seeing the connections between the beginning and ending of a process.
Over the summer, I plan to learn to use all the parts of the Algebra Tiles app so that students get a more hands-on experience to combining like terms, solving one and two step equations, factoring, etc.  I only know how to use part of the app so I need to work on it.
 

Graphs for data

I just realized today as I was reading an article on useful app for iPads if you are in business, that I never use any statistical charts or data visualizations.  My students are often quite visual and such an app would allow them to understand some of the material better.  I realize that I could use one of the iWorks suite on it but I am going to check out free apps over the summer to see what else is available.  I want my students to do a bit more with graphs and charts.  I plan to have iworks but I want students to learn to use other apps so they are better prepared for going into the workforce. 
On a positive note, I am going to the ibookhack this summer and I will share the information with others back at school.  I already have one teacher who is planning how to use ibook author in his class next year and has already said we will work together next year.  I am sooo excited about it.
I just heard about Scoodle Jam which is a paid app that allows students to write, draw, type, collage, and brainstorm with creation tools and cross-subject, educational content.  This is one I think I might check out over the summer to see if it has any real advantages.  Since I work with ELL students, I"ve been working on finding ways for my students to express themselves in written form.  This is going to be fun to see how it goes.

Digital Storytelling

Many times it is too easy to dismiss using certain apps because they are not strictly math oriented.  I gave some thought to this topic and remembering the 3 act Math tasks, I wonder if I can have the students create their own digital stories setting up a situation and explaining the math for that situation.  The math will be from what is being studied in the classroom and the situation will be a real life application of that particular math topic.  I teach in a one building K to 12 school and perhaps I can have the students take their finished projects down to the elementary and share them with students.  That opens some possibilities.  This would be a way for students to develop their mathematical vocabulary and get a better grasp of the topic.  This is going to be something I explore over the summer. When I work out the details, I"ll post them here.