Learn Zillion

In the past few days I've run across LearnZillion while looking for videos to use in class.  At my school, youtube is blocked and if you want a video from there, you have to put in a request at least a week early to have the block removed so you can download the video for class.  I used two different videos from this place today.
The first video was on percent of increase.  It was short but very much to a point and provided a way for students to figure out the rate of increase or decrease while using the same formula.  I had my students watch the video and then we started working problems.  By the 5th problem, most of the students were able to work independently.
The second video was on complementary and supplementary angles.  Again, the video was short but full of information and quite clear.  Even my students who struggled, learned from the video.
When I went to the site I discovered they have both lesson plans and video for various grades, including high school math.  Although the material is free for registered users, they do have a premium subscription for districts. 
I plan to explore the lesson plans to see how well cover the material I want covered.

Fractions

I have high school 9th and 10th graders for Algebra I.  Today I had them draw 3/4 in three different ways.  It was amazing how many either wrote 3/4, 3 to 4 or 3:4 or drew a circle, a square or a rectangle that had three parts out of four shaded in.  I showed them it could be that or three items shaded in out of four or three out of four groups.  So towards the end of the period, I put them on a fractions app by BrainingCamp to learn more about fractions.  It starts out with lots of visuals as they begin what are fractions and moves on to more complex topics.  I think I am going to have them work on it this week. 
I've found the high school students I work with are wonderful at the mechanics but have lost sight of the visual concept behind them and that is one thing I am working on. I hope this helps make their mathematical understanding more comprehensive and much better. 

2 + 1 math rocks videos

I was looking around for a video on types of angles for my geometry class today and discovered this nice rock group called 2 + 1 math rocks.  They have produced many songs and several videos.  The videos can be found on both youtube and teacher tube.  The video on angles sounded like it was in the 3 dog night style and my kids paid lots of attention to it.  Later in the day I tried their please excuse  my dear aunt sally video and several students were humming along to the tune.
It appears the songs and videos are focused on middle school but I can see using them in my math classes that have students who struggle with math. 
The pictures in the videos are funny and the whole experience was enjoyable for both teachers and students.

More on EXY Trigonometry app

It took a while for my students to get the hang of using it but they had fun using it to do their assignment.  They used the unit circle itself to see where each value such as 125 degrees was and then used the app to find the actual value for sin, cos, tan, cot, csc, and sec.  In fact they even used it to help them draw the angle and identify the reference angle because it was clearer for them to read than the unit circle on paper.
I think part of the reason is that the paper version of the unit circle gets rather cluttered and the app shows only the one measure on the circle and all the values underneath rather than having the students calculate every value..
I do struggle with the question of doing it all on technology or making them do it as I did it when I was in school.  I've decided to go mostly with the technology due to the fact they all have mobile devices they can put apps on.
In a slightly different vein, I have three young men, two still in school and one who graduated a few years ago who are coming in regularly to use the SAT and ACT math apps I have on the ipads to practice for the December test.  Two of the young men were the ones who regularly got expelled, blew up at teachers, etc and now they are model students.  The other had no focus and is now ready to move on.  I even borrowed the ACT book from the library so they can have practice tests.  I am amazed but they are coming in after school, during my evening study halls, etc.  I think they are going to do well.

EZY Trigonometry app

My advanced math class is beginning the year by studying trigonometry.  We just started the unit circle this past Monday.  They have read the book, watched a video and we started filling in the degrees and radians.  Tomorrow, we will finish filling in the degrees and radians and then I will have the students use EZY Trigonometr app.  

This is a very nice app because it gives values for every single value on the unit circle. This means that students can fill in the unit circle values and notice the changes due to this being a dynamic circle instead of being static.  In addition, this app contains values for all the trigonometric ratios.

On a side note, I had most of my students doing word problems.  I have them use the KFCM version of the KWL model.

K stands for "What do I know?"

F stands for "What do I need to find?"

C stands for "what do I need to consider?" Or things to think about when solving the problem

W stands for doing the work.

My students call this "Kentucky Fried Chicken Work" as a mnemonic.

Y

Wow what a day

I had my first two classes, both Algebra 1, take notes using a different note taking app.  One class used istudious lite which is fine but none of us could figure out how to add a second page to the section.  It also comes with a flash card option but I could not figure it out. Neither is as obvious as they should be.  I am hoping to figure that out shortly.  The other app worked out quite well.  In Geometry, I had students begin making a set of flash cards using the SAS flash card app.  They made fill in the blank flash cards with pictures.  Tomorrow, we are going to make a few more.  I am hoping to complete a deck of vocabulary that they can review vocabulary on a regular basis before their quiz later on.  The afternoon classes did fairly well with notes.
One thing that was common with many of my students was that if it was not immediately obvious to them on how to use the app, they would get frustrated and want to shut down, even when I provided step by step instructions with the appropriate pauses.

Mathtoons apps.

Mathtoons apps have 10 quizzes with 10 questions each.  If they miss a question, there is a quick note that flashes up to tell them how to do it correctly.  I used the equations one, the geometry one, the trig one and the calc intro one as a quick way to pretest most of the kids to see where they are starting this semester.  For the most part my students took it seriously and they were in the 5/10 to7/10 range.  I figure I will have them retake the quiz to see how well they have improved.  Tomorrow, I think we will begin making flash cards for vocabulary.  I think that will help the students review the vocabulary a second time.  The first deck of flash cards, we will work together to create vocabulary cards with pictures that they make, with definitions and with sound.  I am hoping that will help them develop language.  I think we also need to start making mind maps to add to notes tomorrow and Wednesday. 
Apparently I forgot to ask for a QR scanning app.  So I put it on a new request and hopefully will get it soon.