Television Stations in Education

Over the weekend, I read an article about how some school districts are providing education to their students during this time of uncertainty.  There are areas in America where students do not have digital devices or access to internet so some districts are getting together with television stations to provide education.

In the past, online education for certain college classes meant you were up at 1:00 AM watching a prerecorded show on the local public broadcasting station.  When it was time to take a test, you might head into campus to actually take the test but all the learning was done by watching those shows.

That idea is being brought back by districts who want to make sure all their students receive an education.  It is felt that almost everyone has a television in their houses while not every house has internet, a computer, or digital device.

For some programs, teachers are creating actual videos at home to be broadcast later by the stations.  One example of this involves a preschool teacher who creates a 30 minute program at her house in Virginia but it will be broadcast to students in the DC area.

In Los Angeles, the local school district with its own television station has partnered with two more public broadcasting stations to provide educational programming to its students.  In addition to showing the programs, these stations will show how the material relates to standards and gives ideas to students on ways to look at the new material. It is called "At Home Learning" and 71 PBS stations have decided to run this enhanced material on their stations.

Since about 80 percent of its students live at or below the poverty level, this is a way to reach its students so they still get an education.  It is beleived that in the second week Los Angeles did this, they had at least 140,000 watching with an estimated 200,000 viewers.

Furthermore, not ever city using television to provide education is doing it equally.  In Boston, MA, the local PBS station and WGBH is providing programming for middle school and high school while the programming on the local PBS station in Bethlehem PA, provides mostly elementary grade material.

It is acknowledged that television does not allow the same interaction as zoom or google hangouts but for school districts with students who don't have the technology to connect,  this is what works.  It means students might not be able to ask questions at the same time but most districts have teachers talk to parents on a regular basis.

Special education people have expressed concern that many of their students will not be adequately serviced by the use of television, especially the blind and deaf. As we all know, this is something school districts have never had to face before and everyone is doing the best they can to meet the needs of students.

Personally, I think using the television is a good alternative in places that have television available.  It means that districts do not have to pass out devices and arrange for homes to get some sort of internet  in order to attend online classes.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Warm-up

If the normal cost of a ticket is $1300 to Italy and over night it jumped to $6900, what is the percent increase of the ticket?

Warm-up

One Airline just cut their daily flights by 70 percent.  If they'd had 1300 daily flights before the cut, how many do they have now?

Analyzing Friday The 13th Movie Profits.

It is a time when we have to come up with lessons for students that they can do while hoping we can continue the curriculum as written but the reality is we have to find lessons that will interest our students.

The other day, I stumbled across information on all twelve Friday the 13th movies that were made from 1980 to 2009.  The information includes the amount spent to produce the film, the amount brought in over opening weekend, the amount made domestically and the amount it made via world wide box office amounts.

At the bottom, it also includes average cost of production, opening weekend, domestic box-office and worldwide box office for one film and the totals for all twelve films.  The information is such that it would be easy to create a simple project students could do a home.

1.  Have students use a spread sheet to enter the information for each film for production costs, opening weekend take, domestic and worldwide box offices.  Remind students that the figures for opening weekend are usually included in the domestic box office figures so they might want to separate the two into opening weekend and the amount taken domestically after the opening weekend.

2.  Calculate the percent made for opening weekend, domestic and worldwide box offices as compared to the amount it cost to produce.

3.  Use the information to create graphs such as line graphs, double bar graphs, and even a pie chart.

4.  Ask students which film made the most profit and which the least and have them base it on the data.

5.  Ask students which of the movies in the franchise made at least as much as it cost to make the film during the opening weekend and which ones did not.  What about domestic box office or international box office?

6.  Ask the students to research why there haven't been any additional films made since 2009.  It has to do with Paramount Pictures who sold the rights to New Line Cinema after Part VIII didn't do well but the original director and writer got into a legal battle over who owned the rights.  The case is due to be settled sometime in 2020.

If they don't like Friday the 13th movies, maybe you could have students analyze Harry Potter, Star Wars, or The Avengers.  This site has the same information for lots of different movie franchises and you could let students choose the franchise they'd prefer to do. Then have them research why there haven't been any more done or why they might continue making additional movies.

No matter what movie franchises the students choose, they can do the same as suggested for the Friday the 13th movies earlier in this column.  Take advantage of student knowledge of films to assign this type of project.

It is important to let them know that studios often look at information like this to determine if they will fund a sequel or pass on it.  If a film does not make enough money, studios do not want to invest in additional sequels as is the case concerning Friday the 13th films so they sold the rights but it doesn't always happen this way.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Two Population Apps

 Today, I'm looking at two more apps produced by the The Creative Learning Exchange in collaboration with BTN.  As with the previous two I reviewed in Monday's column, these two apps set up a scenario, discuss the factors in detail, show how the model is put together, and let students explore.T

The first is "Population Collapse" which explores population growth and natural resource usage.  It creates a small model to follow the population growth on a small island.  The model discusses birth rate, mortality rate, and uses some fairly real life based rates.

The model then goes on to set the use of the renewable resource in the form of trees and mentions tree capacity. The app goes into explaining how demand determines the amount of trees used each year and introduces the idea of stress which is defined as demand divided by tree capacity.


The model takes time to show the relations between the factors and explains why certain rates fall within certain limits.  It goes through each and every item on the drawing before showing students what happens and how long it takes for the population to collapse.

The app then goes through explaining how each factor effects the overall situation before introducing technology into the equation. It has students change certain factors to see how these change the final rates.

At the end, it suggests students make their own model to see how they can do on this.  This would be perfect to take some real life scenarios such as the deer population back in the 1920's where they killed all the predators and the population grew till they began starving.

The second app is Population Planner.

This app is only focused on the birth and death rates for a population.  The story is that you are a commander of a space colony and you are trying to get the population to grow at a certain rate so you have to play with the birth and death rates.


Each time you make a change, you run the model to see if you have made it.  If you don't, it tells you to try again but if you get close, it gives you encouraging messages.

I think, I'd have students do the population planner to let students learn about birth and death rates before adding in capacity, stress, and other factors.

I also think at the end of these two I'd have students create their own model for a population of animals and have them create it in the SPLASH! app. The app allows them to create simple models they can run and change values on.

Again, all three apps are free for android and apple devices.  They can be used at home during this time when students are expected to learn by distance.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Apps Allowing Exploration of The Exponential Function! Part 1.

Most of us are having to look at teaching via distance and most of us are not prepared for it.  I've spent my spring break exploring options for teaching classes this way but knowing my students, many of them won't worry about trying to keep up because they attend due to being under 16.  They see no reason for coming or doing the work.  So I've tried to find apps I can use to show these students that there are things they should know about including  I mentioned Creative Learning Exchange this past Friday but I want to spend more time on them because they have produced several  free apps which are well done and could easily be used in math classes.

 Retire Rich is an app that sets up a situation in which students are guided through the first two scenarios to determine which is better and in the process learn the program.

The story they provide is that Tara is thinking of putting away $1000 each year beginning at the age of 40 to 65.  She uses a fairly simple model and the app tells you the interest rate the account gets and it is basic.  When the program is run, she learns she won't get much more than $45,000 but if she does it from the age of 20 to 45, she'll end up with more than double what she would by waiting later.

After the second scenario, the student is encouraged to change the amount per year,  interest rate, or the ages of saving to see how these impact a person's final amount.

This means students can change variables to see how things change the overall picture.  How does interest rate change the final amount?  How does the amount saved change it?

What is even better is that students can double tap on each item for an explanation of part of it from interest to final amount.  The explanations include the basic mathematical information for each one.  In addition, there is a graph showing the growth of the retirement fund and a graph showing savings and interest.

This is a simplified model but it allows students to explore the concept of how to save the most amount within the shortest amount of time.  To make this more mathematically based, have students create a spread sheet with the same information to see if they agree with the figures produced by this app.  They can use the standard continuous interest or compound interest formulas to compare amounts.  This could  be turned into a project where students explore several scenarios and then create a prospectus for other students on planning for retirement.

The other app I want to look at today is Bacterial Sandwich.  This app looks at the growth of e coli in a sandwich.  The story is that someone packed a sandwich with 1500 bacteria in it at the beginning.  It looks at what happens to the bacterial when it is kept out in a room that is at 70 degrees.

Before having students run the actual model, the app goes through each factor in it and explains it clearly.

Then the app suggests the temperature be dropped to 68 degrees to see what the difference in growth is.  The student discovers the growth is significantly less under the second circumstance.

At the end, the student is again encouraged to  play with the different factors to see how it changes the final growth rate at the end.



This app even mentions that bacterial growth is exponential in nature.  So students are introduced to it in a safe way rather than being dropped into a problem in the chapter.

Instead of using a general problem giving the information, the problem appears in context with a real world situation.  In addition, students can play with this before they run the same numbers using the regular mathematical equations.

Once students are given the equation for bacterial growth, they can change the factors to see how these calculations match the answers from the app.

Both apps have a story setting up the context of situation and an explanation of the variables involved with the equations.  These are well done and easily understood by high school students of every level.

The nice thing about both of these apps is that they are both free and made to be used by both apple and android devices.  Wednesday, I'll review their two population apps to give you an idea of how they word.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.

Warm-up

If a lemon tree produces 250 pounds of fruit this year and a lemon weighs 3.5 ounces, how many lemons did you harvest?