Award Winning Publisher's Software

I viewed some of the award winning math software over the weekend. I thought that they were all very thorough and looked looked as though they would be useful in the classroom. I particualrly liked the the Fast Math on the Tom Snyder Productions website. It utilized a method of analyzing each student's skill level that allows not only the teacher to keep track of their progress but the student as well. I think that knowing that they are making progress is important to motivate the student to keep trying. Often, especially in math, students tend to get discouraged when the feel that they don't think that they are making progress. This software attempts to solve this problem and I think it does a fairly good job. It is extremely personalized to each student and even offers printouts to use in class as well as the computer software. I think that it is good to incorporate traditional teaching methods along side with the computer software in order to maximize learning

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly... of Second Life

Second Life is a virtual reality software that allows you to have a second life. Second Life is along the lines of The Sims but is a little more sophisticated. Second Life allows the user to be creative. You can create a version of yourself and change their appearance to anything you like. Also, you can build things and create new inventions. Another feature of Second Life is that there are real business and universities on Second Life. IBM and Dell have virtual business environments that can train employees long distance or can introduce a three-dimensional rendering of a new product. There are also some universities, such as Notre Dame, that use Second Life. These universities can use Second Life as a way to have virtual classroom and as a cost effective solution to distance learning. In Second Life, as in the real world, the user can get a job or open any kind of store they want.

The Good:
Second Life fosters creativity and challenges the user to take their imagination to the next level. Second Life also provides an outlet for communication between peers. Also, the universities classrooms allow for students to learn from practically anywhere in the world. The business aspect of Second life can also teach the user proper money management.

The Bad:
One bad aspect of Second Life is that it takes away the personal feeling of a classroom. Also, Second Life users can have a non-educational motive to play Second Life, which is fine but encounters with such players must be approached appropriately. Also, in regards to the corporations on Second Life, there can be a feeling of a lack in legitimacy.

The Ugly:
Although the fact that Second Life is available to can be useful there is still the chance that some people that use Second Life might have other motives. When encountering people the user must take things with a grain of salt and try to make sure the people they are interacting with are the people they are interacting with. There is no really way to monitor students appropriate use.

So, although Second Life can be used as an educational tool with a business application educators must closely monitor their students to be sure that they are using this software appropriately.

Google Earth

Google has come up with fantastic tools that have reinvented the way we do things. Google Earth is a yet another one of these tools. Google Earth is a program that uses virtual reality and applies is to the world, and in fact, the Moon and Mars. Google Earth allows you to go anywhere in the world with a click of a button. For instance, you could be looking at the layout of New York City and then move the screen to show you the layout of Beijing. Not only does Google Earth show you real overhead shots but also includes some 3-D buildings. So if you wanted to see how the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids looked you could find them and rotate your views to see every angle. Another feature that Google Earth has is that you can find restaurants and lodging if you are planning out a trip. Other than recreational uses Google Earth also has educational uses. Online there are “trips” that can be viewed in Google Earth that follow the treks of famous people or literary works. For example, you could follow the path of Lewis and Clark or follow the path of Huck Finn. The great feature with these trails is that along the way you can click on the points and get more information about the area and the place. Along with the trips that can be found online, you can also create them yourself.

Google Earth can also be used in a math classroom. Students can use Google Earth map out flight patterns for trips and use properties of triangles to calculate how far it is do fly directly as opposed to stopping in different cities. For instance, say you were traveling from Pittsburgh, PA to El Paso, TX but on the way you changed planes in Indianapolis, IN. The student could use Google Earth to find the distance from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis and from Indianapolis to El Paso. The students could then find the angle the two different flight paths make and use trigonometric functions to find the distance if it was a straight shot and compare that to the actual distance between Pittsburgh and El Paso.

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DyKnow .. DyYES

Have you ever felt frustrated when a professor or teacher has moved on to the next slide before you can write down the first one? I know I have. It is a situation that doesn’t lend to good grades either and can become very frustrating. Well, don’t fret there is a program out there that helps to solve the problem. DyKnow is software that helps ease the process of note taking. It allows the professor to start a session that the students join. In the session there is a panel that shows the professors notes or slideshow and the students can take notes right on that. It eases the frustration of missing something on a slide and instead being able to actually take notes on it. DyKnow allows you to save the slide from the session for later use.

DyKnow has some other handy features for teachers. There is a button that students to click that lets the teacher know whether or not the student understands the information that is being covered. This is a good tool because often times students say they understand it but in all actuality they don’t. With this tool teachers can see who doesn’t get it and what they don’t understand so they can go back and elaborate on the topic. Also, there is a feature that allows the teacher to see what the student is doing on their computer instead of taking notes. It allows the teacher to see who isn’t paying attention and to get them reengaged in the lesson. Another feature that is useful for the teacher is that they can have the students answer something by writing or typing on the pane and then those slides can be collected and returned with a check or a comment. This is a good way to incorporate participation into the class and is great for the students who are a little shy.

DyKnow would be good in the math classroom. One use for DyKnow would be to have a problem that the students have to work out and then their work can be collected for credit or to see where they went wrong in their thinking. Another use would be to check for understanding using the feature I talked about previous. It is very likely that in a math class there are students who just don’t understand what is going on and this feature can let you know where they got lost and things stopped making sense. The sooner we catch the error the easier it is going to be to correct it and continue on learning.

Overall, DyKnow is an excellent product for any classroom and offers many features to enhance the learning of the student while lessening frustration.

Podcasts

Some might wonder what exactly is a podcast? Well, a podcast is an audible information file. These digital media files can be audio or visual. Podcasts are usually a series that are releases episodically. These podcasts are usually broadcasted over an RSS feed. The modes of delivery also vary. Podcasts can be delivered using the Internet, streamed webcasts and podcatchers. Podcatchers are user programs like iTunes, Zune, Juice and Winamp. The podcasts can be downloaded and then they can be viewed on the computer or they can be transferred onto a digital audio device like a Zune or iPod.

Some podcasts that we thought were good in regards to math are:

Math Factor -- Math Factor is a podcast that is a site that is run through the University of Arkansas. This site is a site both for podcasts and blogs. The contributing authors range in profession from radio journalist to a mathematics professor. The different contributing authors post a podcast or a blog that are on a variety of topics. Math Factor is a collection of different math problems and classics math brain teasers. They are in a bunch of different topics such as logic, calculus, and infinity along with other topics.
This site could be used to show students a different side of mathematics. The one thing that I think the website could do better would be to make navigating to podcasts a little easier.

Sudoku (mathgrad.com)

I found it interesting to think about how much math really is involved in a Sudoku. The author of the podcast addresses the misleading idea that some people have about how Sudoku has nothing to do with math besides the fact that it involves numbers. In reality the way to find the number of possible Sudokus was only discovered a few years ago. And even today, real people are better at solving Sudokus than computers are.
I thought that this podcast was going to be a very confusing description of how to solve a Sudoku, but instead it gave a plethora of interesting background information about its history (surprisingly not of Asian origins) and relations to other mathematical areas. It was more like a radio show than a tutorial, which could be useful for getting the attention of students and getting them interested in math, or, in the case of other podcasts, other subjects as well.

Math Mutation -- Math Mutation is a website that has multiple podcasts on the math that you probably didn't see in high school. These podcasts are for all ages and range from "Fractals in a Hat" to "Homer's Lsst Theorem". Most of the podcasts are fun and interesting brain teasers. These podcasts help to get people excited about math and to expose them to math they weren't sure existed.
One thing about this website that could be improved is the fact that there is now organized system for how the podcasts are listed. The podcasts are just listed in order on one page with a really long scroll bar that feels like it goes on forever. Other than that, this site seems like a good way to get people involved with math.

One use we thought a podcast has could be that it is used to walk students through problems. Often students are attempting to do their homework and they get stuck and after time spent in frustration they give up. One way to reduce the frustration is to have similar, or even the exact, problems being worked out in a podcast. This gives the students a refresher on how exactly things were done in class. Also, it allows the students to see how the concepts in class were applied to different situations.

Another idea that we had was to have the students podcast for themselves. Students could post a question when they have trouble and then other students could respond. Students could create a podcast with the answer to the question and walk the other student through the problem or the concept. This allows learning from both ends of the process. The viewer of the podcast learns specifics of the application and the creator of the podcast tests and solidifies their knowledge by helping others.

One last idea that a podcast can be used for is to keep parents and guardians updated. The teacher can put out a podcast every week laying out the overview of the week of learning. The teacher could also talk about what the homework was for that day or even the week so the parents know what homework their students have.