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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.

Educational Issues: Wikis and Education

Online wikis, such as Wikipedia, ahve grown in popularity. The provide ease of access to a variety of subjects and are becoming better every day. However, many teachers doubt their credibility due to the fact that anyone can edit articles, often anonymously. Wiki sites are working to improve their credibility by requiring editors to use thier real names, even though anyone will still be able to edit the articles. I do not believe that students should be able to cite wiki sites as credible sources because the author of any type of liturature i bound to have some bias no matter how scholarly they are. When the identity of the author id removed frome the euqation i becomes almost impossible to understand their purpose for writing what they did, and so a great portion of the value of the entry is lost. However, I do believe that students should definitely use wiki sites as a way of gather ing imformation, just not for thier cited information. at the bottom of most Wikipedia articles there are several works cited. The reader is often given a large list of credible sources that they can use that will provide the same information in most cases, since Wikipedia has a lot of artilces that were jsut copied and pasted from the sources that are cited. It is a very helpful to have a list of avaliable sources that have the specific information that the student is looking for. So while the actual information included in the artilces may not be creadible and is therefore unsuitalbe for citation, wiki sites can still be used as useful research tools.

Violence in Schools Today

In the Education Issues section, for Chapter 1 in our text, one of the topics was school violence. They talked about how violence in schools is the number one concern amongst both teachers and parents. It is also a heated political topic. There is much debate over whether schools should increase their security by installing metal detectors and increasing security presence, or for the school and community to looking into the factors in the community that are causing school violence. Right now the solution that is being used is the to beef up security and install metal detectors.
I went to an inner city school so I am very used to this solution. I believe that for the time being, to try and keep the schools as safe as possible, this currently solution is the way to go. In the future, I do believe that we should work on addressing the issues in the community that cause these violence issues. However, I see it as a high priority to keep our students safe and in the immediate future if the way to do that is to install metal detectors and increase security then i think that for the time being that should be the solution. I also believe that the concern and work should not stop there but continue into the community.

Virtual Manipulatives

Our text, Teachers Discovering Computers: Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom, by: Shelly, has a companion site. Within this site, for all of the chapters, there is a integration corner. Under the Chapter 1 Integration Corner for Math I found a entry entitled National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. In this site there are tools for all grade levels and subjects. I clicked on the 9-12 grade Geometry section and found a plethora of virtual manipulatives from Tangrams to Geoboards. There is even a turtle geometry game were you have to move the turtle through a maze.

When you decide which manipulative you want to use all you have to do is click on the title and it opens up in another window. In the new window, there are some given activites that include the manipulative. This would be a good way to integrate technology into a classroom and it would allow the students to interact with the math. These manipulative will also allow students to make the concepts concrete in their minds.


An example of the tangrams activities window.

Microsoft Equation Editor

Have you ever had trouble writing an equation on a word document or on the computer in general? If you do end up getting the equation in there does it look like something that an abstract artist would paint? Do you get so frustrated that you just give up and write the equation in by hand or even scrap the whole idea? Microsoft has come with a program to end all of our misery, Microsoft Equation Editior.

MS Equation Editor allows you to create a variety of equations that are appear the way that it should be written. It can be found in MS Word 2007 right on the ribbon. Under the Insert tab there is an equation button on the right under the symbols section.

If you click on the Equation button you get the Equation tools that will help you edit or create your equation.

This window gives you the ability to creator your own equation and provides you with any math symbols you might need. There are fractions, subscripts, infinity symbols, and even the three dot triangle that represents therefore.

Another tool that is avaible from MS Equation Editor are the built in equations. That include some common equations like the area of a circle and even some slightly advanced equations like the Binomial Theorem. These pre-made equations are good to use when you are doing a certain section in a math class on one of these equations. In that lesson it is probable that the eqaution will come up multiple different times with different values and it makes things a lot easier when the general format of the equation is already then you can simply put values in the equation or have the equation for the students to see it.

Another application for the class would be to have the students make up their own equations for a game that the whole class will play. To ensure that the equations are easy to read and understand the students can use equation editor to create their equations. This allows the students an oppurtunity to build up their technology base but also to have them interact with the math instead of just doing what the teacher does.

Overall, MS Equation Editor is a great tool to have in the math classroom. It allows the ease of worksheets and the professionalism of equations.