My Spring Break is almost over. It’s always amazing how fast time can seem to move! I have had a busy week. I got plenty of things done in my workshop (woodworking is a hobby of mine), and have tinkered with a lot of ideas for using technology in my classroom.
I am trying very hard to embrace the entire “Web 2.0” movement and use it it a meaningful way. Recently I adopted Google Apps for my kids. They love it, and they can work on their ideas at home or school and don’t need to worry about carrying around flash drives or cd’s. I am also going online with a Skype account. I’ve had one for a long time, but I’ve never really gone public with one. Look to the left sidebar and you can see if I’m online.Â
If you have a question, give me a call!
My next step may be blogging. My students use a very basic blog built into our Moodle class, but I’m thinking of going all out. I just haven’t decided if each kid should have their own blog, or if we would share an account to create one classroom blog. I’m also kicking around Twitter as an option, but it’s getting so much attention lately, I’m actually kind of sick of hearing about Twitter. It’s a shame too, I’ve been using it myself for a long time.
Anyway..I’m getting off topic. I have installed Wordpress MU on my server, which means I can offer my own blogging service. I guess it’s a “Beta” program . It is a closed registration, which means you contact me and I’ll set you up. You would have a limited amount of space (maybe 100 mb), and I’m sure we’ll have to work through some tech issues. I hope it will all lead to fixing issues I may face before I give blogs to my kids.  Your blog would be a subdomain of one of my sites, so the address would be something like myblog.smartboardsandeverydaymath.com, where you would pick the “myblog” part. It can be about anything you want, but it might be neat if we had a little Everyday Math/Smartboard community of blogs. It’s free and there aren’t any ads, it’s basically a Wordpress blog.
A fantastic resource was brought up in the forums. http://www.swsd.k12.pa.us/baresvle/MathMaterials/alternat_algor.htm has some great Powerpoint files illustrating some of the Everyday Math Algorithms. Well, I was just preparing for our recent Family Math Night, and I used a similar resource. Our district uses EverydayMathOnline.com. I’m not sure if it is an extra cost, or if it is included when you purchase the program. Either way, at the top of the page there is a section titled “Free Resources.” There, you will find video demonstrations of all of the Everyday Math algorithms. I actually like these better because they are more animated. The voices are a little strange, but the videos are very clear. They are .swf files, so you could use a video capture plugin to download them and plunk them into a Notebook page very easily. I use Sothink SWF catcher for Firefox. Here’s an example of the videos. Lattice Multiplication is coming up… so here you go!
MOVIE REMOVED (Sorry, I couldn’t stand the fact it started every time I entered the page!!!!! It was driving me crazy!  Visit the link above to see the video.)
If your district doesn’t subscribe to Everydaymathonline.com, I would really recommend it. The site has online versions of most of the games, like emgames.com, but it also has the Student Reference Book online. It’s completely interactive. It reads EVERY WORD to the students, and has many video tutorials illustrating the concepts found in the SRB. There is also a gradebook to use. I have mixed feelings on the gradebook. It’s a useful tool, but it doesn’t mesh with our main gradebook program- Progress Book. Check out the videos, you’ll like them.
***OK, I think everything is back to normal in the forums. Everything has been restored, it looks pretty good too. There is a nice new user control panel once you log in along with some other subtle enhancements. I’m going to continue tinkering, but it should not result in any downtime.  If you experience any problems either logging in or accessing files, please let me know and I will work to correct the problems!***
Excuse the mess, but I am currently upgrading my forums. Everything is there, but the upgrade has re-organized the forums. If you check it out, please know I’m working on correcting the problem, but it is slow going. I’d still rather leave it up messy than take the site down until the update is complete. Fingers crossed everything goes smoothly! In the end, it’ll be worth it. The new forum offers some subtle new features that I hope will enhance the experience.
I finally got motivated and uploaded two units of files. Unit 7 and Unit 8 are now available in the forum. In lesson 7-2 they bring up the “Finger Trick” to multiply by nine. It took some work, and it’s far from perfect, but I think I have another creepy (and fun) file. I took a picture of my hand and edited the image so you can count over my fingers and actually yank them off! Then you add up the fingers to the left for the tens column and add up the fingers to the right to get the ones column. Weird and somewhat disturbing–two things that suck my kids in every time! I have a little video demonstration below.
On a side note…. Lori brought up an interesting tip in the forum to snip off the finger of an old pair of gloves to help move things on the SmartBoard screen. You all know, there are a few students that just can’t move things without their fingers studdering across that screen. And I don’t know about you, but my fingers are raw some days after using it and my laptop touch pad. I also keep a marker near the tray. When the students take out a pen, they put the marker in the empty tray slot and manipulate the board with the pen.
But it also reminded me of what I recently read on the Smarttech website. The newer boards have a new touch recognition. The board now intelligently senses the difference between a pen and your hand, so you can draw with the pen, move objects with your finger, and erase with the palm of your hand all at the same time — no tool switching required. Wouldn’t that be awesome! I have one of the first generation 600i boards, so I think I’m out of luck. If you have a new board, you can update your drivers to service pack 4 and the touch recognition will be activated. I added a teachertube video demonstration below.
