No Clickers, No Problem! Try Poll Everywhere

Want to create class surveys and get instant student feedback about math problems, but you don't have access to clickers?  No clickers, no problem!  Poll Everywhere allows you to create multiple choice and free response questions for your students.  You'll get instant results that can be shared with the class. 

Poll Everywhere is committed to education and has many features that make it ideal for classroom use.  Below is a list of some of these features:

• Create as many surveys as you want with a Free teacher account...With a free K-12 account, you can have up to 40 students respond to each poll.  Just create a new poll or If you have a single class with more than 40 students, you can email them and they will adjust your plan.
• Polls are quick and easy to create...You literally could have a poll created and ready to use in a couple of minutes.
• Multiple ways for students to vote...Students can text their responses in or they can vote online if they have access to an iPad or computer.  
• As responses come in, they automatically appear on the results chart...You don't have to refresh in order to see newest results.
• Results charts can be embedded into blogs, websites, Power Points, etc...This is a nice feature which would allow for comments about the poll or survey.  You could also use this as means to address student misconceptions if they were responding to a math problem.
• No spam or advertisements!

The features listed above are all available with the Free teacher account.  If you'd like to be able to get reports, moderate responses, and create response segmentation for contests or comparisons, you can get an individual teacher plan for $50 per year.  School and district plans also make these extra features available.

In a future post, I'll give some specific suggestions/ideas for using Poll Everywhere in the math classroom.

I've added Poll Everywhere to The Best Technology Tools for Teaching Math list.

Mathematics Glossary

This is one of the best math dictionaries I've ever come across (thanks to Glen Holmes!). The  glossary is hosted by Alberta Learning (Alberta, Canada).  

The beauty of this glossary of math terms is that the terms are often accompanied by "real-world" visuals and applets that students can manipulate to reinforce the point/term. 

 

I'm adding this Math Glossary to The Best Technology Tools for Teaching Math  list.

The Best Technology Tools for Teaching Math

There are many excellent technology tools available today, but a lot of them are not really applicable to the math classroom.  That's why I started The Best Technology Tools for Teaching Math on Scoop.it.  This site is dedicated to the best technology resources for math teachers and students.  

Click on tags to see a list of topics.  When you choose a tag, you'll see everything related to that topic.  Some topics that will be included are:

• YouTube --- sites that help teachers incorporate YouTube videos in the classroom
• Multimedia 
• Reflection Tools --- applications that help students reflect on their learning
•  Student Engagement --- applications that help students become engaged in the learning process
• Video Editing --- applications that make video editing quick and easy

If you know of resources that should be added to this list, please feel free to use the Suggest tab at the top of the page to make your recommendation.  Or, leave a comment on this page with your recommendation. 

I'll also keep a list of these sites on this blog, but you'll find more detailed information about the applications and their possible uses on the Scoop.it site.  Here's a list of what's on The Best Technology Tools for Teaching and Learning so far:

• Glogster --- make interactive posters  
• Voice Thread --- create conversations around multimedia
• Spliced --- this site allows you to get clips of YouTube videos
• Hofli Online Charts Builder --- site for creating different types of graphs
• Math Dictionary --- this glossary of math terms hosted by Alberta Learning uses visuals and interactive applets to explain/demonstrate math vocabulary 
• Poll Everywhere --- free student response system...create multiple choice or free response questions for your students and see resultants in real time

This is a new list so it's not very big right now.  I'll continue to add things regularly and it will continue to grow.  

If you use any of these tools, let us know how they work for you. 

You may also want to follow my other Scoop.it topics:

• IGNITE Student Engagement in Math!
• Powerful Technology Tools for Teaching and Learning

Stay tuned!  I'll be creating and sharing more math related Scoop.it topics soon.

Hands-on Lesson for Area of Circles

This video was created by Karyn Hodgens of Kidnexions.  Karyn gives step by step instructions for having students make targets in order to practice finding area of circles.  I really like the way she incorporates problem solving into the lesson.   She also has some good ideas for demonstrating the concept of subtracting the areas to find the area of the outer rings of the target.

In order to extend this lesson and tie area and circumference into other math standards, you can have students create graphs for the area and circumference of each circle in the target.

   
Have students: 

• compare and contrast the 2 graphs
• describe what types of patterns they see on each graph
• determine which of the 2 graphs shows a proportional relationship and describe what makes it proportional  (Proportional relationships are linear and they goes through the origin.  They always go through the origin because there is no constant.)
• use the graphs to make predictions about data points that are not on the graph
• relate the graphs to the formulas (equations) for area and circumference
• describe how the equation (formula) and graphs for Circumference are different when you use radius instead of diameter as the independent variable 

If you like this lesson, you might also like Circumference: The Evolution of a Lesson.

  
What else could you do to extend this lesson for middle school? Leave a comment and share your ideas.                               

Amazing Illusion! Magnet-Like Slopes

This is a really cool illusion to share with your students.  This was the winner in the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year Competition.  Check out the other finalist here.

It would be interesting to see if any of your students could duplicate this.  Trying to figure out how this was created could lead to some interesting mathematical discussions.
 

Posterous Spaces - Excellent Tool for Beginning Bloggers

If you've never blogged or had your students blog, Posterous Spaces is a great beginners tool.  It's the quickest and easiest way to start a blog (that I know of anyway!).  With Posterous Spaces, anyone can easily create an account and write your first blog post in 15 minutes.  It may take a little longer to set up your profile and pages, but even that doesn't take too long with Posterous Spaces.

Posterous Spaces has some features that help to make it a nice blogging tool.  

• Posterous Spaces formats your posts for you.  Just write the post and attach any videos and images you want to go with the post.  Posterous Spaces does all of the formatting for you.  
• You can write new posts on the site or in an email.  Not at your computer, but you want to write a blog post.  No problem with Posterous Spaces!  Just compose an email, attach images and/or videos and send to your Posterous Spaces email address.  They will format everything for you.
• Posterous Spaces has an auto-posting feature.  After you write a post, you can have it automatically auto-posted to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Blogger, any many others.  
• Posterous Spaces has privacy settings that make it an ideal tool for student bloggs.

Today on Free Technology for Teachers, Richard Byrne, posted the following slide show.  He goes through all of the steps necessary for starting a Posterous blog.

Five Benefits of Brainstorming in the Math Classroom

Brainstorming is an excellent teaching strategy that many math teachers neglect to incorporate into their regular classroom practices.  Some teachers don't think they have time, some teachers don't recognize the value of it, and some teachers have never even thought about having students brainstorm.

Brainstorming can be done at various times throughout a unit of study or lesson.  It serves a slightly different purpose and has different benefits depending on when you use it in the course of a lesson or unit.  In this post we'll examine some benefits of brainstorming before a lesson or unit of study.

Brainstorming before a lesson:

• Activates schema --- Our brains love to make associations.  We learn and recall information best when we're able to connect it other things we already know.  Having students brainstorm before you begin a lesson or unit allows their brains to activate things they already know about the topic.  So when students begin to acquire new learning on the topic, they are able to associate it with their prior knowledge. By creating these associations, the connections in the brain will be stronger making it easier to recall the information later.

• Helps set a baseline for learning ---  Brainstorming prior to a lesson or unit of study allows both teachers (and students) to get an idea of how much a student knows about the topic.  As you move through the unit of study, have students revisit their brainstorming tools (where they recorded their ideas) and either add new ideas to the list or correct misconceptions.  Doing this gives students a sense of what they know.  It's also a motivator because it allows students to see progress in their understanding.

• Helps identify misconceptions that students already have about a topic  ---  Students bring misconceptions to the classroom everyday.  Misconceptions are a part of learning.  Brainstorming before a lesson shines a light on any misconceptions that students bring to the discussion.  Identifying misconceptions before you begin the lesson allows you to address ideas that will get in the way of new learning.  For example, if students begin a unit on integers believing that you can only subtract a smaller number from a larger number, they will have trouble grasping the concept of subtracting integers.  If you know that students have this belief, you can make sure you approach subtracting integers in a way that will correct this misconception.  When we don't know about these types of misconceptions before teaching a new topic, we often add to student's confusion rather than helping them learn what we intend.

• Helps guide teaching and differentiation ---  Brainstorming lets you see who has no prior knowledge or understanding, who has a little prior knowledge, and who already knows a lot about the topic.   For example, if you have students brainstorm the topic Volume, you can see exactly what ideas students already have about volume.  Do they know that volume relates to capacity?  Do they know that volume relates to 3-dimensional shapes?  Do they know that we can use a formula to calculate volume?  This type of information helps you decide where to start the lesson, how to group students, which students need remediation, which students are already beyond the lesson you had planned, etc.

• Improve student's perception about their level of mathematical understanding --- Many students have a very low perception of their math abilities because they associate math with computation.  Most students don't realize that they know much more about math than they think.  If you ask 6th grade students what they know about adding fractions, many would tell you they don't know how to add fractions.  This is usually because they have trouble remembering and applying the algorithm for adding fractions.  But if you delve deeper, students might discover that they actually know a lot about adding fractions.  They might know situations where you would need to add fractions, how to estimate an answer, that the steps for adding and subtracting fractions are similar, how to represent adding fractions visually, that you need to find a common denominator when adding fractions, etc.  Once you see what students do know about a topic, you can point out exactly what and how much they already know.  Recognizing what they know about math helps students build confidence and changes perceptions about their abilities. 

There are also other benefits for brainstorming during and after a lesson.  We'll explore these reasons for brainstorming in Parts 2 and 3 of this series.  In part 4 of the series, I'll share some ideas and resources for brainstorming in the math classroom.

Do you incorporate brainstorming?  If so, how?  How has brainstorming benefited your students?