new tricks for an old dog

Quick and easy powerpoint showing the physical size of a trillian dollars. Two versions are availble, ppt and pptx.

How Big is a Trillian Dollars (pptx) @box.com

How Big is a Trillian Dollars (ppt) @box.com

Tristian Miller published a satirical essay using statistics to show why he would never have a girlfriend. Using world population statistics, and adding concepts such as the bell curve, he developed his “proof.” I took the original paper, updated the statistics, and twicked it a little for my current students.

I found that we ended up discussing bell curves, beauty, intelligence, and standard deviation among other topcis during the course of the period. I intended to use the powerpoint as a filler on a light day, but we ended up filling the whole class time.

If anyone changes the statistics or makes any other changes I’d like to see a copy of what you did. Thanks.

Why you will never have a girlfriend @ box.com powerpoint format

I’ve wanted for sometime to post a few of my lessonplans and classroom materials that I have enjoyed and that students have commented on.

The first is a lesson on piece-wise functions that I developed using two blogposts that caught my interest. The two posts are by Jason Dyer and Math Teacher Mambo. The first involved an application of piece-wise functions and the second a graphing technique.

Piece-wise_Functions

Level: Advanced Alg-1, Alg-2

photo credit: rader_seth @ flickr

Things have changed since the last post.

Algebra 1 with 2 students

Geometry with 10 students

Pre-Calc with 1student

Calc2 with 1 student

I’m interested in creating an assigment using a spreadsheet for my geometry class. I want them to understand the basics of a spreadsheet. So I’m thinking of having them create a ‘toolbox’ with the different formulas (area, preimeter, midpoint, etc) that they might end up using on a regular basis in the class. Along the way we will cover cell formatting, protecting of cells and so on. I’m open to suggestions and will try and post a grading rubric ASAP.

photo credit: cassiemassacre via Flickr

My early planning has started. Switching schools and textbooks (which I haven’t gotten a look at yet) is going to force/allow me to revisit lesson plans and activities.

I want to add two things this year: Algebra Readiness assessment, and testing before starting material to find a better starting point.

I’ll keep this blog current as I go. Next week sometime I can get into the school and get my hands on my new materials.

CLASSLOAD: Pre-algebra, algebra, algebra II, pre-calculus and calculus 2 all of which I’ve taught before. (I teach at a really small school, average class size will be 3-4.)

Any suggestions will be welcomed .

I’ve wanted for some time to create a notebook to hand out to my math students the first day of class. Its partly to give them an organized resource for the year, and partly to allow me to teach them a systematic way of doing things. (How many of your junior highers entering your math classes insist on doing their math work across the lined page instead of using unlined paper and working form top to bottom?)

Here’s what I have included this year. If you have any suggestions please let me know.

• Quick guide to wxMaxima (open source replacement for Mathematica.)
• An Excel tutorial
• Excel tutorial for matrices (for the Alg2 and above crowd.)
• Cheatsheet with the trig identities (again Alg2 and above.)
• rectangular and polar graphing paper

What else would you add?

I’ve run up against a serious problem in my attempts to implement technology and some o the web2.0 tools in my classroom. I have a few parents that wont’ let their children use the internet or download anything if they aren’t sitting right there next to their child. So..um…ok..

I’ve decided to offer use of my room and my computer to those kids that can and want to stay after school to work on the projects. What else can I do? I don’t want the rest of the students to be halted because a few families are that resistant. This isn’t a question of filtering, we have to have filters (I’m the IT person so my computers have a lower level of filter). What is it a question of and what is my obligation here?

The first notion I had of the bridge collapse in Minnesota was when djakes twittered about it.

Here was his twit:

“Surprising? No Wikipedia page up yet about the bridge collapse… about 21 hours ago from web ”

My rrs feed today gave me not only the wikipedia entry on the bridge and its collapse, but also the flickr link to the currently (as of this post) 131 pictures showing the destruction.

Living and teaching in Brazil, this news may have trickled into our consciousness after a few days. Teaching about current event has suddenly become possible.

Not to overlook the loss of life, and the families torn apart, but the teaching possibilities are almost endless. We can use math/science to measure the stresses required to shear steel, language arts to write newspaper articles, and so on. Imagine the possibilities.

BlockCad (which I wrote about here) has a partner named AnkerCad, a freeware program for building virtual models with bricks.

I think most of my students would prefer to use BlockCad (lego-based) over AnkerCad, but it does give you another option. (and its pretty cool.)

The question is still: What can I do with this?

What can I do with this #2 was going to be about Scratch, the new toy/tool from LiFELONG KINDERGARETEN at the MIT Media Labs. But Kevin Sandridge at notesfromtheridge beat me to it. He has links to a few videos and other resources. The questions is still, what can I do with this?

Here is what the scratch homepage says:

“Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.”

edit: EwanMcIntosh gives some other links to using scratch as does teachinghacks.

So, because of Kevin, I’ll skip right to number three. BlockCad is a program I found mentioned here and there ( sorry that I lost the pages that showed it to me and can’t give the proper credit.)

Again to quote from the homepage:

“BlockCAD is a freeware program for building virtual models with Lego-like bricks.

You can save your models, or save pictures of them (.bmp, .jpg), even reuse a complete model as a part in another model.

Everything can be controlled with the mouse, but it’s also possible to use the keyboard for most of the commands, making ‘routine building’ more effective, and there is a minimum of text involved, to make it easier for kids.”

What can I do with this?