What happens when you forget to press publish?? A life lesson that can be shared with students...I found this post never having actually been posted so thought I should share!
Today I decided it must be time to do something about the incompetence that's been plaguing me in EC&I 831. What does one do when unsure how to do something? Google it, of course! So I Googled "Twitter Basics" and found that I would've been able to learn everything I needed right there in Twitter! (I realize that this should have occurred to me without the Google search but, alas, it did not.) Armed with Twitter Help Center and a few Twitter for Dummies documents, I fumbled my way through organizing myself on Twitter.
Feeling somewhat confident in my ability to Tweet, I was ready to look for tweet worthy items.
Since Benita and I were getting together to work on our major project this afternoon, I thought that I should go looking for some helpful Math resources. Our school currently owns and underutilizes not one but 3 iPads so I decided to narrow my search to iPad apps. Call it dumb luck or skilled searching but I managed to stumble upon Appsinclass.com, a website dedicated to iPads in the classroom. The app of the week happened to be MathPad so I thought, in the interest of my major project, I ought to check it out. I was quite excited to find that this app enables users to write Math equations and have them converted into digital print. Sweet!! I've never been able to figure out how to make most of the symbols required to write equations on the computer... Next stop, another recommendation of the website, ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard. This one can turn your iPad into a whiteboard...I can see possibilities here! Last but not least, I decided to take a quick peak at an iMovie tutorial because it makes a lot of sense to use iMovie (and our beloved iPads) for the video project we are planning for students later in the year.
By the time Benita arrived at the school to work on our project, I was feeling like I had a few things worthy of sharing. I still wasn't sure how or where or when we would fit them into our project, however, I had something and that was better than where I started!
We pulled together our thoughts on Math and what would serve our students best. Flipped class?? Honestly, chances of our students accessing anything academic outside of class time are beyond low. That being said, they do enjoy working on the computer and interaction is always a plus! They tend to be lacking in multiplication skills, place value, etc. So the plan now is to come up with supplemental resources that students can work through in order to help boost those skills. Now to uncover the best methods to get what they need to them in ways that are interesting and valuable!
