statistics – iLearn Technology

What it is: Woot Math uses adaptive technology to personalize the math learning experience in new ways for 3rd-6th grade students. With a focus on fractions and decimals, Woot Math allows students many inroads to understanding. Flexible implementation options mean that Woot Math can be used in any classroom configuration whether it be 1:1 devices, shared devices, whole-class, or as intervention. The Woot Math system works on the web, iPads, or Chromebooks seamlessly…it truly is a great option for any classroom! It is super user-friendly, and gives teachers the ability to customize for each student in the class as a starting point. Woot Math is adaptive, as students use it, it gets “smart” and creates learning pathways based on the specific needs of the student. Beginning with foundational rational math concepts, Woot Math makes these necessary foundational skills accessible for all students. It is like having a personal tutor sitting beside them as they work through new learning. If a student doesn’t understand a problem, the program adapts to approach the learning in a new way. The illustration of concepts is brilliant! Woot Math gives students a solid understanding of fractions, laying the necessary ground work for algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry, and statistics. Sign up TODAY, Woot Math is totally free for the 2015-2016 school year!

How to integrate Woot Math into your classroom: To begin with Woot Math, decide how you will use it in your classroom. Do all of your students have access to a technology device? Do you have a bank of devices that they can rotate through? Do you have a projector/interactive whiteboard? If you are using Woot Math with limited technology access, beginning with the Interactive Problem Bank is best. Here you can quickly access thousands of hands-on fraction and decimal problems for students to work through together. You can project the problems on a whiteboard or use an interactive whiteboard. Problems can be selected by topic or standard and then by model type. Students can either work together in community solving problems, or as a center in a math rotation. If you have better access to technology, and students can work independently on a device, the Adaptive Practice is the place to start. Here you can print out student login cards, assign an initial topic, and the program will adaptively generate and assess thousands of interactive problems. This is also the place where you can track student progress and understanding through concepts and skills. The visual examples and leading through problems is fantastic, it is truly an engaging process for students to learn with! This is the best way (in my humble opinion) to use Woot Math, because it allows students to work in exactly the way they need to increase understanding and build a solid foundation of understanding. Be sure to go through Woot Math independently of your students to truly appreciate the interactive learning modules and visual representation of concepts…they are brilliant!

Tips: Be sure to sign up soon, take advantage of this timing when Woot Math is 100% free! There are some great teacher resources to download to help you as you implement Woot Math.

Hat Tip to @yourkidsteacher for sharing this awesome resource with me!

512 Paths to the White House Interactive Infographic for the Election #election2012

November 5, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3058 views

What it is: Tomorrow is Election day! I couldn’t be more excited to see an end to the obnoxious political ads. Living in a swing state means that EVERY commercial I see is a political ad. At this point, all I have been convinced of is that the world may in fact be ending…the choices here are dire. One thing I am now passionate about: campaign reform. I digress.

512 Paths to the White House is a super cool interactive feature on the New York Times website. Students can test out selecting a winner for the swing states and see the paths to victory available to either candidate. Students can also mouse over the infographic and see what happens in the breakdown of each option. According to the infographic, there are 5 paths to a tie.

How to integrate 512 Paths to the White House into the classroom: This really is a cool infographic to explore before the election. Students can explore this infographic on classroom computers as an Election Day discovery center, as a class on an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer, or individually on computers.

This site makes a wonderful opening to discussion about the electoral college, the election process for the US, and why the swing states determine the outcome of the election. At the bottom of the page, there are some specific scenarios for students to explore. These scenarios also open up great conversations about economies in different states, beliefs of each party, political advertising, liberal vs. conservative states, etc.

In the secondary math class, students can explore probability, statistics and unpack the data offered here. It is pretty interesting to see the paths each candidate has to winning based on who wins each battleground state.

Tips: Follow up on Wednesday, November 7th with how accurate the 512 Paths to the White House was. Students can use this tool as they watch the election to predict who the winner will be.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using 512 Paths to the White House in your classroom.

Help me personalize education for EVERY child! Donate (even just your coffee money!) and spread the word about the Learning Genome Project.

Piktochart: Create your own infographics

October 9, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment10899 views

What it is: Piktochart is a great web app that makes it easy to create your own infographics. Piktochart has free and premium options. With the free version, there are a handful of themes to choose from. Premium themes are also available, if you are so inclined. After you choose a theme, the next job is to change the mood and edit the information on the chart. Students can add shapes, graphics (uploaded), theme graphics, and text to the infographic. Students can add a chart where they manually input data or upload a cvc file. This is especially helpful if they have been data collecting in another program. There are some features that are only available to pro users. Not to worry, there are enough available for free that you can make a pretty rockin’ infographic that gets the point (or data) across.

How to integrate Piktochart into the classroom: Piktochart is a superb way for students to work on those statistics/probability standards. Being a visual learner myself, I love the way that infographics seem to make data easier to digest. Piktochart can be used to display any type of statistical or mathematical data in new ways. Students can show what they are learning in history, about the world population (miniature earth), science, in the book they are reading, geography statistics, etc.

The way that infographics allow students to blend learning across the subject areas is fantastic. It isn’t just math; it is math, and art, and science/social studies/history/geography/technology. Any time we can help students recognize the overlaps that exist in learning and subject area, it is a win!

A few weeks ago, students at Anastasis discovered that America’s biggest export is trash. They started digging and found statistics about the amount of trash Americans throw away each day (7lbs/person) and how much was recycled vs. what ended up in a landfill. They also looked at statistics of what receiving countries like China and India did with the waste being imported. It was fascinating! Students created infographics showing what they had discovered in their research. It was eye-opening when they translated that trash per person into a year’s worth of trash and figured out how many football stadiums that it would fill. When they could see it graphically, it had an impact on their thinking. The result was: “it is up to us to change this…”

Pretty amazing when the conclusion to learning is transformation…change.

Tips: In the free version: Basic themes, 5 image uploads, Piktochart’s watermark. Pro version ($29.00/mo): 80 themes (and growing), additional customization, more image uploads, no watermark.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Piktochart in your classroom.

Help me personalize education for EVERY child! Donate and spread the word about the Learning Genome Project.

Science Animation Gallery

February 10, 2011Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3489 views

What it is: Sumanas, Inc has created a complete animation gallery for science. Each animation comes with a written summary description, a narrated animation, a step-through tutorial (understanding the concept through a series of steps), and a quiz. There are a variety of main topics, each with several related animation modules. In the gallery you will find General Biology, Molecular Biology, General Biotechnology, Microbiology, Biopsychology/Neuroscience, Ecology, Astronomy, Statistics, Chemistry, and Environmental Science. There is also a Science in Focus section for animations that explain science topics that are in the news (stem cells, malaria, gene therapy, ulcers, antibiotic resistance, and anthrax). These are great for current event science conversations and understandings.

How to integrate Science Animation Gallery into the classroom: The Science Animation Gallery takes what can be difficult to understand concepts, and animates them in a way that breaks down the concept into manageable parts. Many of the science concepts are more appropriate for middle and high school students, but some sections, like Astronomy, include animations that are useful for elementary students (moon phases).

Students can use the animations to explore science concepts that they are interested in learning more about, or to further delve into a topic just touched on in curriculum. Many of the animations would make a great launching point for science experiments and inquiry units.

Use the animations to introduce a whole class to a new concept or topic using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. At the end of the animation, you can instantly check for learning using the quiz at the end (it would work well with a student response system, voters). Use the feedback from the quiz to guide the learning and next steps for students. Students could also visit the gallery as a science discovery center in the one or two computer classroom. I really like the different options offered by the animations, students can listen to a narrated version of the animation or navigate through the animation at their own pace using the step-by-step. The narrated animation is brilliant, science has so many unfamiliar vocabulary words and terms that struggling readers can often get bogged down in just sorting out the words. With the narrated animation, the focus is on the concept being taught and the vocabulary is learned more naturally without stifling the learning.

Encourage your students to watch for science in the news. The news has been full of it lately! Use those current event topics and dig in a little deeper with the Science in Focus animations. So often students hear about stem cells or gene therapy and don’t really know what they are referring to (adults either for that matter!) take the opportunity to teach students about the science concepts fueling those news stories. There are some additional links and resources related to each animation in the Science in Focus section.

Tips: Some of the animations are available for download and can be played on an iDevice or in iTunes.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Science Animation Gallery in your classroom

HippoCampus

October 22, 2009Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1835 views

What it is: HippoCampus is a website with incredible vision. The goal is to provide high-quality multimedia content on general subjects to high school and college students free of charge. Subjects on HippoCampus include algebra, American government, biology, calculus, environmental science, physics, psychology, religions, statistics, and US history. Each of the subject has a large library of multimedia content from students to learn from. HippoCampus was designed as part of the Open Education Resources, a worldwide effort to make education available equitably to everyone. Each lesson includes multimedia lessons, the text of the lesson, and related resources. I believe the HippoCampus model will be the textbook of the future. Students are able to learn at their own pace, pausing, reviewing, and receiving instruction on demand.

How to integrate Hippo Campus into the classroom: HippoCampus has an incredible library of content for teaching and learning. Use the multimedia lessons in place of traditional textbooks or as a supplement to your current curriculum. Teachers can build their own HippoCampus homepage where students can access specific lessons targeted for them. You can even create custom announcements to be displayed to students. Although HippoCampus was designed with high school and college students in mind, many of the multimedia presentations could be used to teach middle school students as well.

Tips: HippoCampus uses Adobe Flash and QuickTime. Make sure that you have each on your computers before using HippoCampus.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using HippoCampus in your classroom.

Tag: statistics

Woot Math: Adaptive learning for fractions and decimals

Science Animation Gallery