pattern – iLearn Technology

Numberphile: a series of numberly videos

January 28, 2013February 1, 2013Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3597 views

What it is: Numberphile is a series of “numberly” videos by Brady Haran. This is the same guy behind some other great projects including periodicvideos and sixtysymbols. These videos reveal some of the mystery behind numbers and math in fun, short snippets! I could give a long, drawn out explanation about the site…but really, you should go have a look and play a few videos. Or, try out the video below:

How to integrate Numberphile into the classroom: Numberphile can make a math geek out of anyone, myself included! I don’t tend to geek out very much about numbers or math, but show me pattern and reveal some of the mystery that numbers hold and I am in. This is what Numberphile does beautifully! Numberphile would make a fantastic opening for math class. Start each math class with these short videos to get your brain’s math muscles working. I’ve watched 3 videos in a row and I am seriously geeking.

Ask students to each choose a different video to watch. Students can learn a new math “trick” or pattern in math to teach their classmates. The goal: creatively teach the concept! They could create their own video, stop motion animation, infographic, story, illustration, etc. Hold a math day (3/14 would be fun…pi day) where students get to spend the day teaching one another.

You may assume that these videos are best for older students, not so! At Anastasis, our 2nd and 3rd graders had a ball learning about Fibonacci and will happily explain it to any who enter their classroom. Find an area of interest and share the passion!

Tips: All of the videos on Numberphile are YouTube videos. If you don’t have access to YouTube in your building, try one of these methods for accessing the videos:

YouTube for Schools- This is a YouTube that has been created just for schools. Network administrators must be involved so that they can add this option for YouTube into your filtering system. This is a completely customizable option that lets teachers and administrators add videos to a playlist that you have predetermined you want students to watch. Teachers can find videos by Common Core Standard, subject or grade. Students can watch videos that teachers and administrators have approved or any YouTube Edu video (think Kahn Academy, PBS, TED, Stanford, etc.).
SafeShare TV- This site lets students watch YouTube videos without ads, links, comments and related videos. You also have the option to crop videos and share videos with a unique URL.
YouTubeXL- This is a service that YouTube provides that lets you watch videos on large screens without the ads and comments. Neat tip: if you time “quiet” before the YouTube url, it takes you to a safe page where you can watch a YouTube video. WAY cool and easy to do on the fly!
Clean VideoSearch- This site lets students search through YouTube videos without the comments, ads and busy sidebar. It has additional features like the ability to choose how many videos you want to see on each page in your search.
Clea.nr– This service (a browser plugin) deletes all of the obnoxious extras that hang around videos (ads, comments, related videos). You can also search YouTube without all of the extras showing up.
ViewPure– This site cleans out all the clutter and gives you just a video. Bonus: There is a quick button that you can add to your browser so that you can go to a video, click on “Pure” in your bookmark bar and instantly have a clean video.
Dragontape– This service lets you drag videos into a timeline and share them easily with students. This is great for mashing up several videos, or cropping multiple videos into one.
Movavi– This is a video conversion service. Wonderful for teachers who can’t or don’t want to access a video directly from YouTube. Copy/paste the url you want to convert, choose a file type, done!
Zamzar– This is another great video conversion service. Works quickly and easily!
SaveYouTube- This site used to be called KickYouTube. Here you can enter the url and download it to your computer to play offline.

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

Dance, Factors Dance: Animated Factorization Diagrams #mathchat

November 15, 2012November 15, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3082 views

What it is: Dance, Factors Dance is a fantastic site to visualize factorization diagrams. The first “tango” is inspired by the digital clock, with a separate diagram for each of the hours, minutes and seconds. The Factor Conga is a “promenade of primes, composites, and their constituents, arranged with an aesthetically-tuned variation of Yorgey’s rules, one per second.” I love the way these math factorization dances help students visualize numbers and Prime numbers. Brilliant!

How to integrate Dance, Factors Dance into the classroom: Dance, Factor Dance is a stupendous way for students to visualize and think about numbers. I Love the way that the prime numbers are depicted…so easy to see why it is a prime number! Ask your students to explore this site and identify the patterns they notice in the dance of numbers. What happens when a number is prime? When a number is odd? Even?

Dance, Factors Dance is a fun way to learn more about numbers, it is also a wonderful inspiration for finding the art in math. How can students use the site as inspiration to create their own math dance? Could they use stop motion animation and manipulatives to do something similar? What patterns in math do they notice? How can they use color and design to help them better understand math?

This site is a great one to explore as a class, as a center on classroom computers, or individually on student devices. Students can pause the dance, rewind, and fast forward as they explore.

Tips: Be sure to watch (or fast forward) to the three digit numbers…this is where things get really impressive! As a side note, I learned something today from a fellow teacher. When looking at numbers in grid form, you know if a number is prime if it can only make one rectangle. This understanding would have been helpful in math class! Better late than never 🙂

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Dance, Factors Dance in your classroom.

Gudli: learning games for math, language, science, puzzles and fun

June 9, 2011Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4999 views

What it is: Gudli is a collection of games for kids that makes learning fun. Students can play these interactive educational games while developing skills in math, logic, memory, words, creativity and more. Gudli is free to use and a fantastic learning space for students in kindergarten, first and second grade.

Learning games include:

Math

Color Addition
Learn Shape
Color Subtraction
Number Series
Number Wheel
Add Numbers
Match Shape
Minus
How Many
Number Writing
Spider Counting
Color by Number
What Number Missing
Billing Counter
Time Zone
Table Memory
Mission Subtraction
Tick Tock Time
Quick Match
Math Story
Pattern Match
Counting Coins
Mission Addition

Language

Simple Sentences
Lead the Way
Rhyme Time
ABC Words
Word Rhyme
ABC Jigsaw
Word Trail
Sight Words
Labeling
Save Panda
Letter Blox
Word Hunt
The Blank
Opposite Adjectives
Spellathon
Scramble
Phonic Train
Googly Balloon
Alphabet Writing
What Letter Missing
Word Search
English Memory

Puzzle

Connect Pipe
US Map
Jigsaw Wonders
Stardoku
Shape and Shadow
Jigsaw Puzzle
Tetris Mania
Tricky Shuffler
Tic Tac Toe
Sliding Puzzle

Science

Butterfly Life Cycle
Grow Plant
Water Cycle
Animal Quiz
Jigsaw Safari

In the side bar student will learn fun “did you know” facts, Math tricks (like “Multiply by 9: Multiply by 10 and subtract the original number”) and grammar hints. Each game is labeled with the grade level and has a short description of the game and learning goals.

How to integrate Gudli into the classroom: Gudli is a fun way for kids to practice learning in math, English and science. These games make great center activities to support learning. The games are short enough that they can be set up on classroom computers and students can take turns reinforcing learning and skill practice. Gudli has enough games that students can play several in a lab setting where each student has a computer. Students can choose the games that best meet their learning needs.

Gudli is a great site to share with parents looking for some ways to reinforce learning over the summer!

Tips: Gudli has a brand new virtual world coming soon! Students will be able to explore a fun virtual world, “chat” with their friends, play in an interactive environment, challenge friends to games and of course learn!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Gudli in your classroom!

Isle of Tune: Create a musical journey

May 31, 2011February 10, 2012Kelly Tenkely3 Comments7954 views

What it is: Isle of Tune is a site that has just significantly impacted my productivity today- I can’t stop playing! Thanks to @Matt_Arguello and @dancallahan for this share today on Twitter! Isle of Tune lets students create musical journeys out of street layouts. Roadside elements act as instruments and cars are the players. Students can create whole islands of music by creating a street layout, adding objects that generate different sounds and adding cars to play the music. Each object has an object panel where students can adjust the sound, volume or clone the object. Students can determine when a sound will be played based on the ground lighting up when the car passes. Junctions change the course of passing cars or can “loop” a sound. It is easy for students to get started, they just click “Create a new island” and away they go. Students can name their island anything and save to return to it later. No need for registration, the Internet browser they are using just needs to have cookies enabled (this is a bit of a problem for shared classroom computers with a single account).

How to integrate Isle of Tune into the classroom: Isle of Tune is an enchanting place for creation. The sky is the limit as students create music based on visual creation. Aside from teaching some great music principles, Isle of Tune would be a fantastic way to teach students pattern. Students can use Isle of Tune to construct patterns of objects and actually experience the connection between math and music as they “play” their pattern tune.

Isle of Tune would also be a fun place for students to learn about maps and ordinal directions and basic graphing. Students can start with oral directions about where to lay their street “Four street squares North East, two street squares West”. After directions are given, students can customize their islands with trees, houses, lamp posts, etc. You can quickly tour the room for some formative assessment while students complete their island. Let students take turns listening to each other’s Isle of Tune, noting similarities and differences based on the patterns made.

Use Isle of Tune as a creative writing prompt. Students can create an island and tune and write an imaginative story about the island they created. The saved island makes a nice visual-aid and soundtrack for their finished story.

Isle of Tune makes a great interactive whiteboard, or projector-connected computer activity. Students can work together to create a giant island of tunes. Use the annotate over the desktop feature to label directions, coordinates and patterns.

The shared songs are pretty incredible- many of the “top” shares are popular music that has been created using Isle of Tune.

Tips: Isle of Tune is currently available on the web, keep an eye out for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad versions coming soon! If Isle of Tunes inspires your students to want to become architects or engineers, point them toward online CAD Drafting classes.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Isle of Tune in your classroom!

Fold it: Solve Problems for Science and Change the World

January 14, 2011Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3131 views

What it is: Fold it is a puzzle game based on science that helps change the world. Download the Fold It game and puzzles for free and contribute to the understanding of protein folding and amino acids. By playing this game, students take part in actually contributing to science. The implications of the Fold It game are huge, playing this game helps scientists better understand protein structure prediction and protein design. This means that by playing a little puzzle game, your students are contributing to better understanding of the role proteins play in diseases such as HIV, cancer, and Alzheimers, and even bio fuel technology. Scientists collect data from the game to find out if humans pattern recognition abilities and puzzle solving abilities make them more efficient than computers at pattern folding tasks. If it turns out that humans are more efficient, human strategies can be applied to computers to make the process even faster.

How to integrate Fold It into the classroom: If your students are currently learning about cells, proteins, amino acid, and biological make up, Fold It is an incredible way for them to really understand all of these working parts, while contributing to science. The puzzle and pattern nature of this game should appeal to a wide range of students…who doesn’t enjoy a good exercise in pattern recognition and problem solving? On the about page, your students can read the background “briefing” about the game and the science that they are contributing to by playing the game. There is also a Fold It wiki with great links for more in-depth learning and understanding. Not only will your students be learning important science concepts (I’m talking the building blocks of life here!), they will also be actually contributing to science by playing. How cool is that?! There is a large collection of puzzles with new puzzles being released and completed puzzles expiring. Don’t know anything about biology? No problem, you can play the game without understanding the biology concepts behind it (although for me, knowing the background of what I am looking at makes it that much cooler!). Check out the blog where you can read the results of how the game play has affected real science.

Tips: The idea of building games to impact the real world is incredible to me, the first time I had considered this was when I watched this TED talk by Jane McGonigal. If you haven’t seen it yet it is worth a watch! You can read my original post about this TED talk here.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Fold It in your classroom.