Where does Edmodo fit in a mathematics classroom?

Last year I was introduced to a web resource called Edmodo at the FETC 2011 (Florida Educators Technology Conference) and then again during a graduate course at UCF (University of Central Florida).  According to my experience with Edmodo, I would consider it a social networking site a lot like "Facebook," but meant to be more educational and allows for teachers to have more control than what "Facebook" would offer.  Although Edmodo has a lot to offer teachers for their classroom, I had a hard time thinking of how I could integrate the use of Edmodo into a mathematics classroom.  This is what I have come up with so far:

Last year, when I first started using Edmodo, I created an assignment for my Pre-Algebra students to research the golden ratio and Fibanocci sequence and find out how the two related.  The students were to present their answers in a Prezi, powerpoint presentation, or movie.  Most of the students chose to either do a prezi or a powerpoint presentation.  On Edmodo, the students were able to load their prezi or powerpoint presentation directly onto Edmodo.  This eliminated the students having to bring in a flash drive or burn a CD with their presentation.  It also allowed me the option to grade their presentations online from home on my personal computer or at school with my school computer.

This year I have found a few other ways to integrate Edmodo into my mathematics classroom.  I have created a library within Edmodo of resources and websites for the students to access if they are struggling with a particular topic from class.  I have also posted links to their online textbook that provides many of their own resources to help students understand the concepts presented in class.  Because of limited time to cover material within the classroom, I often post links to websites that go beyond the material covered in class for students that are interested in a challenge or have an interest in a particular topic.  For example, the other day we were talking about cubes and when I was looking for a picture of a cube I came across an interesting website that taught step by step instructions on how to create a foldable cube.  I immediately added a link to this for the kids to access.  Also, in class the other day we were talking about the Order of Operations and how they use the mnemonic device PEMDAS.  The P represents parentheses.  I thought we should change the P to a G to represent grouping symbols.  I then had the students think of a new mnemonic device to remember GEMDAS and post their idea on   Edmodo.  I then took all there ideas and created a poll for all the students to vote on their favorite.  Lastly, I allow the students to post questions directed to class about what the homework is.  

I feel that I have come up with a few good ideas, but I am more than welcome to hear your ideas.  Oh, and by the way, Edmodo has an option for teachers to link to subject matter groups.  It allows for  teachers around the world to share their ideas.  

Curriculum Page EME 5050

Rubric…Activity Reflection #7

This week for my graduate class we were to create a rubric to evaluate our students digital stories projects.  According to Craig Mertler from Bowling Green State University, rubrics are “rating scales as opposed to checklists- that are used with performance assessments. ”  Before I could even start creating my rubric, I had to decide which type of rubric I would like to create between an analytic rubric and a holistic rubric. Mertler stated that holistic rubrics allow teachers to grade a project as a whole whereas an analytic rubric allows teachers to grade individual parts of the project separately.  He also suggested that if there are only a few correct answers to a project he feels that the analytic rubric is more appropriate to assess the students and the opposite is true for holistic rubrics.  I choose to go with an analytic rubric for my students project because there are so many separate components that I feel is important to grade.  I spent a lot of this week contemplating what percentages would be appropriate for the mathematics content and how much of the percentages would be appropriate for the technology that the students use for their project.  At our school we have a separate elective class that teaches our students how to use technology and I do not know how much as a math teacher I should focus on grading them on how well they use the technology in their project when they have the opportunity in their elective to learn about technology.  Understandable, coming from a teacher that is getting my masters in Educational Technology, I feel it is important for all teachers to integrate technology in some way into their classroom, but I am not sure how much emphasis to put on the technology when I am expected to teach math.  But, then I looked at it from the perspective of one subject area to another.  Every teacher at our school is required to integrate reading into the subject matter that they teach.  In my opinion, integrating technology is just as crucial as integrating other core subjects areas into my math curriculum.

The two rubrics that I relied on to put together my own rubric was from University of Wisconsin – Stout and the NCSU Multimedia Mania Project Rubric.  I felt that these two rubrics did an amazing job of defining different descriptors that will help me as a teacher decide what category each student falls into for each criteria in the rubric.

I decided to use iRubric to create my rubric for the Golden Ratio project.  This program was very easy to follow and I felt that the tutorial videos were short and very informative.  I liked that I could preview my rubric and see how a student would get a grade by clicking on the different levels of achievement for each criteria.  I had a little trouble embedding the rubric into the PBworks page I created.  I figured out how to do this, but I still have questions on how I can actually score each student’s project using iRubric.  I think I have to actually set up a class within iRubric.  I feel that before I actually use the rubric I created I need to do a little more research on this program before I turn in my final project for my graduate course.

Here is the links to the rubric I created.

You are also able to view it within my Curriculum page at: Rubric or 
Glogster and click on Step 4 - Evaluation & Rubric


or



Resources:
Mertler, Craig A. (2001). Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom.  Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(25).  Retrieved April 13, 2011 from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=25.


Rubrics:
University of Wisconsin -Stout http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/pptrubric.html
NCSU Multimedia Mania Project Rubric
http://www.ncsu.edu/midlink/rub.mm.st.pdf

Prezi-The Golden Ratio - Activity Reflection #6

This week in my Graduate course “Fundamentals of Technology for Educators” we were to create an example of a project we will be asking our students to create.  While I started creating my own example of what I expect my 6^th and 7^th grade mathematics students to create I came across two problems.  The first problem was that I did not provide enough links in my curriculum page from the week before for my students to find the answers to all the questions I provided for them to answer.  I will have to go back and add some of the sites that I used to create my example that I saved in my Diigo account.  My Diigo account is an online place for me to keep track of the different websites I have visited by bookmarking them by title so that I can revisit the sites at a later time. 

The second problem that I came across was that the comments that were connected with some of the amazing and professional YouTube videos were very inappropriate.  In the future, I feel that unless I know how to embed these videos into the curriculum page, it is not worth being called into my administrator’s office because parents and students are reporting all the inappropriate comments that Ms. Garver led them to for an assigned project.

After reading chapter seven from our textbook “Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom” by Shelly, Gunter, and Gunter, I realized how important it is to evaluate the different sites that I am providing for my students, so that they are getting the correct information from reliable sources.  Although the content on the website is the most important in evaluating the site, I feel it is also important to see who is writing the information on the site and what companies, schools (university or school district), and organizations are affiliated with the site you are evaluating. 

I am very excited for you to view my example.  The question that comes to mind that I would love your input on is…Do I allow my students to see my example with all the answers to the questions that I provided? I don’t want them to just view my example and get the answers.  Isn’t it important for them to do the research on their own?

Resources:

Shelly, G. B., Gunter, G. A., & Gunter, R.E. (2010). Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom Sixth Edition. Boston, MA: Cendage

Well here it is The Golden Ratio Prezi

6 Hours Straight - New Record! - Activity Reflection #5

 

6 hours Straight! New Record – Activity Reflection #5

There are definitely not enough hours in the day for the things that I want to complete.  This week for my graduate course Fundementals of Technology for Educators we were to create a curriculum page of a storytelling activity for our students to complete.  I got very excited about this and felt that it was going to be an easy task.  I have heard of wiki spaces, but have not ever had the opportunity or reason to actually create one before this week. I already had the activity decided so I thought I was just going to be writing up the details of the activity and linking the URL’s I had collected the prior week in my Diigo account into my newly created wiki space.  However, this was not the case.  Over the weekend and on Tuesday night I looked through all of the links that my professor had provided for use to look at to get ideas for setting up our own curriculum page.  I was overwhelmed with the amount of information and ideas.  One project that caught my attention was a webquest created by Jessica Levene on 21^st Century Poets.  After viewing her project I decided that I must present my curriculum page the same way.  This task alone took me 6 hours.  In PBworks wiki spaces I created 3 pages to explain the activity: Introduction, Task, and Process.  All three of these pages have links for my students to research the activity, link to tutorials to teach the students how to present their project, and links to examples of final projects for students to view.  I tried embedding Youtube videos into the wiki spaces, but I was unsuccessful.  With the amount of time I had spent creating these pages and getting all the URL’s, I decided to hold off embedding these videos until I have had more time to practice and research how to correctly.  I feel that if there were more hours in the day or if I had better time management skills this assignment for my graduate course would have been less overwhelming.  It is hard to manage my time when I get so excited about the technology and I do not want to stop an assignment until I have completed it. I need to learn how to walk away from a project and reserve time throughout the week to complete assignment.

 

Well, here it goes…My final rough draft…Please check it out The Golden Ratio

or try The Golden Ratio

 

We are "Golden"! - Reading Reaction #5

The question we were asked this week was “What kind of digital storytelling project do you wish that one of your current or future students would be able to turn in as part of your curriculum?”  When I think about middle school mathematics the last thing that comes to mind is “storytelling.”  I thought this task this week was going to be very difficult until I did a google search on Digital Storytelling of ideas that other teachers have done.  Some of the ideas presented were Geometry walk, math around the town, acting out math problems and the history of mathematics.  The one example that really caught my attention was from a Pythagorean theorem digital story.  After watching this I thought that this would great for when I talk about “The Golden Ratio” to my students.  They will be able to create digital stories about where the golden ratio originated from, what it is, pictures, art, and clip art of examples of the golden ratio.  Also, there is a theory that says that people that’s bodies are closer to the golden ratio are more pleasing to look at.    The students could create a story comparing different images of celebrities that they think are pleasing and some that are not so pleasing to compare and see if the theory holds true. 

If the students in my class were to do this project they would need to have access to a lot of different media.  The students could take digital pictures of examples of “the golden ratio.”   The students could research via the Internet what the golden ratio is and what examples there are for the golden ratio.  The students would need access to different forms of creating their digital stories from as simple as Microsoft Powerpoint and Prezi to more complex presentations including video editing software like Camtasia and iMovie. 

For students to be successful in creating quality digital stories I think it would be helpful to create a curriculum page of resources for the students including the example that I found on the Pythagorean theorem and other digital storytelling examples.  Also on this curriculum page I would include different types of ways that the students could present their projects like Prezi and Camtasia.  Both of these programs, along with others, also have good Internet resources for tutorials on how to use these types of programs.  Lastly, I would make sure that on the curriculum page there are resources of what the golden ratio is, where the golden ratio came from, and who discovered the golden ratio.  An activity that would connect with this project is having the students measure parts of their body and see how closely they are to the golden ratio.

I particularly like this project idea because it allows for students to explore different venues to create a product that may look totally different from the other students in the classroom.  According to Edutopia, these types of activities allow for students to retain more of the information and develop critical thinking and communication skills.  I think this project is something that could easily be integrated into my curriculum and I am excited to actually have my students try.

 

The Dizzy Future - Activity Reflection #4

Our assignment for this week was to create a presentation in Microsoft Powerpoint, Google Docs, Keynote, Open Office or Prezi that explained the benefits of digital storytelling and embed it into our blog.  Before I could even begin to explain the benefits of digital storytelling it is important to explain what it is.  A YouTube video that we had to watch explains it better than I could ever tell you just in words (how ironic)

There are a lot of benefits to digital storytelling but the one that I feel is the most important is that we are presenting material to students in a way that they can relate to in the 21^st century.  Secondly, while reading our textbook Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom I was amazed to read that when students are presented with information that they can see, hear and interact with they retain as much as 80% of the information compared to 50% when they just see and hear the information.  All the other benefits I highlighted in a Prezi that I created.

I decided to create a Prezi instead of a Powerpoint presentation because I had never worked with Prezi before and wanted to become more familiar with the program.  My only experience with Prezi before creating my own was a presentation I attended for one of my other UCF classes.  Unfortunately, the paths were not working the way the presenter wanted and it made for a very dizzy experience for the audience.  I found the Prezi to be very easy to create and edit.  However, I did struggle with creating the paths and frames.  I spent approximately 5 hours on this assignment on Wednesday and finally gave up for the night because there were some Internet errors I kept receiving.  Today I went back to Prezi to complete the assignment and make any necessary changed before I embedded it into my blog.  I had no Internet errors and the paths I created went the way that I wanted them to.  If I am to create another Prezi again, I think I would make sure to have a few days to create so that if I have Internet errors while working on the project, I can walk away from the project and then go back later when I am less frustrated.  I also believe the philosophy “Practice makes Perfect.”  The more presentations that I create in Prezi, the easier they will become to create.  

Resources:

Shelly, G. B., Gunter, G. A., & Gunter, R.E. (2010). Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom Sixth Edition. Boston, MA: Cendage