Create Interactive Number Set Venn Diagrams with Google Slides

I'm in number sets and set theory land in our Applied Math curriculum, which means I'm in the midst of my yearly debate on what, exactly, matters about classifying numbers, and what doesn't.

That's manifesting itself this year in a desire to bring more interactivity to our investigations of these numbers. While searching for activities a few days ago, I came across this self-checking Venn Diagram activity that I really enjoyed. (Okay, its not the one I actually found the other day, but that seems to have vanished from my history. LOL)

Here's another self-check style page for sets - I particularly like that a few of these questions require description of sets that are already in groups.

What I liked about the practice I found in my initial investigation was that it had students thinking of the numbers not ONLY in terms of "integer" or "rational," but square or even, too, so I integrated rational/integer with square and even to increase rigor in this activity.

My diagrams look like this:

Creative Workflow:
1. Place your circles on the Slide, change color properties to differentiate regions
2. Define your sets
3. Use an equation editor (I used the Daum Equation Editor Chrome app) to get images of numbers to save to laptop or Google Drive.
4. Insert numbers into slide, adding numbers to fill out the sets.
5. Duplicate slides for new groups
6. Share link to students

Student Workflow:
Students will be separated into groups of 3(ish) and directed to the Google Slides document pictured above via Google Classroom. Students will drag the numbers from the grey box onto the Venn Diagram and then add their OWN number anywhere to the diagram using a text box.

I made a separate page for each group in this one Google Slides file to keep the open/close/grade/repeat to a minimum for my groups. It could end up just being a copying situation, too, but I like the layer of potential scaffolding in place of the other groups being able to see what each other is doing.

Alternatives:
Paper. Yeah, you could. There's less of a penalty if students need to revise their number placements this way, though. Instead of erase or start all over, its as simple as dragging.
Google Drawings. If you are working on a laptop of desktop and can edit Google Drawings (not possible on my class iPads), you could accomplish the same interactivity with a Drawings file. You would, however, lose the scaffolding I mentioned above.

Can I get the file??  Sure - make a copy. :)
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dnL4UM94SE2WYzC24nPFS-l-p4MhQVworTy55PJus2M/edit?usp=sharing

Tech Integration Tip: Try New Things With One Class At A Time

You've got a new piece of hardware, app, or website you want to try out in your classroom. You've thought through some of your students' potential difficulties, what could potentially go wrong, and what you can do to mitigate those problems, but there is still an element of the unknown until you or a colleague try it out in the context or your own district or school.

"Pilot!" you think, excited to see what may come of your idea. But who pilots for the the early adopters in your building? What about the late adopters who are slow to adopt a tool until they've seen it work in their classroom?

Where Do I Start?
Pilot for yourself! I got the idea of using my own classroom as both experimental and control group from a university study on clickers I found while working on an action research plan in graduate school. The professors wanted to incorporate and investigate the use of a student response system (clickers) for generating feedback for their students, but had trouble getting colleagues to participate in their study.

To get as large of a test/control group population as they could, the professors each had half of their students acting as control and half acting as experiment groups for a portion of the semester. Having students in the same section serve as both control and experimental groups in the course of the study mitigated variables of individual student achievement, hour of the day, day of the week, and individual teaching style. It boiled the clicker study down to this question:

Is there a significant different in these students learning using clickers to generate immediate feedback, or not?

What's that mean for my team and my classroom?
I'm sure my data team has not been alone in the past in wondering when we collect data on common assessments if the differences in student scores were the result of any of several factors, including but not limited to teaching style, hour of the day, and students in the class. These are all factors that in comparing two sections of the same course are important to consider.

Establishing (and rotating) experimental and control classes within your day eliminates all of the uncertainty of what those other factors may be contributing and narrows your focus to (as close as possible) ONE single variable.

Can it be replicated?
Once ONE of the teachers in your subject area or data team have had positive results using a new technology or strategy, others can have confidence in trying it out for themselves, in their own context.

Adding Mystery and Intrigue to Your SMART Notebook Lessons: Boxes and Screen Shade

Which of these normal, everyday slides from a normal, everyday Notebook lesson grab more of your attention?

What's behind those squares?

You can take the content you already have created in SMART Notebook (or PowerPoint for that matter) and up the interactivity of your lesson in a matter of seconds. By using the Screen Shade or boxes to cover text, images, or writing, you give opportunities for students to:

Predict...

• what's next in a story
• the next step in a mathematical solution
• connections between two ideas
• meaning of new words in context

Signal importance - I feel like my students skim over or miss even the bold words in texts, sometime, so I like that some books highlight, but you can even go the next step and emphasis with a box. 

Focus - When I'm hoping that I say the right words to communicate a concept to a student in the 30 seconds I have their attention, the LAST thing I want is for them to be focusing on something ELSE related to the lesson on the SMARTboard.

The greatest ally to misunderstanding in math class is misinformation. 

"You wrote it on the board, and you said..."
"Yes, but not at the same time..."

Encourage interactivity - that kid may not want to write a lick of the information you're sharing, but you better believe you may entice them with a chance to drag a box.

Now you've got, "Remember when you went to the SMARTboard and moved the boxes? That's what you need to use right now," in your back pocket, even though its surely no where on a piece of paper. :)

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HOW TO...
Screen Shade:

Between boxes or Screen Shade, the easiest of the two to implement would be the shade. Pull up your content, put up the shade, and drag to reveal. I use this most often in my Algebra class to ask, "What do you think I did next?"

The Screen Shade icon

Drag at your own speed...

Boxes

Using boxes is a bit more complicated, but FAR more customizable. Here I've used boxes to cover up the solution to an example I grabbed from my online texbook using the screen capture tool (the camera icon)

WHY Interactive Technologies? #1 - Curiosity and Play

Thinking through rationale for the value of engaging students in their learning process with SMARTboards and/or websites/apps for a training this Friday and ran across this video.

Obviously in the daily ebb and flow of your classroom you're going to aim a little lower than giant interactive art installation, but here are some things I'm going to start asking myself every morning before I start the day:

Is there anything playful in my lessons today? Are there any elements that are going to pique someone's interest to want to touch or explore? Is there anything here to grab anyone's attention?

You find out within your first couple months teaching that some of your best efforts at lesson planning sometimes crash and burn, so the end result of daily interactivity is not the point. Rather, the effort is what flexes those creative muscles (and keeps me from being bored in class...)