Is it Tech-Ready? 3D Solids Town Project

A large part of my job as self-appointed edtech evangelist in my building is seeking out opportunities for my colleagues to take something they are already doing that works well and take it to an even higher level with technology enabling them to learn more, share more, or show more.

Last week I was inspired by a 3D solids project my mentee and another Geometry teacher did earlier in the semester. I did a Google Sketchup project last year to assess 2D area, and one of the greatest tools in Sketchup is its ability to easily create 3D solids, so I asked Colleen and Emily if we could have a chat about their project.

Our discussion was centered on these 4 questions:

• What were you assessing with this project?
• Why did you choose to assess those goals this way?
• How do you feel your project went?
• Would using the technology bring added value to this project?

So is this project tech-ready? As far as simply evaluating ability to calculate surface area, volume, and write linear equations, I think it translates nicely, however (and I think this was a surprise to Emily), you do lose the physical, tangible skill reinforcement of measuring a physical object if you take this project into Sketchup. With the emphasis we're trying to place on graduating kids that have and/or are ready to gain technical skills, I think it might be worth it to keep this as a paper-based project, or at most provided Sketchup as an option.

I have really enjoyed seeing these projects on the walls the past month, and I'm impressed at the evolution it represented in instructional design from the last project these Geometry classes. It was a good integration of some Algebra concepts that are sometimes hard to put in the Geometry curriculum, particularly in this unit. However, since this is an ed tech AND math blog, let's explore some ways we could go further next year.

What are some things we could do to keep the tangible skills but still enhance the learning experience with this project?

• We were talking about having kids check the workability of their word problems by having their classmates solve them - you could generate a rich feedback loop having kids post their problems on Google Classroom, a student blog, or Voicethread and require kids to respond and give feedback to a set number of their classmates. You could do the same on chart paper in the room, I think, but moving that opportunity online keeps the feedback more easily accessible (instead of a giant piece of chart paper), and opening up the number of people who could comment on any one student's problem.
• Have students decide the surface area or volume they want for each 3d solid and then create and print the net for the solid themselves using image editing software. Even MS Paint would work. :)
• Students chart the lines of their streets on an online graphing utility like Desmos, and just enter the placement of their physical 3d solids on their poster as coordinate points. This option would keep a map-making element to the project with a tool more approachable (and accessible) than Sketchup. 

What other ideas do you have, readers? Do you think the physical measuring skills are not worth the limitations they place on the type of product the kids can make and share? Is there something else we can use technology to enrich and enhance the experience while keeping the physical manipulatives?

"Hangout" with an Expert

My district is holding a STEM Expo next week, and I thought this was an excellent opportunity for my AP Stats students to present the statistical significance projects they design and conduct at the end of the semester each year.

The only problem with my vision was that I don't have any experience on what presenting a poster at a science conference looks like. From what I've heard from a couple of my friends that are/were STEM graduate students, its not really the same as showing some PowerPoint slides and discussing.

Enter my friend of a friend, Washington University doctoral student, Ryan Watkins, who has presented a poster a few different conferences. She did me a super solid and met with my class at 7:30 this morning.

Ryan's bio:

Ryan is a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, finishing her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science. She graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology in 2010 with Bachelor's Degrees in both Physics and Space Science. She have completed three NASA internships — two at Kennedy Space Center as an undergrad and one at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. She was appointed as a NASA Student Ambassador in 2008 and is actively involved in STEM outreach at all age levels. She has published papers about the effects of rocket exhaust on lunar soil and is currently studying volcanic regions on the Moon using orbital images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. She plans to continue researching the Moon and become involved in planning future planetary missions after she graduates. She dreams of becoming an astronaut one day, and hopefully be the first woman to walk on the Moon.

Before the Hangout, I sent Ryan's bio to my students through Google Classroom and had them all respond with 2 questions to get help them prepare and make the most of our time. I think the best question from a learning/work perspective came didn't actually get asked.

"What are the qualities a good STEM poster should have (kind of like an informal rubric I could refer back to)?"

It's not entirely common that I will have students (especially earlier than the day before the due date) ask for a rubric to guide their work. And that he even thought to ask someone else (sort of outside the classroom setting) is especially impressive to me. (She ended up sending this great resource from NYU with tips, tools, and guidelines for research posters right after our Hangout)

HANGOUT VS. FACETIME VS. SKYPE
I chose to do this via Google Hangout today for a couple of reasons:

• I wanted to let another AP teacher in the district whose kids are also presenting at the Expo in on the broadcast
• I wanted to archive it in case my chronically absent students were absent, or the kids just wanted to watch it again.

I could have accomplished the 1st goal via a regular Hangout, but to record it, I would have to have been running screencasting software on top of my window (which would be the only way of recording a FaceTime or Skype), I was worried about lag on my network as it was, so asking my computer to also due more seemed like pressing my luck.

The best feature of doing the video chat via Google Hangout was that I could do it as "Hangouts On Air," which automatically broadcasts the chat live to your YouTube channel and then archives as a regular YouTube upload after the fact (which is how it is embedded earlier in this post).

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Video chatting or live streaming can be taxing on a network, so if at all possible, you should try to schedule your chat away from peak times (for us, its lunch time), or at the least, inform your technology department and perhaps they can clear some extra bandwidth for you ahead of time.

We spent several minutes before we actually got started getting "in" the Hangout and then getting my settings right before we even "started" the interview, so if you're crunched for time, its good to know that you can start the Hangout before you actually start broadcasting it.

Hangouts On Air and Hangouts actually live in different areas of your Google world. Hangouts you setup via Google+ or the Hangouts app, but Hangouts On Air need to be setup through your YouTube account. Here's some info on getting started with Hangouts On Air.

Defining Students' Capabilities (What Happened on the Scientific Notation Project?)

What do you think defines more of your students' capabilities to create, the tools you give them, or the content you teach?

Which builds more capacity in our students to solve (their own) real problems, teaching them to ask better questions, or teaching the content necessary to attack those problems?

I had a great conversation with +Jeff Horwitz from Chesterfield Day School in December about continuing to push myself to think out of a box about what problems kids can solve and what products they can create in 2015 with the technology and information available to them. There are skills we teach at the high school level in our career and technical ed and arts courses that 15 years ago a kid may have needed to make a professional-ish product.

When I was a kid...

• I "published" stories and books by using a printer, our best markers, and those little metal brads and giving them to my parents. One day, I even got invited to an city-wide event where I got to read my story in a classroom of TWENTY-FIVE other kids and parents who were attending the same event.
  
• I "produced" songs by recording myself singing along to the radio on a casette recorder.
  
• I "interviewed" people from other cultures by making up fake languages and talking into my casette recorder.
  
• I "published" a newspaper by drawing a picture in the box and writing on the lines of a pre-printed template on newsprint that my parents bought one time. (And just once. So, the fun was over in an evening.)
  
• I saw my grandparents on my mother's side fewer times than I can count on my hands, because they lived more than a day's drive away.
  

My 5 year old...

• Has published an interactive ebook and shared it on my facebook with her friends (okay, my friends, their parents, but you know what I mean.)
  
• Without even being given the idea, recorded music videos on a Leapfrog Leappad with songs she makes up herself.
  
• Has a "fashion" blog with images of her designs that she'll request we post to so she can show her friends her pictures of "horse braids", "tags for charming babies," necklaces, and more
  
• Can Facetime her Mimi and Poppa almost whenever she wants, sharing all the latest news from STL to ATL. 
  

Its hard for me to even imagine what she'll be capable of once she starts reading, but I have a feeling it will only be limited by our ability to get the tools into her hands, and her own imagination. 

I think in a lot of ways, I expect greater creativity and imagination from my preschool-aged children than I might from the high-schoolers in my classroom. Is there a chance our expectations of what they may be capable of is what defines the end product? If something is an "11th-grade" project, what makes it so? Is it the math content from a course they haven't yet taken, or is it a complexity limitation? 

Once you raise your expectations of the quality that students are capable of producing, how do you sell that to your students that have a fixed mindset of what they can accomplish? 

Two weeks ago I gave my Applied Math students a mini-project about multiplying or dividing numbers in scientific notation. I gave them the choice of 4 different questions to research and solve, and a choice of poster, collage, video, or whatever else cool they could come up with as their product. Several students steered toward poster, which was fine, but the disparity between quality was what rattled me for the better part of a weekend. Choosing to work by herself, one student finished her work in 2 class periods (and most of the 2nd was filled with coloring in block letters and graphics on her poster.) I had a group of 4 boys "finish" the same question in 4 class periods with what was probably a level of quality I could have produced in 3rd grade. 

What happened with these boys (the 2nd photo above)? Is it a matter of their teacher accepting this poster as "done," even as I already know that it will barely pass muster on my rubric? Can we mandate creativity in core classes? Do I have to put quality measures in my rubric that really should be assessing a student's learning of the content? 

From my experience, its not enough to give the option of creativity in the classroom and producing cool, quality work. Some students will flourish under that setting, but it cheats that ones who will continue to function at the lowest common denominator. I don't think its enough to show our students what they can do - we have some level of responsiblity to push and encourage them to make it happen. 

Algebra on a Chromebook: Google Search Math Tricks

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Need a calculator?
Need a graphing calculator?
Need a unit converter?
Need to calculate a volume?
Need to calculate an area?
Need to find the measurement of the side of a shape, given one of its volume or area?

Your students (and you) can use Google Search to perform all of those tasks without ever leaving the browser window. Does it take the place of having a standard, standalone, scientific calculator? Of course not.

However, knowing these Google search math tricks help me to work more efficiently when I'm in the flow of a project. Having a browser window open is ubiquitous to the modern computer experience, so as often as possible, it makes a lot of sense to me to utilize what I've already got open and available. If I can perform the task without going to a specific online calculator or grabbing my physical calculator, it just makes sense.

So what all can I do?
1. Perform calculations the same way you might on a handheld calculator.
You can even do square roots or logs if you know the proper notation.

2. Graph equations of functions. 

Include a comma between equations to do more than one. Trace for specific values by hovering your mouse cursor over the function.

3. Calculate the volume or surface area of a 3D solid. 
Just type in volume formula of _________. Cone is shown here, but also works with cylinders, prisms, spheres, and pyramids.

4. Calculate the area of a 2D shape. 
If you only search, "area of _______," it will return the formula and give you a text field to enter your dimensions, but you can also specify a dimension in the search. In the example below, I specified a radius of 4 by including "r=___"

5. Convert units 

This is super important for project-based learning, "real-world" problems, or gathering information for 3-act math stories.

The drop-down menu that is currently on "digital storage" below also has options for temperature, length, mass, speed, volume, area, fuel consumption, and time units.

5 Ways to Pwn Your Math Homework With Google Search

I couldn't finish my homework because I didn't have graph paper.
I couldn't finish my homework because I didn't have my graphing calculator.
I couldn't finish my homework because I didn't have my calculator.
I couldn't finish my homework because I don't know how to use my calculator.
I couldn't finish my homework because I don't know how to convert units.
I couldn't finish my homework because I didn't have any examples.

You've only got to teach math for a few weeks before you've heard every one of those excuses. No one answer is going to be good enough for the kid that goes through all of those, but you can use a simple Google search to perform many necessary tasks to "pwn" your homework and save time.

All of these tips work simply by typing in the search box on Google.com, or using the "omnibox" on browsers like Chrome and Firefox.




1. Calculate.
Typing in calculations such as -1*-3 pulls up an onscreen scientific calculator that gives you an answer and allows you to continue with my calculations.

2. Find and print graph paper.
Your teacher does it this way often, too. :)

3. Graph equations and trace for points.
No need to even go to a graphing calculator app or website. Trace along the line to find intercepts, coordinates, and other key features.

4. Convert units.
You may still need to show your work (especially if you're in a lesson on the topic), but this will at least check your work.

5. Solve systems by graphing multiple equations at once. 
Separate with a comma. Trace along the line to the intersection and approximate the coordinates.

BONUS: Find a video tutorial without going to YouTube.
Many graph or calculation searches will also bring up relevant video results that you can play from the search screen.

For more info, all of the documentation about the Google calculator and grapher can be found here.

5 Reasons Why Common Core Will Promote Creativity

There are a lot of reasons to #stopcommoncore, 5 of which I shared here about its effect on creativity, but let me give you 5 ways CCSS could be good for our right-brained students, and actually promote creativity in our schools.

1. Modeling with mathematics. 
Modeling "real-world" situations with arithmetic, formulas, and statistical displays and inferences is one of the the Standards for Mathematical Practice, which while not much different than the current Missouri process standards (the "placemat"), go a necessary step further for no other reason than acknowledging that technology beyond scientific calculators exist.

Modeling can often leads to multiple solutions and different approaches to the solution of a problem, and require much more holistic thought to a task than simply "Solve the quadratic function by factoring."

Another aspect of CCSS math standards in particular that encourages creative thinking is the new prevalence of statistical literacy in nearly every level. Something I love (and some hate) about the study of statistics is that there are seldom black and white answers in inference. Interpretations of results given a particular situation makes statistical study inherently more of a right-brained activity.

• CCSS.Math.Practice.MP4 Model with mathematics.

2. Evaluating Authors' Differing Points of View
Is role-play not an element of creativity? When we evaluate viewpoints, replacing the author's attitude for our own, we experience fresh perspectives and we can express individuality in new ways. How do we innovate without empathizing with what is different from our own?

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.6 Evaluate authors’ differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors’ claims, reasoning, and evidence.

3. Using and consuming diverse formats and media.
If you're assessing in your classroom in student centered methodologies, I trust that you're doing more than giving students homogenous paper tests and you're pushing them to use more than 5 paragraph essays to provide evidence of and for learning.

I don't think drawing upon multiple info sources is too much of a problem for teachers, gathering info for lesson plans, but how often do we actually model that and expect it of students?

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.11-12.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., quantitative data, video, multimedia) in order to address a question or solve a problem.

4. Using Design and Digital Media Strategically

Using color for emphasis = good

Using color because its cute = bad

It's a creative work to thoughtfully include media and design in a presentation or project. It's lipstick to have an item on your rubric that says something like, "Student used color."

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.5 Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

5. Writing Narratives for Real or Imagined Events

From my social studies background, this might be my favorite creativity-promoting standard of them all. I had my Algebra 2 students do this for linear inequalities last fall and a lot of students really got into it. (Kids made up or recounted a scenario in which they could have used a linear inequality to make a decision and gave details of how the inequality was set up and how they used it in the story)

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

As far as history class, you're challenging your students to know just tell you what happened at the Battle of Hastings - they should be trying to make you experience it. Like World War Z.

Conclusion

English class, is, admittedly probably less "fun," now, but how many kids were getting overly expressive about Huck Finn and The Scarlet Letter, anyway? The good news is, "creativity" in every other discipline is promoted and has been emphasized. Creativity hasn't left our schools, its been given a purpose and legitimized.

DEWALT Mobile Pro iPad Calculator - Demon or Delight?

Note: I have no affiliation with DeWalt - I just love calculators!

This is either the best thing to ever happen to tech school, shop/engineering courses, and applied mathematics, and maker spaces or it will go largely ignored in education.

You have to choose sides with the DEWALT Mobile Pro Calculator - do you think its necessary and helpful for your students to memorize formulas, conversions, and common reference measurements and values, or would you rather take the memorization time and errors away so you can spend more time doing real (ugly, scary, student-centered) stuff? [I know, like I really gave you a choice, eh?]

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
There is so much loaded in this app! It opens right to the main content screen and you find a scrolling menu on the lefthand side that seems to have all of the calculating options.

"Hmm. Pretty extensive," you think. "Wonder when I'll get to the in-app purchases."

And then you keep scrolling. And keep scrolling. I wasn't going to list all of the functions you get for FREE in the app because it's a long list, but look at this!

• Loan Compare
• Notches/Holes, Joists
• Notches/Holes, Studs
• Wall Opening
• Rough Opening
• Studs
• Volumes, Various Shapes
• Areas, Various Shapes
• Perimeters, Various Shapes
• Pythagorean Theorem
• Gross Profit Margin
• Cost of Acquisition
• Marketing ROI
• Trim, Casing
• Trim, Crown Molding
• Trim, Running
• Odd Shape, L
• Odd Shape, U
• Odd Shape, Multiple

The calc has templates AND overviews built in -

Your students can pick up the concepts behind the templates

along the way

[Still there? Keep scrolling!]

• Roof Gable
• Stairs Landing Height
• Baluster Spacing
• Common Differences, Rafter
• Rake Wall
• Roof Underlayment
• Rafter, Common and Jack
• Roof Hip/Valley
• Deck Footing Size
• Roof Conversions
• Deck Boards
• Deck Load
• Roof Shingles/Square
• Roof Dormer Ridge Board
• Stairs
• Ohm's Law
• Floor Joist Span
• Total Gross Wages
• Deck Post
• Calculator
• Concrete Slab
• Drywall, Total LF
• Paint
• Area Conversion
• Auto Lease
• Auto Loan
• Concrete Bags
• Date Conversion
• Discount
• Fuel Efficiency
• Gravel/Stone
• Length Conversion
• Mass Conversion
• Mileage Reimbursement
• Mortgage
• Compound Annual Growth
• Percent Change
• Sales Tax
• Savings

[You can do it! Almost there!]

• Seller's Net
• Temperature Conversion
• Volume Conversion
• Energy Conversion
• Force Conversion
• Power Conversion
• Pressure Conversion
• Velocity Conversion

This list does not even include the more specialized electrical, business, concrete, carpentry, landscaping, etc packs that you can add on.

VERDICT
Much like when students still need to know what to put into formulas on exams when they have formula sheets (statistics, geometry), whoever uses this calculator must still have a brain and know what they're entering into the template and why.

If your goal is to assess students' memorization of facts and figures and hand calculations, then this app isn't for you. I were teaching engineering, electronics, or technical courses, I without a doubt would want my students to download this calculator to their favorite devices. If you are a math or science teacher that wants to explore more project-based learning, this app would answer a ton of your "what do we need to know" questions. If you aim to get your students solving real problems and applying real principals to their problem-solving toolbox, you should give this a try.

At the very least, download it for yourself! (or your favorite tradesman, handyman, or do-it-yourselfer)

Tech Tip: Using Animation for Sharing Procedures And Directions

"Did you read the directions?"

"Yeah." 

"Alright. What's your question about them, then?"

"I don't get it."

"Which part?"

"I don't know."

How many times have you had a conversation like that? As you can tell from my gif there, conversations like that tend to bring out the grumpies in me.

It doesn't have to be that way!  Making quick videos and animations through services like Xtranormal or Go!Animate are an easy way to introduce assignments and projects or to draw your students into the lesson with something other than your (handsome) face.

Take, for instance, this area problem from my Applied Math book. I like it because it has elements of being open-ended, offers some choice for students, and secretly requires some scale factors and unit conversions.

If students don't read the paragraph on top, this is nearly impossible to do "right."

When my students did this problem 1st hour, I had several "I don't get it," questions - way more than I should have.

I knew part of the problem was that they didn't read the information above where #19 is, and some of it was my introduction of the problem (or lack thereof), so during passing time and our Do Now, I made this video on Xtranormal, essentially just copying most of the text from my book for the character to say. This literally took, about, 7 minutes. (And your students will be amazed.)

Pool Design Problem
by: chuckcbaker



A COUPLE OTHER EXAMPLES:
This one I made to introduce our study of minesweeper at Saturday School to improve reasoning
The Minesweeper
by: chuckcbaker

I set up an "interview" to address FAQs on a logarithms project
Functions Log Project FAQ
by: chuckcbaker

Tip Tuesday: How Do My Students Deal With Photos?

My AP Statistics kids just turned in a project Friday that required them to screen capture some plots from their graphing calculator and embed them into the narrative of their paper. There's a couple ways to accomplish that:

TI-84, USB Cable, and TI Connect Software

TI-83, Camera Phone

The method using the TI Connect software is probably PREFERRED, and it makes for a more polished product, but in my school, and probably for most schools and many students, the graph and take a picture method below is more realistic.

I had a project come in late today because he hadn't had the pictures from his calculator on Friday. When asked him why he hadn't just emailed them to himself, he said,

"Well, I don't have a smartphone, so I don't have a way of getting them off of my phone."

Sound familiar? As long as I have been giving projects requiring students make videos or take pictures, I've heard the can't-get-them-off-my-phone excuse. It's valid-ish. Not everyone has a smartphone (nor should everyone). I don't, either. That's my touchscreen messaging phone I bought on Amazon for $.01 in the photo above. What this student didn't know, and I guess is lost knowledge when most people just have their personal email attached to their mobile device, is that you can email any account with a text message. It works just like sending a text message, except you enter an email address instead of the recipients' mobile numbers.

STEPS:

1.  Take the photo.
2.  Begin a new message.
3.  Enter your own (or someone else's email address in the "to:" field

emailaddress@domain.com

4.  Attach your photos (usually this says attach in the message menus) 
5.  Attach as many photos as you need! The next thing this student did to shock me today was he ended up sending like 6 different emails to himself, one for each pic.

I attached 3 pix to this message.

6.  Wait a few moments, open your email on a computer, and save/print the image files.

Classroom Use:

This was relevant to me most recently with these calculator screen captures, but I could see it being relevant for assignments on field trips, scavenger hunts around the school, photos accompanying reflective pieces in a lit/comp course, evidence for student learning portfolios, or relevant notes for interactive notebooks (to be glued into a physical notebook OR a physical artifact uploaded to a digital notebook).

---

Extra bonus: 

There are several web-based photo editors for cleaning up the images once they come from the camera phones. Here are some I've used:

• PicMonkey (used on this blog and heybethbaker.wordpress.com)
• Pixlr (express or advanced) (used often for my master's portfolio, also a Chrome and Firefox extension)
• Aviary (Also a Chrome and Firefox extension)
• Inside Google+ photo viewer (from the makers of Picnik)