Website #4: Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzle

After reading the chapter on mathematics, and knowing that problem solving is one of our school improvement goals, I decided to look at a websites from this chapter. This website is "dizzying". There are, I'm not sure, but a million links! I decided to look at a link within the million categories and look at one link for each category.
Here are the main categories found:
*sites for teachers and parents *Algebra
*Arithmetic *Geometry
*Math games and puzzles *Logic
*Fractals and chaos *Visual Illusions
*Probability *Eye Opener Series
*Social Science *and Much much more
First, as I looked at a link from each category, I kept saying to myself, this is good "stuff", and will be so engaging as a class (especially on a smartboard), or individually. As a class, I have had students look at illusions. Believe me, looking at an illusion on a smartboard is magnificent. Secondly, I could see myself turning the students loose on the website and they individually look at the illusions, or I specify a certain for them to "experience".
As a math teacher, this is like the "candy in the candy store" situation. What fun it would be to be a high school math teacher and get to use this website. (I plan to share this site with my colleagues).
Here is a brief synopsis of a few links:
Visual Illusion: Heaver a Visual Illusion gives the history of the illusion, what professor created it, and the how these certain shapes are optical illusions. It is very hands on. I can hear students say "cool" to this one.
Math Games and Puzzles: Toads and Frogs Puzzle. What a great problem solving activity. I have had students show this one to me before. Move the frogs to the right and the toads to the left with hop skip or jump. What a great one for high school students!
Algebra: It has tutorial/lecture information on areas in algebra. I immediately thought how effective this would be with a substitute and teaching the information to the students. It also has a component for students to do online practice, anything from word problems to geometry. I tried this word problem:

"Another time," Said Scheherazade, "ten thieves stole into Abdul's shop. Some of them were armed and some were unarmed. The armed ones were those of senior rank. Anyway, they stole a bag of fifty six pearls. When it came to dividing them up, each senior robber took six pearls, and each junior robber got five. How many of the robbers were senior?

What was your answer? i am still trying to figure it out.......:)

All in all this is a great website. This would be a site that if I was a math teacher, I'd have it on my wiki space. As a Psychology, this would be a great site for students to do some "extra credit problem solving".

The only downfall I have noticed, is that it takes some of the links a little bit of time to upload. Students may become impatient if it doesn't load in 1.6 seconds :)

Chap 8: Math: Thinking Mathematically on the Internet

This book continues to amaze me. Even though they prefaced that there isn't "that much" on the Internet for math, they still found many awesome sites to share.
I immediately recognized the Math Counts site. When I taught at Twin Spruce, it was just the beginning of the Internet, and the math teachers "coached" students in a math counts competition. I now see that the organization has branched out to the Internet. I do recall that when my daughter was in 7th grade math, her teacher gave her a problem of the week. The problems of the week were very challenging.
It came to mind how an interdisciplinary unit could be put together with math/language arts or social studies, using the Notable women of mathematics. What an awesome historical, mathematical unit we could come up with.
This chapter along with the other continues to stress that the learning needs to be meaningful. It also stresses how the emphasis is on mathematical insight, reasoning, and problem solving. These three continue to be constants for math teachers. I do believe these are topics/themes on the PAWS test.
I do agree not just mathematically, but intra/interdisciplinary the Internet provides opportunities for students to communicate their developing insights and to compare them with those of other students, in their classes, and around the world. As stated, this puts them in regular touch with the new literacies the Internet requires. Also mentioned, math lessons ask students to communicate their insights.....the Internet provides these opportunities.
Some of the websites that I plan to check out and possibly use in my Social Studies classrooms are;
*Japanese Math Challenge
*Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Math and Science
*Interactive Mathematics Miscellany
*Global Grocery List
*Mega mathematics
*Robertniles.com (finding data on the Internet)

In closing, I'd like to share a program that our school has purchased to help students improve their math skills. It is an on-line program called SAM learning. If you'd like to preview it.....go to homesamlearning.com Our math facilitator has written a reference letter discussing the successes of the program. I am one of the facilitators of this intervention, and have seen the success of the program. The goal is to help students become proficient in their math skills...... PAWS will tell us if it has.

After building my wiki space, this chapter, pretty my "get up and go" more into gear :). This chapter has given me the challenge. The challenge to provide for my students and parents a meaningful tool to help us keep in contact. The challenge to project an image as a professional. The challenge to develop a curriculum that is immediately available to many. And I like this challenge.
So I decided to follow the idea to look on the internet and look for teacher home pages. I found many American Government pages. But one I really found useful and full of ideas. Even though the website has "best teacher website of 2001, she is constantly working to create a web page that is student and parent friendly.
Here are some of the many ideas that I will "steal", just like all teachers do!
*Question of the week..... but the must email her the answer, so they only way they know the extra credit question, is to access her web page. The students have one full week to answer the extra credit question. (sneaky)
*She has provided many links for students to access information, especially if they are at home doing homework or makeup work, and don't have their text book. (there is never an excuse for not being able to complete the work)
*If students want to know what happened on "This day in History", she has many links for students to browse. (could help them with extra credit?)
*She has made me realize the importance of posting notes and assignments on the web page. So often students will use the excuse, it is at school. (Not anymore, it is right in front of us)
*In her agenda for the week, some of her writing is conversational. She is writing to the students as if she were speaking with them. Ex: "you can leave your materials in my room, or ask some nice teacher". (this I found cute and what a fabulous way to build a relationship with parents and students)

I also took a look at resources for icons, images, and graphics. I had to use the "back door" to find it, but it had MANY icon, images, and graphic websites that I can use on my wiki space. Just more tools......for the tool box.
This chapter definitely solidified that I am "3/4 of a year behind", but "1/4 ahead" for next year. I am already seeing myself, for next year, using my wiki space. This text has challenged me to be better, and I am going to be a technological teacher, and have the wiki be a useful tool. It is a challenge, but one that I know I can continue to work on and accomplish! Thanks to this class and this text.

Chapter 7: Managing an Integration of Popular Culture Texts by Xu

This chapter was a nice way to end the book. I appreciate the fact that Xu doesn't believe that she is the expert on all, but the messenger of ideas and beliefs in engaging students.
As she discussed the need to have the administration and parents involved in "changes" in curriculum, I continued to think how this would affect me. I teach Social Studies and most popular culture I use, comes from the internet. This is high school students "popular culture". So I work hard to find meaningful and interesting sites that students would use and be engaged. This is fun for me and a challenge for me.
Her rationale is quite helpful any teacher if the need is to have parent and administration involved in the curriculum change. It definitely is specific and very informative. No parent or administrator would question why a teacher would use popular culture in their classroom. I especially like the section: the relation of the book to the program. It brings to the community why the use of popular culture will enhance the reading program being used.
Just as she has mentioned, I so believe in sharing "new material" with my colleagues. Daily my next door colleague and I share ideas and activities. We both have been working daily to engage students in their learning. What better way to engage students, than to involve them in the planning. This is a risk, but many times is worth the risk.
In conclusion, this year has been a year of teaching, my 22nd year, has been a year of extreme growth. I continue to monitor and adjust my teaching, always evaluating: has it been rigorous, and relevant.
This class and National Board Certification continue to push me to be the teacher of the future and not the teacher of the past. And the teacher that students can say, "she made learning fun".
And using popular culture in the classroom is fun!

Chapter 7: Using the Internet to Support Scientific Thinking by Leu

I great chapter for Science teachers. Science is helping students to ask questions, seek logical answers through observation, reading, writing, and critical analysis.
This chapter begins with a "cool" site called SETI@ Home. This would be awesome for students to see if there is any extraterrestrial life. I can see students being engaged daily to see if any life is in the "outer sphere". Of course the NASA sites are all very valuable, as is the Mad scientist network sites. I found interesting how "ask the scientist site" works. They do provide answers, but recognize that they aren't the ones writing the research paper. I like this Mad Scientist site, and will share this with my two children, who are always wondering about some science fact.
I too agree that workshop activities accomplish teaching better than any others. I am finding daily how students are becoming more confident in national, state, and local politics just through the many workshop activities that we do. It is exciting to hear them talking about politics......
There were many sites in this chapter that I plan to share with my science teaching colleagues. They seem to have ways, as did the ones for Language Arts and Social Studies, to enhanced learning and engage the students. This is our goal to engage the students. And believe me it is becoming a difficult task. Sites that I will share with my science colleagues are:
*Eisenhower National Clearinghouse For Math and Science Education
* Whelmers
*NASA quest
*Visit our Museums sln.org
*Scientific Thinking Literature
*Snowflake Study this looked awesome
*Earth Day Groceries Project
*DNA for Dinner

All these sites help enhance the student to use the five central functions of literacy:
identify, navigate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate.

I also took a look at two sites that I thought would enhance my teaching of the brain. The sites were Franklin Museum Science Institute and Or mind and Matter: The Mystery of the Human Brain. The Franklin didn't have anything on the brain, but had rich information on sports, the heart, and space command. Makes me want to go to Philadelphia to the museum. The site is still full of awesome information and video, that not just a science teacher could use. I never would have looked at this site, if it wasn't for this book.
The Or Mind and Matter was an awesome site. It is now in my bookmarks and del.icio.us list. This is a site that I want to have quick access to, to show my students information or have them do activities. I really liked the interactive activities they had. As we study memory and thinking I am going to have students participate in a couple activities. Again this book has been so valuable. I have missed out on many websites! Thanks Mr. Leu and others!

Chap 6: Using Popular Culture Texts to Enhance Literacy Learning by Xu

Celebrating popular culture and celebrating and critically analyzing popular culture are the themes of this chapter. The goal is to engage students in the classroom, and what better way than to use popular culture texts.
As I read this chapter I kept thinking how exciting it is to engage students. Elementary teachers have such rich source in using the many cartoons and movies to work with children.
When teaching World or American History, I love to use story board/comics as an assessment. Students love to draw their own historical figures. So when I say www.kiddonet.com, the interactive comics site, I thought I better check it out. It is a site that would work for any age, especially if the teacher was working on short, concise explanations/descriptions.
I love how teachers had students create their own Pokemon figure/card. This is taking students to the highest level of thinking. This truly was a rich activity, one that my son did many years ago, on his own. He would sit in his room and create his own figure, and list all the strengths/weaknesses the character would have. :)
Many times I watch Language arts teachers (like Leonard), read a piece, then watch the movie, and do a comparison and contrast paper. This too is a rich and valuable activity to delve into the qualities of both genres. I too have done this with a Literature circle group. We read Five People You Meet in Heaven, and then watched the movie. In the end they enjoyed the book more, because they were able to have their own "pictures", not have the movie transform what the characters were to look like. And that is OK!
I really enjoyed the section in the text about Problematizing a Popular Culture Text. This section was a great way to evaluate the text, to see a different perspective of the text. It is amazing that the teacher can facilitate students to be the researchers of language, by asking them to look at how certain characters are portrayed and what kind of language is used. These questions could also be used in analyzing historical figures.
One thing I really appreciate about Shelley Xu, is that she always mentions that she challenges the reader to go beyond what she has, to just use her ideas as springboards. This I am doing, and I appreciate her ideas that I change steal and alter.

Website #3: www.pbs.org American Experience

I chose to look at the PBS (Public Broadcasting Service Website). This website provides teachers, children, and parents many opportunities.
Children Link: provides young children all the pbs television shows with added links. Children can play games, listen to music, color, or listen to story told by their favorite characters. My children love the Berenstain Bears, and Barney. I took a sneak peak at the Berenstain Bears, and I played a matching game, same the theme song, played what's wrong with the picture, and colored sister bear. What fun for young children!
Parents Link: Parents can access these links:

• Child Development
• Children and Media
• Creativity
• Early Math
• Going to School
• Raising Boys
• Reading and Language
• Talking with Kids
• Birthday Parties

All of these links provide parents help and support in working with their children (of all ages). It has a link that promotes reading and language. It provided Literacy Quick Tips, such as one that I believe many of us parents have used, read the menu at the restaurant together. This provides that child to process pictures with words. It also discusses "growing that child's brain" through interaction, play, and talk. The child's literacy skills will increase through this process. Yes, nothing too new to us, but also validating of what we do as parents. Teachers could share little clues and ideas to young parents of young children.
I also like the links they provide for the many television shows. Children could be given more opportunities than just watching the show, there are many literacy activities to enrich their skills.

Teacher Link: As I continue through our Psychology unit on Memory, I want students to understand the illness of Alzheimer's. I am sure many of my students have witnessed a family member struggle with Alzheimer's. This I feel is important to have students work through and understand. So what I did was type in Alzhemeimer's, and I was able to check every one of these categories:

• Lesson Plans
• Offline Activity/Project
• Online Interactive/Activity
• Audio/Video Clips
• Shop PBS Products (cannot refine by subject or grade)
• Recommended Non-PBS Links (cannot refine by grade)
• Recommended Non-PBS Books

I was given 6 valuable resources for the topic of Alzheimer's. I was able to look and work through each one of them and found all 6 to be very valuable.
I never thought of using PBS for lesson plans for activity. This has been a great website, that I see myself using quite often. It is full of options and opportunities! It is a website that takes you through many routes of content. Teachers of all grade levels and content could find this website to be so useful. And then there was the parents and children.
Sesame Street isn't the Sesame Street I watched some years ago. Now children, parents, and teachers have wonderful opportunities. Do take advantage of this website!

Social Studies: A World of Possibiities Chapter 6 by Leu

The candy store has more and more and more! This the best! The internet give students more and more possibilities that any other content area. This is my area! This chapter validates my teaching and the use of the internet.
This chapter has provided my Social Studies colleagues and me so many websites, websites I didn't even know existed. Am I ever lucky :)
Here are a few websites that I have looked and have bookmarked for future reference and use:

• memory.loc.gov.learn Library of Congress
• EDSITEment.neh.gov National Endowment for the Humanities lesson plans
• eartheasy.com help sustain the environment in the community
• devlab.darthmouth.edu/olympic/ Ancient Olympic Games Virtual Museum
• webquest.sdsu.edu I love doing webquests, this site has many activities, I have already "borrowed" the political party website
• www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/china/ action plan with China
• www.kn.sbc.com Little Rock Nine, desegregation
• Our language arts teachers use turnitin.com, for students to submit work, to keep an eye on plagiarism, great website
• www.pbs.org PBS is the best, pyramids and Giza
  
• use senate.gov house.gov to locate and communicate with Wyoming's senators and representatives
• remember.org Holocaust
• oncampus.richmond.edu Ancient Rome
• www.nationalgeographic.com National Geographic Society
• www.ncss.org National Council for Social Studies always a good one to use
  
• www.si.edu The Smithsonian! nation's treasures
• www,oyez.org Supreme Court... every Supreme Court case, audio if wanted!

Such a treasure this chapter was! What a text we have been exposed too..... My final thoughts come from a page in the text:
"it is clear that effective use of the Internet should be integrated throughout the curriculum since students need many opportunities in all content areas to fully develop the new literacies necessary for success in an information society. Teaching new literacies as they are actually required in various content areas is more effective and efficient than having students learn them in isolated exercises".
I believe the social studies classroom provides an especially rich environment to do this. This is my classroom. This is why I have pushed to have 12 computers in my classroom. This is why I am lucky to have a smart board to use to effectively teach and model the use of certain websites. This is Social Studies!

Gaining Knowledge of Popular Culture Texts: Chapter 5, Leu

The beginning of this chapter discusses learning from students about popular culture texts. It discusses how teachers should and could learn from these students, and find out why popular culture is so engaging and appealing.
As I process this chapter, my two children are husband are immersed in popular culture. My daughter has spent the afternoon watching movies both on the television and on internet. My son has checked his email, caught up on today's sports and news,both in print and on the internet and played video games on his wii. And my husband has used the internet to check the high school basketball sports, and play a few games of Scrabble. At this moment, we have two computers running at one time. All using many literacy skills to understand the text. Oh how things have changed since I was in junior high and high school!
It really makes me think, how different texts lends us to use these literacy skills of:
*predicting
*reading
*listening
*making personal connections
*differentiating reality and fantasy
*making inferences
*using intonation clues
*trial and error
Television and film text have the longest history with readers, yet still situations are changing if people watch these shows at home. Viewers can converse about the movie, during the movie. We continue to stop in the middle of a movie we have rented or watching from "DISH", and discuss the movie: make our own inferences or predictions. But as the text says, when in that movie theater, discussion comes later.
Hypermedia text on the internet is an ever growing literacy. Even my high school students ( the greatest users of the internet) are sometimes overwhelmed by the many linguistic units, such as sound effects, animations, images, actions, pop-up windows. As mentioned in the text, students with limited knowledge about the topic, consecutively clicking each heading to see which one will lead to a hypertext with needed information is common practice. My students do this. They are so use to just clicking, that they don't have the patience or reading ability to take time to find the right link.
Music text is a constant in our household. Between Scrabble games today, my husband and son were busy installing our new Sirius radio. In the classroom, students are welcome to have music(mp3, ipod). This is their literacy. My language arts colleagues, do an outstanding job of analyzing music lyrics. Students greatly enjoy that unit.
Oh the days of comic books......this was my literacy! I love to read all sorts of comics. My students, this month are experiencing political cartoons that are on the internet. Is this a new literacy for them! I am watching students break down the text, and make inferences on a very number of linguistic units. It is grand to watch this in action.
The day after I finished this chapter, a student came into my room and asked to use my computer. I slowly wandered over to see what he was up to. He was on the Tony Hawk (skateboarder) game site. OK. no problem. I continued dong my thing and then I noticed he was printing something. He was printing CHEAT sheets for the game. I giggled! And then proceeded to tell him about the chapter I was reading........ giggle......and told him about my son always is doing this. Finding the cheat sheets on the internet. Truly students/adults who play games: probe, hypothesize, re -probe, and rethink. These individuals are in a metacognitive state. Always reflecting and practicing.
It is a new world compared to the text world I grew up in. I am glad I have children and students who teach me a long the way. It is my commitment to capitalize on their acquired literacy skills by teaching in a way that makes connections between their personal literacy practices and with the popular culture texts. But not to forget their learning of the traditional shcool texts. It is exciting to watch this in action.