Today’s site is a great one that can be used for a wide range of ages. It is a Math Dictionary which not only gives great explanations for mathematical terms but is also interactive in that it allows the users to see the term in action. I have used it in my class not only as a demonstration term but also as a way for students to explore concepts being taught in class as an intro or a fun extension.

The site is A Maths Dictionary For Kids .

The creator also has some great tools for writing linked from the site as well as a maths site for older students.

Today I am going to provide you with another resource that I use time and time again. Whenever I need graph paper, I always you this resource to print out paper for my students to use. The resource is a series of graph paper with the intersecting lines at various sizes. You choose which type of graph paper to use depending on the size of the squares you want to have. I don’t remember where I obtained the resource but it is one I use over and over again. They come as one .pdf file.

linedgrids.pdf

I’m a little late this week with edtech thursday. I had a busy day with a whole bunch of things going on. Anyway, I thought I would continue with looking at web2.0 graphing and survey tools.

I was originally introduced to a neat tool called Zoomerang a few years ago. Unfortunately, they have gone to a more fee based model. There are some aspects of it that are still free but it has sort of lost it’s appeal to me as a tool. One tool I have started using is Free Website Polls (www.free-web-site-polls.com). It is a nice and easy poll creator. It’s not fancy which is part of its appeal. Once the poll is created you can publish it to your blog, either on the side bar or within the blog itself. Anothernice thing is that you can only vote once. Clicking on one of the selections willtake to the results page where you can see the results.

So, how do we include this in our class?

Well, first of all, there are so many connections to math. You could set this up with students and get other schools participating. Our class will set one up on the class blog and collect data on favorite subjects. We will then use the Rich Chart Live to post the results on the blog. You could do this with any subject. For Language Arts, you could use it as a way to predict what will happen in a next part of a book you are reading. You could also have a book contest where you have students reading a selection of books and poll which book is the class favorite. Students could then do reviews of the book stating why it was their favorite, posting those answers to the blog.

How do you use online polling in your classroom?

Over the next couple of weeks I thought I would talk about a couple of survey/graphing tools I think would be really neat to use with the class.

One tool I really like is Rich Chart Live (http://www.richchartlive.com/). It is a great way for students or yourself to create graphs and publish them. The graphics are rich, colourful and completely customizable. You have control of all the settings including the type of template you want to use, your data entry, the style of the data collection, and layout. It can even be animated. When you are ready to publish, you can publish the information as a flash file or you can place it into a powerpoint or blog or print it off as a web page document. Now, you’re probably thinking, “All this and it’s free?” Well, there are a few caveats. None huge though. The one thing is that if you are not purchasing their services, they will place a small logo on the graph, which is hardly anything at all. The other issue may be the fact that they use ads on the site. I’ve never had a problem with the ads but you never know what may come up and where students might click. So, you may find that these are enough not to use the site or not. I think that with any site, students need to be taught that their movements are being tracked and that if they are going to be clicking on inappropriate links than their privileges may be taken away.

Here is a sample:

How do we use it in the classroom?

Well, for elementary it might be hard unless you do it as a whole class project. After awhile though, they would probably get the hang of it (Grade 3 and up). I used to have students use the Microsoft wizard to make graphs and they seemed to catch on after awhile though they just used the basics of it. This might be a little too much though as there are so many choices. I think it would be an excellent tool for a whole class project and the results could be posted on the class blog. It could also be used in conjunction with a smartboard.

For higher grades, students could complete surveys and graph them posting the results to their blog or incorporating them into powerpoint presentations. Last year, I had a class of Grade 3’s graph heights of famous buildings to create powerpoint presentations as part of their building unit.

Graphs for blogs could also highlight results of questions you may have asked parents thereby communicating decisions to parents.

Let’s have a conversation!

How could this resource be used in your classroom?