Why not be Animated!?

I have found one thing about students in the classroom. They like to draw. Often they are not happy with the quality of their work, but I always encourage them to work at it and keep moving forward. They also have an interest in animation.

However, I have also found that most schools do not have the funding to provide animation software for their students. I have found an interesting site off my del.icio.us account that I have posted. Go Animate is an interesting animation program that students can use to get the flavor of creating unique animations. There is an account setup that must be gone through and there may be some student privacy/viewing issues that teachers/administrators will have to del with locally. It is still worth a look as students seem to be genuinely engaged in learning when animation is used.

Math is a Passion

You have to watch this video. Show it to your students, your colleagues, your friends and neighbors. This video shows that math is not the horrible subject that everyone tries so hard to avoid. It can be so much fun.

Did You Know?

If you have seen the old version of "Did You Know" but not the new version, it's worth a look. Updated and still engaging, I think it really shows what we as educators need to strive for as we educate 21st Century students. Click on the play button and spend the next 8 minutes thinking about how we can work together to change the face of education.

Screencasting

I've been working with middle level students lately and we have been creating screencasts in math. Let me first say that each student has a notebook computer to work on, so this is made easier than going to a lab. Also, let me say that I am working at a 1:2 ratio of teacher to student. This makes things even easier! My current teaching position allows me to do this. However, I can say this without hesitation...When I have a full classroom of students again, I will try it with the entire class. The students love it and it easy for them. Let me explain the process. First we had to give them a theme or idea to make it easy for the students to build the screencasts. In our case, we use mental math strategies as a starting point.
From here the students wrote their scripts (writing in math!!) and then practiced with the software we were using for our projects. That's it! The students then recorded their screencasts to be posted on our learning website. Students as teachers! It's a great thing. Plus these students will never forget their chosen concept.

OK, so what software did we use. Well there is a lot out there to choose from. If you are fortunate to have SMART Notebook software there is a program called SMART Recorder that you can use to record and the save as a movie file. This file has the added benefit of being able to be brought into Windows Movie Maker to be edited if you want. I have been using Jing a lot lately. I like it as well. An today, thanks to November Learning, I discovered ScreenCast-O-Matic. This is a fully on-line creater that is super easy to use and has the added feature of letting you hide the mouse on your screen.
If you would like to take a look at some of the work the students are doing, check out the wikispace we have created at thelearningfactory