Journal Entry Week 8

This week I've been working with Fathom. I came into this week with no idea what kind of program Fathom was. I didn't know if it would be similar to GSP and GeoGebra or similar to another technology program we have been dealing with. Come to find out, it is very similar to Tinkerplots.

Fathom and Tinkerplots have a lot in common. I've only worked with Tinkerplots, the night the guys taught it, but based on the activities they had us do, some of the same characteristics can be found in Fathom. Each program has tabs to drag down tables and graphs. Which I think this characteristic is really nice, especially compared to making graphs and tables in Spreadsheets. It is very easy to move attributes into the graphs x-axis and y-axis, and to make different forms of graphs (such as dot plot, histograms, etc). I really like the way Fathom has directions inside the summary table and graphs to determine where categorical and quantitative data should go in the graph or table.

I think the icons in Fathom are easy to use. All you have to do is click and drag the icon into the sheet and expand the box to make it as large as you want. This aspect makes it much easier to do assignments and work.

Also, from a collection of data, you can click on an individual to get all of their information (for example the census at school). Then, as you work more and more in the sheet, the individual data follows you wherever you are in the sheet, whether you're at the top, middle or bottom. It makes it really easy to drag attributes from this box to graphs, summaries, and tables.

Fathom is an interesting program and seems fairly easy to use, but I'm biased and still love GeoGebra!

Journal Entry Week 7

This week my partner and I got a chance to teach our class about GeoGebra. We came up with three assignments that represent a good introduction into the GeoGebra program. Our first assignment, title Learning GeoGebra, was comprised of two tasks with several steps each. We wanted the students to get feel for how to navigate around the icons. There are several icons to be used and functions that can be plugged into the input bar that the students needed a chance to experience before trying anything too difficult with the program. The second assignment was all about one of our favorite and important components of the program the sliders. We were amazed at these and wanted our students to work with them right away. The third assignment was to incorporate calculus into the assignment by working with tangents and derivatives. In the first assignment, the students were working a little with the input bar and functions, so we wanted to elaborate and show some of the functions that can be used with GeoGebra.

After our revisions, prior to teaching, we felt like our assignments were completely ready for the class. Our first plan was to read through our directions and make them as easy to read as possible, and work through our assignments ourselves to make sure we were making the directions easy enough for everyone to follow. After going over the GSP module, I realized that pictures are a necessity for our assignments. I know that it can be difficult to know what your screen is supposed to look like, therefore we took pictures of the graphs on our screens that way students can see what they may be doing right or wrong without our constant watch.

During our teaching, it made me realize just how important it is to make easy to follow directions. Even though I thought our directions made sense, some of the students still had some problems with the directions. So, what I have learned to do is read through my own directions multiple times and try and learn what I think my audience will understand. I think it's important to know your audience and how much they know, which will help me to make the appropriate directions. I did enjoy making the assignments and learning how students react to certain directions. I'm looking forward to making my own module.

Online High School

The online high school is a new phenomenon to me. I had never heard of one before until this class. Though it makes perfect sense that there would be a school solely online with all of the technology that we have today. And since our society is constantly "on-the-go", everyone wants to place school and work around their own schedules.

The online high school is really for students who are professional athletes and can't attend school on a daily basis, or students who are on missions trips with their parents, or out of the country, or wealthy families who don't want their children to go to bad school districts will pay to live where they are and have their children attend school online. Therefore, this type of school is really for students with busy lives, very intelligent, or wealthy families in bad school districts. Of course others may attend, but it is unnecessary.

On that note, I don't think an online school is necessary for the average student. I believe that face-to-face interaction is necessary for everyone, or how else are they supposed to connect with the rest of the world. Going to school allows for networking, communication skills, and possibly a better understanding of a topic when they can ask the teacher on a daily basis for help or clarification.

From a teacher's perspective, being an online teacher does have its perks. You can work anywhere you want, teach anytime you want, and there are great benefits. Though the pay is similar to a public school teacher's salary, and the grades do tend to be the same of students who are attending public and maybe private schools.

I think that I will stick with a regular, face-to-face high school to teach mathematics. I want the interaction with my students on a daily basis. The only reason I would teach an online class would be to make some extra money possibly in the summer time when I might have some extra free time.

Journal Entry Week 6

After first reading through the assignments for the week I felt a little overwhelmed. It looked like a lot to do. Since the beginning of the week was really busy for me, I decided to start reading the article by Tuesday and finishing the response by Wednesday. Therefore, I am now done with one assignment. Whew! That makes me feel much better. The two items I am worried about the most are finding appropriate lessons plans for my technology and writing the correct information regarding those plans. My plan is to begin tomorrow searching for lesson plans and finishing that task by Friday or Saturday. I don't think it will be too difficult to complete the task once I have found the right lesson plans.

The second task I am worried about is finding more lessons/activities to complete with my technology. I'm hoping that once I find good lesson plans for the previous task I discussed I will be able to to use some of them in my technology program to see what else I can do with GeoGebra. Once I find a couple of activities, I don't think it will be difficult to find the time to complete them and record my thoughts about each one. I'm looking forward to doing more activities in GeoGebra that I have not made with my partner.

Lastly, I'm looking forward to our virtual classroom discussion on Thursday to learn more about online high schools. I am very interested in how these schools work and what types of technologies they are using. I think writing a journal about my experience and understanding of the discussion will be easy to write. Therefore, this week may require more time than previous weeks, I just need to use proper time management skills to complete all of the tasks, which I'm not concerned about at all.

My aha Moment

When looking over tutorials while I was beginning my study in GeoGebra I came across a thing called the Boolean rule, but I was not able to figure out how to make it work using the input bar or icons in the top, so needless to say, I did not make any progress after that trying to figure it out. So I gave up looking for the Boolean rule.

Luckily, my partner in crime was able to show me differently this week. After she was working with the program she came across how to perform the Boolean rule using the program. I knew that the particular rule must work some how, but I was clueless has how to make it happen. My partner showed me what she had found on the GeoGebra program and I was like "AHA" there is a way to do it. It felt so good to finally know how to do the Boolean rule.

Journal Entry Week 5

Before I started this course, I thought that technology was a good way for teachers to use for demonstrations during lectures for the students in classes like geometry. At my high school, we didn’t have any of the technology that we are experiencing in this class, so I never really thought of incorporating technology into the classroom.

After starting this class, my feelings have changed about the use of technology in the classroom. I did not know that there are so many technology programs that can be used in a mathematics classroom. I never thought of setting up lesson plans for students to experience the technology on their own. Since there are not a lot of schools with money to pay for technology for every student, my school being one of those, I didn’t know there could be so many uses of technology in the classroom.

I think that technology should be incorporated into every classroom so that students can experience new ways of working with mathematics and other subjects since technology is becoming an integral component of our society.

Journal Entry Week 4

This week in technology I had an assignment in the program Terrapin Logo. I was asked to make triangles, various quadrilaterals, circles, arcs, and programs. At first the program and its concepts are hard to grasp, but after watching tutorials and reading through the directions, I was able to meander through the program.

Since the turtle can only move forward, backwards, left, and right, I needed to understand angle measurements and how to calculate various angles depending on side lengths and other angle measures. It would be difficult to use this program if one didn’t know how to calculate angles. Since the turtle can’t move diagonally, it must move in very tiny increments to appear to the naked eye as a circle or an arc.

I believe the most challenging part of my assignment with Logo was constructing the proper angles and appropriate side lengths in order to complete the triangles and quadrilaterals. Though I do think this program is very unique and fun to use once you can make the turtle do what you want it to do. I think learning mathematics with Logo is a fun way to learn and would be interesting for students.

Journal Entry Week 3

This week while working with GeoGebra I realized what an excellent program this is to work with Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, and more. After making our Introductory Assignments, it was amazing to see all of the applications, commands, and all the possibilities that this program is capable of doing. Which also brought to my attention that there is so much in this program, since it is continually getting updated, that I may not even know that the program can do.

Even though I have watched some tutorials and played around with the program, I learn something new almost every time I open it up. Since it is continually being updated, it makes it difficult to keep up with all of the applications and possibilities of the program. I think that is the most frustrating part about this program. If I want to see what is new, I need to continually update the program, though it is nice to have new applications. Currently, the program only has two-dimensional capabilities, but they are updating it and trying to add three-dimensional capabilities. I think this will help the program with Calculus and higher methods of mathematics.

I’m looking forward to sharing this program with others because I am quite comfortable with it and find it to be a wonderful program to incorporate into classrooms.

Journal Entry Week 2

This week in Geogebra, I started making triangles and working with angle degrees. I think this program is fairly easy to use. It is easy to “hide” items such as points, but you cannot “hide” triangles or other shapes that have been made like you can in GSP. The screen is very small and I haven’t figured out how to change the scale yet, which is necessary to do since you can’t see very many lines on the grid view. When finding the measure of the angle, it depends on which way you order the points of the triangle, i.e, by clicking point A, then point B, then point C will give the angle wrap around outside of the triangle, but by clicking point C, point B, and then point A, the angle is measured inside the triangle.

Each of the items are a different color. Points are blue, angles are green, triangles are red, and circles and ellipses are black. What is really nice is this program automatically calculates many different items, such as the length of sides, the area, circumference, and many other items without using a calculate button like in GSP.

I think it will be easy to show our class the interesting applications that this program can do, all for free. It will be easy to display items that we want to share by using our Jing download.

Journal Entry Week 1

This week I started by downloading the Geogebra program. Since it is free, it didn’t take long for it to be downloaded to my computer. I spent time watching tutorials from different sites and learning what this program is capable of doing. I have only started in the beginning practicing the easiest tools and applications. I will be spending more time to determine what else this program is capable of doing. I think this program is fairly easy to use, thus far. It is nice that this program allows you to name your own points and plot points where you want them instead of “eyeing” where I think (2.5, 4) would be. I am anxious to work more with this program.