Academic Musings & Tech for Learning

Last week I had the pleasure and honor to conduct a guest math lesson at the Arturo Schomberg Bronx facility of Satellite Academy High School. [You can also read more about the Satellite Academies here. Shawn Welcome is the Principal.] The lesson I created is called “Dining Out” and this idea can work well particularly well with older students in a consumer math, personal finance, and/or basic algebra review class. The primary activity involves ordering dinner from a menu and getting as close to $50, without going over, including sales tax & gratuities.

Some envision a curriculum around the topic of EveryDay Math. With my personal experience and background in finance (I worked on Wall Street for a number of years, as a Mortgage Office after that and for a financial planning firm), I really know a lot about this and it is one of those things I really like teaching. Too often our students graduate high school knowing nothing about credit cards, bank accounts or budgeting. There are all kinds of financial decisions we make – from picking a cell phone plan to furnishing an apartment – and a class like this can give students a real jump on dealing successfully with these situations.

At The Young Women’s Leadership School in East Harlem, NY I taught a similar class, and I really enjoyed the students and their engagement with the subject matter. There were equations, too, of course, but it all fit into Math in Every Day life. The school has a computer lab & mobile laptop carts that can be used, too. Students can learn to use a spreadsheet program, research investments, and tap into an online Mathematical Skills plan to practice and create their portfolios. Dan Stein, college professor and consultant, has developed a spreadsheet that students can use to track their progress and link directly to AAAMath.com for topic reviews and practice.

I published the lesson on the web using google pages and used a calculator widget from Lab Pixies. Widgets are great… and this one cames in handy! Lab Pixies has something new call “moodgets”…. I’m sure you’ll be seeing this one on myspace … and it could be great to use with little kids when learning about expressions and feelings..

For more teaching ideas, lesson plans and articles, see my Portfolio page at LynneMBailey.com.

You may have read that MIT has made all their courses available online .. and so have many other institutions .. and they are searchable at www.oercommons.org. ISKME (The Institute for Study of Knowledge Management in Education) has created this new learning portal with more than 8,000 digital classroom materials from top university faculty available free of charge. But it’s not just a higher ed resource, K-12 materials are available, too. They have aggregated a lot of course here and there are also some other searching resources for technology resources and news that you can use. I’m sure they will continue to expand and look for additional contributors.

Open Education Resources, or OER, offer new ways to engage with free-to-use learning content.

Users can create their own portfolios of materials. ” With a free membership, you can add tags, ratings, reviews, comments and favorites to your own portfolio. You can also post to discussion, blog and wiki areas and see how others are using OER.”

I was at a Region 10 (NYCDOE) Technology Liaison workshop on Friday and we were introduced to this terrific open source program. It’s lot like Google Earth on steroids! On the left is a screenshot of Mt. St. Helens from the 3d application and a visual of Maximum Temperatures. From their site:

“World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara.” Go to the website: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/index.html

What’s so special? It is truly amazing. Historical data, data is updated every 24-72 hours, layers you can turn off and on that show political boundaries, weather events, pollutants, place names, fires/smoke events from volcanos, all kinds of things. There’s even a Lewis & Clark expedition layer with links to a website. People can create their own layers, too, with a little xml programming. Some layers get you close enough to see the cars on the Golden Gate Bridge. There is an abundance of educational opportunities here from all disciplines. All teachers should check this out.

Jeopardy Game Template !