I stumbled across a great measurements website while preparing for my beginning of the year science unit the other day. It is called “Teaching Measures” and it has a number of helpful resources for practicing and demonstrating the basics of measurment (length, volume, and mass).

menu via kwout

It is directed at interactive whiteboard users, but can still be used perfectly fine without one. Right now the web version is available for free, and you can download it to your computer at a cost. I’m sticking with the first option and hope it lasts.

In case you tried to visit this blog today between 1:00-3:00 (CDT) you might have gotten an error message telling you the page was missing or unavailable. I too, received this message right before some beginning of the year meetings and had only a few minutes to try and figure out the problem. As I walked to the meeting, laptop in hand, I had the sick feeling that I’d lost five months of material from this blog. I didn’t want to be rude to the presenters so I fired off a couple quick emails to anyone who could help and closed the lid while a feeling of anguish swept over me.

While I sat there, however, I was comforted by a singular thought. Things could be lot worse than losing all your blog posts. It wasn’t as if someone had died. Dinner would be on the table tonight, my wife and daughter would be at home to greet me, and the Olympics are on TV.

By the time I returned to my room, I had resolved to not get too upset by it. I was still a little sad, but the gloom quickly turned to elation when I received an email from my hosting provider that everything was now in order. I had simply messed up the file paths when I was fixing my website this morning. It was a nice reminder however, that there are a lot of things more important than a blog.

It’s also not a bad idea to back it up.

1. MrMansour.com has a new look as of today. I mentioned on my classroom blog and this blog that I was redoing the site with synthasite. In the end, I decided not to go with synthasite since it didn’t work when I uploaded it to my own web space. I would recommend hosting with them if you’re going to use it.

Mr Mansour’s Classroom via kwout

2. While most of the site it written on nVu, I do my cover page on iWeb. Since I’ve got an older version, it doesn’t offer the convenience of putting in web widgets. To overcome this limitation, I just put in a rectangle shapeholder that is the same pixel dimensions as the web widget wherever I need it. After publishing the site to a folder, I open up the page in nVu and look at the source code. I find the line of code that contains my shape, which looks like

I mentioned in an earlier post how much I like synthasite and I’ve been suggesting it to a few other teachers I’ve talked to recently. Currently, I’m redoing my own website using synthasite. It should be up in the next day or two. While I was working on it today, I decided to do a quick screencast of some of the basic features of screencast. The screencast doesn’t cover much, just some of the basics. I used Jing to do the screencast. It’s a great tool and easy to use.

Click on the picture to play the screencast.

If you’d like to take this survey, go to this link.

I’m a huge fan of thatquiz.org for many things, but especially math. In less than a minute I can create a quiz for review or practice. Students complete the quiz on the computer and get immediate feedback. It saves me time on grading and keeps a nice gradebook of all the quizzes. I also learned recently that you can print out quizzes you create if your students don’t have access to computers. This saves time with formatting and leaves the option open for computer testing. It isn’t a full-fledged learning management system, but it can certainly make your life a lot easier.

Here is a quick tutorial on how to use it. The site also gives some excellent directions.

I’m currently taking an online class on computer programming. We’re working with Alice (the program) and everyone in the class was stuck on a particular problem. Unfortunately, the course interface did not give us much opportunity to collaborate beyond a message board. To remedy this I invited the class to join me in working through the problem using Adobe’s Connect Now. (See screen shots below)

This is a great collaborative tool that is free and extremely easy for anyone to use. If you sign up for a free buzzword account from adobe, you’ll have access to it. Just click on the “meet” icon at the top right of your screen. This opens a separate window that allows you to chat, webcam, use audio, and share your screen. For others to see it, nothing is required but going to the web address adobe connect gives you. Users don’t have to download anything or know any special tricks to participate. They just navigate to the link you send them.

Everyone who joined me to hash out our programming problem loved it. In the end, we found a bug in the program that was causing everyone fits. The simple collaboration was a huge benefit.

I look forward to using this with my students during the year - possibly as a way to review before a test.

Fill out the survey below and then leave a comment telling how you’ve used educational technology in the classroom this year.

I’ve written a lot in the past about online website design tools, but haven’t found any that could do all the things I wanted. That was until I used Synthasite. After hearing about it on Larry Ferlazzo’s blog, I gave it a whirl and before long I’d created a whole site with it. It’s located at edutech.synthasite.com.

educational technology

While I am a not a fan of schools paying lots of money for interactive whiteboards, I am all for inexpensive alternatives. This summer my students built a wiimote interactive whiteboard. They made a wiki about it that shows how they put it all together.

The students had a few interesting ideas for using it, but summer school ended before we had a chance to really research the best ways to use iboards in the classroom. In my own research, I’ve found that most teachers use iboards for the following:

• Having the internet live and accessible to the entire room
• Making diagrams, flowcharts, etc. with the included software
• Making flipcharts for vocabulary or highlighting learning material
• Recording the screen during a lesson and posting for review or absent students
• Interactive educational games for the students (where they can touch the screen)

Aside from the last example, an iboard is not necessary for any of these functions. However, you can add the functionality of interactivity with a wiimote whiteboard for about $40. Here is what I’ll be using the wiimote board for this year. These are all iboard specific activities, but most could be modified for use with just a projector. All of these applications are free.

• Jeopardy and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader interactive review games. Before a test, I like to play these review games with students. The wiimote board will allow them to interact a bit more.
• Individual review games with classtools.net. This is an excellent site with a variety of game choices that allow students to review in class material
• Demonstrating and recording multi-step math problems with kindlelab and sketchcast See an example here.
• Drawing and manipulating diagrams in kindlelab or sketchfu. It’s probably easier to draw on the board, but there is a large color palette and some other tools to animate with on kindlelab. Plus, I can save and post whatever I draw on the computer apps.
• Showing students how to use new computer applications with my hands rather than a mouse pointer. It’s a lot easier to see where my large man-hands are pointing, than a mouse pointer.

I’m sure that I’ll find more creative uses as the year goes on, but these are things I’ve already used in class that will take on a new dimension with the wiimote board.