YouTube for Teaching and Learning Math

            YouTube is a great website for educational purposes. YouTube is great because there are tons of videos for tutoring purposes, teaching, or fun learning videos. There are many videos uploaded by many users that could help a student learn any math topic and how to apply it for problem solving. The great thing about this is that not every student learns the same, so if the student does not understand the way one user is explaining it the student may simply look up another video.

Teachers today could make up their own videos for students. There will always be those days when a student is out for health reasons that may take up to one or more days. It is difficult for a student to come back and catch up especially if something new was taught and the teacher cannot simply reteach the lesson when the student returns. Even if the teacher does a short 5-10 minute video on the lesson, it is much better than the student having nothing to refer to for help. The other great thing about doing this is the video could also help students that do not take great notes to refer to as well and the video could stay up and help other students from other schools.
There are also fun learning videos that may help students learn in different ways. There are videos that have songs and short stories on different topics for math, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, the distance formula, and many more. There are unlimited amounts of videos that may help students learn and remember through creative videos. Students could also be asked to make their own video as a project to apply what they have learned. I believe a great way to ensure students are learning is to have the students explain or apply what they have learned through numerous ways and making a video allows students to apply this skill. Overall, whether to teacher uses the videos to teach or the students use the videos to refer to for help it is a great technology for teaching, learning, and applying math.

Collaboration Canvas

At first selecting a canvas to remix was difficult, because there are so many options and math could go hand and hand with many other content areas. I decided to choose a physics unit plan on Newton’s Laws because students need to have a basic understanding of algebraic expressions and functions in order to apply these laws. I added many things to this unit plan. The first thing I included was the different ways of expressing functions. I then added the mathematical representations of Newton’s Laws, for example for each law I included the expression and graphical representation of each law underneath. I then added two videos that were both about Newton’s Laws and the math in his laws, for example one of the videos included sports scenarios with some examples that expressed his laws and were solved through plugging in these values into the variables. I did not want to remove anything from the original canvas, because everything was also related to math. Math and physics collaborate very well together in general, so both canvas fit very well together. I believe that these lessons go very well together and support each other perfectly.

URL: http://www.play.annenberginnovationlab.org/play2.0/challenge.php?idChallenge=2589&mode=view#network6

FluidMath

            FluidMath by Fluidity Software, Inc is an extrodinary software for both teachers and students in grades 6-12. This software is a handwritten based mathematics app that helps students learn and teachers instruct on an interactive app without having to go through the hassle to look for math symbols. The software recognizes the handwritten math and automatically converts it into computer text underneath. This is both helpful for mathematical reasons and if the student wants to refer to what they did, it is much easier to look at the computer-generated text, since it is more organized and easier on the eyes.
            FluidMath is like a notebook calculator for students. This software recognizes mathematical expressions when handwritten and allows the students to graph not just one but multiple expressions on the same graph or on different graphs side by side. It also tells the students how many variables are in the expression and allows the student to solve for the variables with just a click of a button, and everything is labeled. Students can also graph inequalities, with different colored representations on the graph and with a table value alongside the graph. Students could also see graph relationships and change the variables as many times as they want, which will also change the graph. It even allows students to simplify and approximate fractions and radicals. Not allow does it allow students to do so, but also shows the students systematically how to. Lastly, if a student uses this program to solve a problem and messes up on a step, after fixing the step the program will edit and fix the answers to all the following steps, so that the student does not have to redo the problem. Overall, this is a great software for students to practice math and catch their mistakes. 

Unit Plan Canvas

            Creating a PLAYground canvas was not as hard as I initially thought it would be. Like anything, the website was confusing when I started creating my canvas, but then I found it to be easy. It was easy because when I placed my mouse over the widgets everything was labeled, which made it simpler. I liked how each widget had its own purpose; it made the canvas easier to set up. After completing my canvas, I saw the purpose in using this website as an introduction to a unit plan.
            My canvas focuses on a unit plan on probability for 7^th grade. This unit will teach students what probability is, how to solve for probability of a given event, and probability of compound events. In addition, students will learn how to use visual representations to represent and relate probability to the real world. The first image gallery shows mathematical and visual representations of theoretical and experimental probabilities that students will learn and apply throughout the unit. The second image gallery shows real life applications that probability could be applied for to predict the chances of an event occurring. The videos represent what probability is and how different probabilities are applied to different events. Finally, the students are given the opportunity to explore additional resources that contain probability in the news, further explanations of the content learned, interactive websites to explore, and a further explanation on why probability is important.

URL:  http://www.play.annenberginnovationlab.org/play2.0/challenge.php?idChallenge=2272&mode=view#network6