Free and Open Source Tools For Secondary Math

After taking in all the wonders of the web that Tammy Worcester shared in her three sessions yesterday I decided to take in some content area tech stuff. This session is being put on by Jeff Allen, the Director of Educational Technology in the Olympic School District.

Jeff started out by introducing himself an telling us about his background and why he likes technology. He started out by saying,

"Of all of the things that we can control in the learning of students, the quality of the instruction that the kids receive has the greatest impact on the learning students. Technology is a tool that can serve as an amplifier for good instructional pedagogy." Jeff stated that these tools are "like an amplifier with a knob that goes up to 11," A nod to all of the Heavy Metal fans in the room.

Open Source vs. free - What's the difference? - Open source means that the computer code is open to be edited and updated by anyone. Free just means free.

Moodle - Using Moodle to open your classroom. This is something that HSD1 already has and a lot of people already use, so I'm not going to go into this too much.

Math Casts - Math 247 - This site is a site that is a database of "math casts" which are video captures of computer screens where teachers are solving example problems. Another Link he showed was a blog called Patty Papers who work a lot with math casts. A third site he showed up was called brightstorm.com This is another database of math casts that makes their money by selling ACT, SAT and AP prep student guides. But the math casts are free. A lot of these examples are free and have embed codes that can be added into moodle. Jeff then showed everyone how to use Jing to create their own podcasts. One of the attendees also said that a couple of different program that also work: screencast-o-matic and faststone.

Jeff also talked about having students make their own math casts and grading each other can be a powerful learning tool. The he talked about using voicethread.com another site that allows students to view a math cast and then create comments about the videos they are watching. This is basically a forum about a video. This site has a lot of potential for creating discourse about mathematics. A teacher could have students critique problem solving skills, look for errors, or create and peer-review the videos.

Flash Applets - Jeff show us the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. He also showed us a website of simulations on the University of Colorado at Boulder Physics website. These Java applets are down-loadable and can be uploaded onto a moodle site.

We finished the session by looking at a Math Text using something the TEX filter. Apparently by inserting two dollar signs before and after a mathematical expression, you can make your expressions look like something that is created in the equation editor in Microsoft Word.

Example

"$$f(x)=3/(x^2)-12$$" will show up like this -


Then Jeff showed us Geogebra - This is an awesome free and open-source program that is as good or better than Geometer's sketchpad. Students can run this as a java file in their own computers, or can download the program for free and complete assignments on their own computer. I love this program.

The final thing Jeff showed us was something called fooplot. If you go to www.fooplot.com and then add a "/" and a function in the URL bar, plot the function in a web window.

Here's a list of the various links that Jeff showed us during the presentation.

All in all, it was a pretty good session. A lot of other people from the audience contributed to the session with various websites that parallel the sites Jeff showed the group.

MathCasts
Math 247 - Library of Math casts
Patty Papers - A blog about creating math casts
Bright Storm - More Mathcasts.

Virtual Manipulative Sites
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives - Great Site
PhET - CU Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Math Applets
Shodor Interactivate - Lessons with and without Java Applets
Thinkfinity - A great Site that has a ton of lessons with and without java applets
Illuminations weblinks - NCTM sponsored web-based lesson plans
MathTools - a search engine that searches all of the above websites and more. - I love this site.

Geogebra - This website has the free down-loadable Geogebra program and also a pretty good wiki of lesson plans and pre-made files that are great. There aren't very many however, but the ones that I've used are pretty good.


Is download-able a word?