Video Reflection

In my past life I was a video editor for a local TV station. I edited video for the morning and evening news. For my education technology class I had to shoot and edit a video. This is a completely different experience from what I’m used to dealing with. I know that we should have planned more before starting to shooting our project, so we would be better organized and have a more cohesive project. I really do like editing video, and it is something I have missed the past few years. I’m hoping I can get my students to do some video projects in the future. I am confident that I can teach my students how to use iMovie or windows movie maker, but I’m not sure that I will have the time as a new teacher to take on such a project. I’m also not sure that I will have the cameras or computers for the students to use to make videos.

Online Quizes

I found a website called that quiz where teachers can make up online tests. I did a sample class and test on angles that you can take here. The neat thing about this website is that you can assign each student their own password, but the students don't actually need their own account. It automatically gives the correct answers and the grade at the end, and collects the scores for the teacher. The teacher can set up different classes and assign quizzes to each class separately. They also have a whole bunch of quizzes and tests you can browse if you don't want to make up your own.

screen grab of a sample fractions test so you can see the user interface.

Math in Nature

I created this webquest on trackstar which can be found here


Then I created this worksheet using google forms for my students to fill out afterwards.

Useful Apps

I'm currently reading though the Connecticut Common Core Core of Teaching for another class.  I know that my fellow TCPCGers are doing the same, so I wanted to share an application I use a lot called Skim. Its a PDF reader that lets you highlight and mark up the document. You can also do the same thing with nook study, but I'm partial to skim.

Classroom Technology Tips Article

For class this week we had to read an article from edutopia.com that provided a list of ten tips for using technology in the classroom. There was nothing too groundbreaking for me in this article, but it was a good reminder to always be creative in how you think about technology. I have a few points I wanted to highlight.

• The common theme I see between this weeks article and last weeks Alan November article is using technology for communication. Using the Internet provides us with so many variations over the old fashioned pen pals if we know where to look.

• This article also talked about finding your classroom technology experts. I think of myself is being very good with technology and may not need too much help from a technical standpoint in my classroom, but I think its important to see what ways our students can think of to use technology.

• I wanted to ad some things to their list. They talk about using a website as a classroom hub, but they never talk about moodle.org. This is a program that can be installed for free onto the school servers  and is very similar to blackboard.

In which I present you a math video

Maru may be cute, but he isn't exactly math related. I do have to share a math video this week, so I chose a quick review of the Pythagorean Theorem.

iMovie screencast

I used screencast-o-matic.com to make a screencast demonstrating how to put a title over video in iMovie.