Technology Requirements
Here is a quick look at the technology you will need for this course, how to find it and how to get started using it.
As the teacher of this course, you will be encouraged roughly once per week to conduct micro-workshop-type crash-courses on new technologies and to explain new features. These workshops are meant to energize your class. We hope they are fun for you and for your students. The goal, when introducing unfamiliar technology, is to encourage play and exploration.
The workshops also provide opportunities to introduce and promote an awareness of the new media literacies, many of which your students will already have a degree of skill. Please see the pedagogy section of this User’s Guide for more information.
Also, as learners, both teacher and students engaged with unfamiliar software can rely on online user communities as wellsprings of information.
“Teach a learner to seek and you educate him for a lifetime.”
-anonymous
Please note: These recommendations are by no means definitive. The best technology is what you have available to you.
1. A Computer or Mobile Device
This course is designed to be used in an environment that offers one to one access to a computer or a mobile device. Internet access is assumed.
However, if need be, the course can be adapted to other situations. Shared computers increase opportunities for the development of valuable collaboration skills and visual presentations and models can be created using more traditional offline methods. Access to at least one classroom computer is a necessity, although with a bit of creativity, perhaps even the lack of a computer can be worked around. Dynamic thinking starts in the mind.
2. Geogebra
“Geogebra is open source dynamic mathematics software for learning and teaching at all levels.” (Geogebra.org)
While we encourage exploration of other software, Geogebra fits the needs of the course very well. It is free, powerful, easy to use and is available on all platforms. Compared with commonly-used spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, GeoGebra is designed for learners and is thus designed with a different focus. Compared with other dynamic geometry or algebra software, GeoGebra offers amazing and simple visual linkages between spreadsheets, graphing, and algebraic notation.
Further instructions in GeoGebra will be provided as the need arises. To obtain access to Geogebra:
3. Presentation and Collaboration Software
This course requires math students to make monthly video presentations about data. These projects can be undertaken jointly, in groups, or individually. Generally, in this class, we suggest you encourage use of multimedia, and experiment with tools that facilitate participation and collaboration.
The goal here is ease of communication for meaningful participation within a community, the class, or the wider world. Online synchronous collaborative tools can help coordinate interaction across the world, and they can also be useful among fellow presenters in face to face group work.
These are only recommendations. As an Educators you may have access to other tools through your institution. Explore new technologies or reinvent the old.
Presentation Tools:
The amount of presentation media available is astounding. Availability is key. The goal is effective communication of ideas. PowerPoint was supposed to save the world from boring presentations. This did not happen, but don’t blame the tool. Successful new media learners are able to master the tools available to communicate effectively. Luckily, there is a range of amazing free and low-cost apps available that make the creation of these presentations painless.
EduCreations is one free example of software that allows for easy visualizations and audio explanations.
Explain Everything is not free, but is a favorite among those with access to it.
Don’t discount poster paper and markers. What is considered technology changes over time - don’t dismiss the classics.
Collaboration Tools
There is an interesting variety of free collaboration tools.
Google Apps for Education, Office 365 for Education, Wikispaces and Minecraft all provide opportunities for students to collaborate digitally.
Learning Management Systems
The learning management system (LMS) you use will likely be already designated by your school. The information below is meant to outline the profile of a good digital learning environment. Our focus is on the LMS as an integral part of the community and learning as opposed to a content delivery system. As with presentation software, there are many options and all can be used effectively.
Key Features for Effective Instruction and for Enhancing the Quality of Interactions:
Online Math Resources
There is a plethora of math material out there and not all of it is created equally. If you or your students are looking for help, check out (and consider bookmarking) these recommended sources:
Useful Sites to Access Data
Here is a quick look at the technology you will need for this course, how to find it and how to get started using it.
As the teacher of this course, you will be encouraged roughly once per week to conduct micro-workshop-type crash-courses on new technologies and to explain new features. These workshops are meant to energize your class. We hope they are fun for you and for your students. The goal, when introducing unfamiliar technology, is to encourage play and exploration.
The workshops also provide opportunities to introduce and promote an awareness of the new media literacies, many of which your students will already have a degree of skill. Please see the pedagogy section of this User’s Guide for more information.
Also, as learners, both teacher and students engaged with unfamiliar software can rely on online user communities as wellsprings of information.
“Teach a learner to seek and you educate him for a lifetime.”
-anonymous
Please note: These recommendations are by no means definitive. The best technology is what you have available to you.
1. A Computer or Mobile Device
This course is designed to be used in an environment that offers one to one access to a computer or a mobile device. Internet access is assumed.
However, if need be, the course can be adapted to other situations. Shared computers increase opportunities for the development of valuable collaboration skills and visual presentations and models can be created using more traditional offline methods. Access to at least one classroom computer is a necessity, although with a bit of creativity, perhaps even the lack of a computer can be worked around. Dynamic thinking starts in the mind.
2. Geogebra
“Geogebra is open source dynamic mathematics software for learning and teaching at all levels.” (Geogebra.org)
While we encourage exploration of other software, Geogebra fits the needs of the course very well. It is free, powerful, easy to use and is available on all platforms. Compared with commonly-used spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, GeoGebra is designed for learners and is thus designed with a different focus. Compared with other dynamic geometry or algebra software, GeoGebra offers amazing and simple visual linkages between spreadsheets, graphing, and algebraic notation.
Further instructions in GeoGebra will be provided as the need arises. To obtain access to Geogebra:
- Go to www.geogebra.org/download or use the app in your web browser at web.geogebra.org/
- In either case, our first unit starts with the spreadsheet view which you can select on the startup screen. (It opens with a spreadsheet view beside a graphing view.)
- You and your students should sign up for a free GeoGebra account for ease of saving and sharing files.
- To familiarize yourself with the interface, do the GeoGebra Spreadsheets Quickstart tutorial. For interest, you can also explore the Geometry Quickstart tutorial, GeoGebraTube, and you can watch videos on the Geogebra YouTube Channel, but you are not likely to find much that relates closely to this course. Don’t worry, it is intuitive software and extra direction will be provided within the course as you need it.
3. Presentation and Collaboration Software
This course requires math students to make monthly video presentations about data. These projects can be undertaken jointly, in groups, or individually. Generally, in this class, we suggest you encourage use of multimedia, and experiment with tools that facilitate participation and collaboration.
The goal here is ease of communication for meaningful participation within a community, the class, or the wider world. Online synchronous collaborative tools can help coordinate interaction across the world, and they can also be useful among fellow presenters in face to face group work.
These are only recommendations. As an Educators you may have access to other tools through your institution. Explore new technologies or reinvent the old.
Presentation Tools:
The amount of presentation media available is astounding. Availability is key. The goal is effective communication of ideas. PowerPoint was supposed to save the world from boring presentations. This did not happen, but don’t blame the tool. Successful new media learners are able to master the tools available to communicate effectively. Luckily, there is a range of amazing free and low-cost apps available that make the creation of these presentations painless.
EduCreations is one free example of software that allows for easy visualizations and audio explanations.
Explain Everything is not free, but is a favorite among those with access to it.
Don’t discount poster paper and markers. What is considered technology changes over time - don’t dismiss the classics.
Collaboration Tools
There is an interesting variety of free collaboration tools.
Google Apps for Education, Office 365 for Education, Wikispaces and Minecraft all provide opportunities for students to collaborate digitally.
Learning Management Systems
The learning management system (LMS) you use will likely be already designated by your school. The information below is meant to outline the profile of a good digital learning environment. Our focus is on the LMS as an integral part of the community and learning as opposed to a content delivery system. As with presentation software, there are many options and all can be used effectively.
Key Features for Effective Instruction and for Enhancing the Quality of Interactions:
- Discussion Forums: Continue the conversation outside of the classroom. When students encounter learning opportunities outside the classroom, they no longer have to wait until the next day to talk about them. Take a picture of a concept discussed during the week, post it to the class discussion forum. Edmodo and Schoology or even Instagram can all be effective tools to encourage participation and the development of new media skills.
- Collaborative Tools: Many Learning Management Systems offer built-in tools for collaboration. Explore the capabilities of the system you are using. Online collaborative tools are great for encouraging peer review and assessment which encourage reflection on one’s own and others’ ideas.
- Assessment: Online quizzes provide instant, formative feedback to students and to teachers. Use formative assessment as a way to gauge both learner progress and to find the strengths and weakness of your instruction.
Online Math Resources
There is a plethora of math material out there and not all of it is created equally. If you or your students are looking for help, check out (and consider bookmarking) these recommended sources:
- Purple Math is an awarding-winning site created by an algebra teacher offering solid explanations and definitions. If you or your students forget the difference between a mean and a mode, this is the place to go as a resource for definitions.
- Khan Academy is a great resource although the introduction to algebra takes a completely different pedagogical approach to what you’ll find in this course. Some students may find the explanations and exercises here useful.
- Discovering Algebra was an innovative textbook that we have drawn inspiration from. Some of the the related support materials are available free online and may be of more use for a teacher of this course than many of the traditional supports for middle-school algebra.
Useful Sites to Access Data
- Hockey Stats web page: http://www.nhl.com/stats/
- NBA Stats web page: http://stats.nba.com/
- Google Maps: maps.google.com for road trip travel planning