Friday, April 15, 2011

Before I get in too deep...

I got home this afternoon from a fun two days at NCTM.  I have several (8? 9?) pages of notes and other worksheets to sort through before I post any thoughts, but I was just catching up on my google reader (it was around 480... ugh) and wanted to pass along a few items I read that are definitely sharable.

1. A  post at dy/dan by Dan Meyer referencing a clip from The Daily Show.  Just thought it would be fun to throw at my Algebra 1 kids and have them check the math.

2.  Kate Nowak at f(t) brought back Qbert (created by Jason Dyer last year in a response to a challenge thrown  out by Kate to create something fun for the binomial theorem).  I'll be covering the binomial theorem on Monday in precalc and it might be fun to use something like this with them.  That's assuming I find the time this weekend to check it out.

3.  A semester review project from Mimi at I Hope This Old Train Breaks Down (which I think I'll refer to now on as IHTOTBD because it takes me forever to type that :) ).  They're going to make a geometry magazine.... I thought that sounded cool!  I guess it's time to think about what I want to do for the kids to review this semester - that'll definitely be on my list.  A guy mentioned to me today at a session that last year he had the kids each pick a topic and they were to make a 5-8 minute presentation on it.  He said that most made videos and they LOVED it.  Another on my list.

4.  I don't know where she finds the time, but Julie Ruelbach just made her first imovie with her class singing their Equation of a Line song.  So cute.  So totally can't see my high schoolers even giving it a shot. :)

5.  I'm going to be hitting conics soon with my Algebra 2 kids and just saw this post on Square Root of Negative One Teach Math from Amy.  It talks about a deck of conics cards that she says really helped her kids understand (and like?) conics.  Definitely something to try!  (I just e-mailed the originator and asked for the files.)

One last thing before I crash.  I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden my google reader looks different.  It used to have the navigation stuff in a column on the left side of the screen.  While I was just reading, I guess I clicked something and that's gone.  Does anyone know where it went and/or how to fix it?

3 comments:

David said...

Look for the liiiittttle triangle in the middle of the page on the left hand side and click it, and the navigation bar should reappear.

Dan Anderson said...

If you type "u" it should also reappear/disappear.

KFouss said...

Thanks, guys! It's back :)