Author: Jacqui

Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Jane Sandwood, has interesting ideas on blending tech with tradition:

Balancing Technology With Traditional Teaching To Enhance Performance In Class

California has recently increased state investment in school technology, focusing on better broadband connections and supporting further teaching of computer science. Although there is still some debate about the benefits of increasing use of technology in schools, there appears to be plenty of evidence to show that, if used effectively, it can greatly enhance learning. It isn’t as productive on its own, and shouldn’t be used as a substitute for good teachers. However, blended learning takes the positive aspects of technology and combines them with tried and tested teaching methods. Although children are naturally becoming citizens of the digital world, for them to integrate fully and in a positive way in this new society, they still need guidance from teachers.

Teaching A Mindful Approach

A balanced approach is particularly useful when dealing with the potential negative effects of digital use, and especially social media. Children are now intrinsically linked to the digital world, but they still need to be taught how to navigate through social media safely, and to ensure that their interactions are positive and useful. In some cases, even after guidance, children may still use social media in questionable ways, and this could indicate other underlying issues or vulnerabilities. However, for all children, it’s important to find ways to balance these adverse effects. Taking sessions in mediation and mindfulness can be a useful technique to manage or reduce the negative effects of social media. In addition, they may also help children concentrate and be more attentive in class.

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Math games in the classroom have changed a lot in the last decades. Where they used to be fun ways to drill math concepts (with games like math bingo or math race cars), today’s games focus on higher-order thinking, sharing knowledge about math processes, and understanding concepts.

5 Popular Math Games in the Classroom

And they’re highly effective! Here are five clever approaches to gamifying your math lessons:

Gizmos

A favorite among math games in the classroom is a website called Gizmos. Gizmos offers over 400 math and science Gizmos (like super-charged simulations) that graph, measure, compare, and predict. It is aligned with most educational standards, runs on most digital devices (including desktops, Chromebooks, iOS, and Android), and can be used in whole group scenarios or 1:1. 

Math Science Music

The free MathScienceMusic.org teaches STEM through music, using music to show real-world applications of mathematical or scientific concepts. It is designed for kindergarten through college and uses non-traditional methods to help students acquire STEM knowledge and think creatively. Where the content is somewhat limited, it is unique and may be the perfect approach for a diverse group of learners who might not think they like math.

Manga High

Online Manga High is a gamified math-learning ecosystem that teaches and reinforces a wide variety of math fundamentals from counting and number sense to beginning algebra and geometry. Students play the games at their own pace or work on teacher-assigned challenges. Students can earn medals, badges, and rewards, compete against students across the world, and take part in school-wide challenges against other schools. The content is aligned with Common Core Standards and includes not only math games but hundreds of tutorials and quizzes.

Planet Turtle

Planet Turtle teaches math while individualizing content for each student as they play. An advanced algorithm promotes students from one topic to the next as their learning progresses. Students scaffold math learning as the system continually reacts to their performance and provides additional exposure and review on necessary topics. Since the questions are interchangeable in activities, Planet Turtle provides appropriate content while letting students pick their favorite games. It is aligned with many math programs like Everyday Mathematics and Math Connects, as well as national math conventions.

PolyUp

Polyup is a web-based platform (and app) that provides gamified math challenges for all levels of students. With the help of a friendly avatar — Poly — students explore anything from simple operations  to the Fibonacci sequence and the Birthday Problem. As students work, problems get progressively harder while offering a wide range of operations and functions to choose from. Students can even create and submit their own Poly Machines. Included on the website are teacher-oriented guides on how to use Polyup in the classroom.

Summary

These five only scratch the surface of the amazing world of gamified math lessons. What are your favorites?

More Classroom Math

Want more? Try  5 Math Games in the Classroom.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Have you heard of the wildly-popular Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why, dramatizing a teenager’s thirteen reasons for committing suicide? Though it warns watchers about what can cause teens to take their lives, to everyone’s surprise, suicides in that age group went up by 30% in the immediate months following the release.

No one knows why a movie dramatizing teen suicide increased them but it did shine a bright light on the problem of teenagers, gossip, culture, and ultimately social media. Here are two statistics that may shock you:

95% of teens have access to a smartphone

45% of teens say they are online “almost constantly”

Do they have time for anything else? And what are they doing with all that time?

I can’t help with the first question but the second one, I know. I dug into the research — anecdotal and statistical — to find out which social media platforms have so engrossed teens that they barely want to sleep, eat, or watch TV (too much TV — now there’s a quaint problem). Why the mix of anecdotal and statistics? Because teen interests change on a whim. What was hot (like Facebook and Twitter) one year is no more. As a result, I used quantitative data balanced against anecdotal experience.

Let me start by confirming: Yes, the news that kids are no longer in love with Facebook seems to be true. They still use it but precipitously less each year and the number of teen users is behind many other popular social media platforms (like YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat). Kids have their own methods of chatting, staying up to date, and sharing media with friends, ones that their parents didn’t introduce them to.

Before I share what’s trending among teens, I need to remind readers that most require users to be 13+ to create an account (that’s High School age). But no one verifies that nor does it prevent adults from signing up and then turning access over to the child. It’s the honor system, which works or doesn’t.

Here are the top social media trends kids now use in alphabetic order:

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Primary schoolers learn about money. The only way to really ‘get it’ is by repetition. Here’s a list of websites to provide redundancy for each type of learner:

1. Brain Pop Learn about Money
2. Cash Out
3. Cashtivity
4. Coin Counting
5. Coin games—from US Mint
6. Count Money
7. Counting Money
8. Face on money
9. Face on money–from Lunapic; lots of options
10. Make change
11. Money—counting
12. Moneyville
13. Money Flashcards–APlus Math
14. Mr. Bouncy’s Money collection–lots of websites
15. US Mint virtual tour (a slideshow)

If you have iPads, here are two you’ll love:

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Creating a shortkey for a program will quickly become a favorite with your students. I use it for the snipping tool–because we use that a lot in class–but you can create one for any program you use a lot. Then I discovered how to create a shortkey for it:

• Go to Start
• Right click on the desired program
• Select ‘properties’
• Click in ‘shortcut’
• Push the key combination you want to use to invoke the snipping tool. In my case, I used Ctrl+Alt+S
• Save

Here’s a video to show you:

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Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. This one is perfect for Hour of Code. Make yourself a hero for an hour:

Age:

Grades 3-8 (or younger, or older)

Topic:

Problem-solving, critical thinking, building

Address:

Minecraft

Review:

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Greeting cards are easy enough for second graders–even early readers. Using MS Publisher, pick a template, add a picture to personalize, add their name–and they’re done. It takes about 15 minutes. Kids always feel great about creating these greeting cards: (more…)

Here’s a long list of websites to address Digital Citizenship topics you teach in your classroom:

Avatars

to promote digital privacy

1. Avatar 1–a monster
2. Avatar 2–Lego you
3. Avatar 3–animal
4. Tellagami–a video avatar
5. Vokis
6. With comics, via Pixton — fee-based

Copyrights and Digital Law

1. Copyrights–BrainPop video
2. Copyright and Fair Use–Common Sense Media video
3. Copyright Law Explained (fun video, informative, thorough)
4. Copyright law curriculum
5. Creative Commons
6. Take the mystery out of copyrights–by the Library of Congress
7. Videos on licensing, copyrights, more (from Creative Commons)

Curriculum

1. Common Sense media
2. Ask a Tech Teacher

Cyberbullying

1. Bullying—Watch this (videos)
2. Cyberbullying video
3. Cyber-bullying–5th grade
4. Cyber-bullying—BrainPop
5. Cyberbullying—what is it
6. Think Time: How Does Cyberbullying Affect You

DigCit (General)

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Here’s along list of websites that focus on math automaticity for the K-5 classroom. I’ve broken it down by grade level, but you can decide if your second graders are precocious enough to try the websites for grades 3-5:

K

• K Math Skills
• Math Videos (not practice, but fun to watch)
• Money flashcards
• Numbers

1^st

• First Grade math skills
• Money flashcards
• Numbers

2^nd

• Math Flashcards
• Math Practice Test
• Mental Math
• More Quick Math
• Multiplication Tables
• Quick Math
• Quick Math II
• Quick Math—by level (more…)

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: Some websites/blogs are confusing. I click through way too many options to get anything done. What’s with that?

A: I hadn’t put a lot of thought to this until I read a discussion on one of my teacher forums about the oft-debunked-and-oft-followed 3-click rule made popular by Web designer Jeffrey Zeldman in his book, “Taking Your Talent to the Web.”. This claims ‘that no product or piece of content should ever be more than three clicks away from your Web site’s main page’.

This is true with not just programming a website, but teaching tech to students. During my fifteen years of teaching tech, I’ve discovered if I keep the geeky stuff to a max of 2-3 steps, students remember it, embrace it, and use it. More than three steps, I hear the sound of eyes glazing over.

Whether you agree with the ‘rule’ or not, it remains a good idea to make information easy and quick to find. Readers have a short attention span. Same is true of students.

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