Math High School Teacher Ideas!

[AJ Stuart]

Hi all!

I am one of the reps for Promethean out in Washington State and I was hoping you could all help me.

Next Wednesday I am doing a demonstration for the Math dept at a high school. I was trying to find some premade flipcharts and get some good ideas for Algebra, Geometry, Statistics, Discrete Mathematics and Calculus.

If any of you have some good ideas how best to impress High School Math teachers i would really be happy to hear them.

????

Thanks in advance!

[LisaD]

Not a high school math teacher myself, I can't answer on some of the higher level lessons but you might want to familiarize yourself with a couple of areas of Promethean Planet.

Curriculum Corner
See the lesson Always, Sometimes, Never
http://www.prometheanplanet.com/us/server/show/nav.3105
There's a video that explains how this lesson works and the idea can be applied to higher level math. It is an Algebra lesson.

Teacher Feature
Try the one on Heather Monks
http://www.prometheanplanet.com/us/server/show/nav.2152
She is teaching a geometry lesson and you can download her lesson on Polygons.

Searching for flipcharts
Finally, you can search for flipcharts in the resource section. I just did a search for high school math and found 220 flipcharts!
Can't tell you which ones are the best though but I'm sure some math teachers will chime in soon to assist. +wave+

Lisa

[tai_ann2003]

Alex :D I usually show the versatility of the resource library beccause the the math backgrounds, grids (which can easily be changed in size by double-clicking on an open space in the page), math images, and math flipchart pages are amazing resources. The new gadgets and widgets are great for interactive lessons: Remember that there are usually some things that may need to be targeted for more remedial students as well.

Showing how to create angles with the protractor and then using the new feature in 3.0 that allows you to double click on the angle created (or any object) and use the sliding scale to change the translucency ... that is an awesome tool to show comparing angles.

Showing how to demonstrate the power tools is very powerful at the high school level - so really, just showing mastery of them is a great strategy to show educators how useful the board and our software can be (and no other IWB compares!!) +wave+

[brianksee]

I feel my best two FC's are my Pythagorean theorem and Slope-intercept form. If you do a search for "bsee" I think it will give you all my FC's. All my FC's right now are for Algebra. Hope they can help you out.

Heather does have some nice ones as well for Geometry.

I have also seen some nice ones dealing w/ chemistry recently.

One thing I use over and over again is my coordinate plane -10 to 10. So I take a pic of it (area style) and add it to my toolbar. It saves me a bunch of time rather than going into the library everytime.

I have also used some of the Jeopardy templates to do problems in class.

The ruler and protractor are great tools.

Also, I would showcase how this saves time because the teacher does not need to waste time writing the objective, definitions, Ex's (esp. if you have a teacher in multiple classrooms). You can also easily create shapes that otherwise may not look quite like a circle.

You can also draw a shape, then easily make a "similiar" shape by duplicating it and making the second one bigger.

Well, that are some of my thoughts for now, let me know if you have any other specific questions.

[tai_ann2003]

Brian,

I know the purpose of Alex's post is about Promethean Planet and ActivStudio... but I was curious if you use any other advanced math software for your instruction. Texas Instruments makes a wonderful product called "Smart View" that works amazing on the ActivBoard. Plus, you can then use the desktop flipchart to annotate on top of the software and take camera shots of problems to refer to later. It only costs about $5 more than a TI-84 calculator. I have heard that some other companies that make calculators have created computer software as well, but I personally have only seen/used the Smart View by TI.

Just another tip or a spark of discussion to show the versatility of the wonderful Promethean Activ Classroom!! [clap]

[jepatton]

I'm also a high school math teacher. The things that I enjoy most about teaching with an Activboard and ActivStudio are:

1. Being able to prepare questions ahead of time so that I don't have to waste time writing them on the board as I'm teaching. That way I can be walking around the classroom while students are working, and I can see who is understanding the concepts and who is struggling.

2. As previous posters have mentioned, there are several really good software packages out there, like TI Smartview and Geometer's Sketchpad. I will frequently paste a graphic from one of these programs into a flipchart, and make the graphic an action object to open that file and launch the application. I embed the file into the flipchart so that I can share the flipchart with others in our department. Anyone who uses the flipchart does need to have the application installed on his/her computer though.

3. I also store coordinate axes on my shortcut bar so that they are readily available. Since I'm teaching trig and statistics this year, I also have sine and cosine graphs, a unit circle, and a normal probability graph on my shortcut bar. Having these readily available is a real time saver.

4. Some of the new actions in V3 are very useful. Instead of putting answers to problems in the page notes, I now make them invisible and put them right on the page with the problems. I have a text object "Answers" that I click on that shows the answer object. I also have the answer object set up to hide itself when I click on it, and I check the box "prevent action when hidden" so that I can write in that space if the answer is not currently visible. I find this really useful, since many answers to math problems are not pure text, which makes it hard to store them in the page notes.

I know there's more, but I can't think of them at the moment. I hope this helps!

[Peter Lambert]

There's a lot more June, but thanks for your very helpful post [clap]

[wilcogirl]

Aj, hello. I would love to help you out. I have presented to quite a few of our math teachers in our county with the larg install that has gone into Sarasota County. In fact, I have a demonstration flipchart that is very much geometry with a little of algebra worked into it. I do use quite a few of the features.
If I had to rate the features that I use the most, my list would look like this, but not limited to:
1. Handwriting recognition set to shape recognition.
2. The line tool.
3. Camera tool ( for adding graphs and such to my toolbars)
4. The resource library.

All of the features are quite powerful, but those are the ones that I find myself using at a constant rate.

I too am very partial to the "Smart View" software by TI. It has been very helpful in graphical represntations.

I think that too, I would look at the power of the planet and the many treasures that it holds. If you need any flipcharts to demonstrate let me know. +wave+

[brianksee]

Brian,

I know the purpose of Alex's post is about Promethean Planet and ActivStudio... but I was curious if you use any other advanced math software for your instruction. Texas Instruments makes a wonderful product called "Smart View" that works amazing on the Activboard. Plus, you can then use the desktop flipchart to annotate on top of the software and take camera shots of problems to refer to later. It only costs about $5 more than a TI-84 calculator. I have heard that some other companies that make calculators have created computer software as well, but I personally have only seen/used the Smart View by TI.

Just another tip or a spark of discussion to show the versatility of the wonderful Promethean Activ Classroom!! [clap]

Right now I am only using ActivStudio (don't even have a board currently). I also have no calculators so the TI would not really be useful for me right now (as far as showing the student how to do something), however, if I do end up getting some calcs I would look into it a little more (I am going to ask around to see if anyone else in my building is using it, if not I will check it out on the web...thanks for the tip).

I have also went to a one day training on Sketchpad, but it was on a mac and I did not see how to successfully integrate it into multiple algebra lessons (or at least enough to make me really break down the program). However, I am sure it has it uses.

As of right now I am teaching Classes to help students perform better on the state test. I am not sure what I will be teaching next year.

[brianksee]

(on a side note, I have used apangea, cognitive tutor, study island, and may be soonly using plato.) Each have their own worth.