Nate and Megan Excited about GPS!!














Kirsten and I didn't find the Geocache, and Nate and Megan couldn't find it either.

















Kirsten and I with our Cache, that we found with the help of this guy and Nate and Megan's hint.

Some difficulties that we found when looking for the cache was not looking in the right place. Apparently we were really close to our first one, but it was by the CAC and not Strayerwood Theatre where it appeared to be on our GPS. Heading in the right direction in the first place was a little difficult at first, but then we got the hang of it. In the classroom this could be used for a Geography/Social Studies class. Especially when talking about direction of places. And when students are learning about longitude and latitude.

Delicious

Delicious is a useful tool to provide different tags with various bookmarks. As a teacher I would use it as a resource center for my students. I could show them how to create their own and if we were doing some type of research project I would provide them with various links so they could all share the resources that they found. I would also use my own Delicious as a help center. Where my students would have different tutorials to remind them how to do their homework or what I talked about in the lesson that day.

Geometer's Sketchpad on Prezi and Jing

Here is the link to my Geometer's Sketchpad Prezi/Jing video. It was frustrating to make! I think I made this video 5 times!!

Zotero

Zotero is a good way to organize your resources. You can add highlighting to the pages. You can also add little notes or tags to your page. You can save different things like books and web pages. It is pretty neat. This can be used as an online resource or not an online resource. You have to upload or export the information that you found though, so that's a little different. Try it out.

Google Sketchup Study Area

This is a picture of my idea study area. I used Google Sketchup, which was interesting at times to use. This is a useful use of software if you need to draw different things frequently. As you can see, I have a desk, chair computer, bean bag chair, and a book shelf with some books. I had some difficulties making some of the things for a while, but then I got the hang of things. There were some really neat things in the 3D warehouse, which is where the beanbag and the laptop from. I think that you should try it out, make sure to watch some video's first though!!

Twitter

The twitter application that I found was DreamTweet.

This application allows people to answer the question What Are You Dreaming? This allows people to talk about nightmares or just dreams they have had in a dream log. This could be used in a classroom instead of a journal. If you would have a section you were journaling on about dreams. I would think this would be useful for a creative writing class. You could tweet about your dreams, but at the same time you can also read about other peoples dreams. If you would use it for creative writing you could look at others dreams and write a story about them or even your own dream. Since you have limited space for a tweet, this will allow the student to be creative and come up with different cenarios. By having the journal/dreams on the web, you can access it from anywhere. Students always have a problem with leaving things at school. Since it would be online, they will be able to access it anywhere.

Personally, twitter is different. It is nice to connect with people who are half way around the world or in different states. If I was teaching English and not math, I would use Dream Tweet for journaling. I would probably even use just Twitter for journaling. I think that the Dream Tweet would be a good use for story ideas. It's kind of like brainstorming, but with your dreams. I like the fact that you can go to other Twitters and read what their dreams are.

This provides an interesting way for students to be creative in the classroom.

Ideal Classroom Project Reflection

The topic that Megan, Kirsten, and I decided to pick was a regular 10th grade geometry class. I have personally started to like geometry a lot more the past 2 years. It is a different type of math, which seems to be very much about visualization, which is how I learn mostly. I think that my fellow group members woudl agree with me in saying that geometry is pretty cool. We focused our units mostly on triangles and 3D figures. The triangles always seemed to be a big part of geometry in high school in proving congruences. I personally liked this part the most. The 3D figures would go well with that, just because it was something different. We then decided to apply that knowledge into a further Architecture unit. We decided this because there was this video that we watched about a school taking 5 weeks to design a school just using their geometry knowledge. We wanted to create further exploration mostly in the Architecture unit. Since this would be doing something that not most high schools do as an assessment, we thought that it would be a good one to use since it would be a real life situation.

It was very helpful to use the Google Docs worksheet to communicate our ideas over the Spring Break. There were all certain parts that each of us worked on, which made it a lot easier to have just that 1 document that all of us could see and even edit at the same time!!! We did get some of the earlier portions done together in class and then just did the rest in portions. Megan created our classroom set up using a website. While Kirsten worked on the budget. I worked on a few of the other questions. It was neat to see it all come together in the end.

It was difficult at the end when we had to make sure that we had everything the same on the paper and the spreadsheet budget. We also had difficulties thinking about topics other than the triangles and 3D figures. We felt like those were pretty similar and wanted something that could be applied to the outside world. After watching the video, we knew that we could incorporate the Architecture into our unit.

I learned that Google Docs is pretty cool to use when using group projects. I seem to have a lot of group projects right now, and I have tried to use them for my other classes too, but I don't think the other group members are as interested in it as I am. It was also good to look first to see what has been done before, like the Architecture project. This is probably something that I would want to incorporate, maybe not to a full 5 week project, but something still into my classroom. The project was difficult to start out, but in the end, it was fun to create a classroom just how we wanted it to be. As fun and crazy as it was!!

Passing Video

I found this new site that has step by step videos of the different parts to volleyball. The site is called Sportskool. The one that I watched was on passing. They said that the key to passing is good body position and footwork. This is true, because if you don't do your job as a passer, then the rest of the team gets off of schedule. If you have a bad pass, then you don't have a good chance of getting a good set and attack. There are even some drills to help develop leg strength and flexibility to help beginner with passing.

To get to the video, you can go under the sports link, and then go to volleyball. It will have the video's that you can view on the right hand side.

Triangle Centers Worksheet

So, this isn't about Volleyball...it's about Math, which is my major, well Math Education at least. I hope you enjoy.

What

In my Math Technology class that I took fall of 2008 I worked on a Triangle Centers worksheet with another classmate. We designed a worksheet that explained the difference between the Incenter and Circumcenter of a triangle. We used sketchpad, which is a geometry drawing tool, to give detailed instructions of how to find both of these. Then, we had the idea of talking about the Bermuda Triangle. Kind of as an explore more type of question, wondering if the Incenter and the Circumcenter were the same point for this. Mainly hypothesizing if this is where people get lost. Which if the Circumcenter and the Incenter of the triangle are the same, the students were then able to see that that triangle would be an equillateral triangle.

So What

For the most part our worksheet worked. What we had to do was switch our worksheet with another group in the class, and we decided if the instructions that were provided were written well enough. There were some parts in our instructions that were unclear, so that would need to be fixed.

Now What

If I were to use this lesson in the future, I would try to talk about the other types of centers for the triangle. I would also want to make sure that all of the directions that were stated were clear and could be understood.

Yeah Math!!

Volleyball.com

A while ago I found this website that I found useful when starting to teach volleyball. What I really liked about the site was that it has basically everything you could think about when coaching volleyball. The website that I found was www.volleyball.com. Just as easy as that. I found the sportswear on here, which would be much easier then going to a store. What I liked most about this website was the different drills that they had. They give you the rules of how to do the drill, but what is nice, is that they also have diagrams of what the drill looks like. I liked this because sometimes you are reading about something it can sound different then what it really is. This site was well organized too, which made things helpful to go around it. Everything is basically found at the top, when you go under volleyball 101.

Check it out!! It is pretty neat!

Introduction to Volleyblog

The theme that I have choosen is volleyball. I choose this because I am a coaching minor. As you can guess I would like to coach volleyball some day. I would like for this blog to be a resource for coaches. I would like to have different drills, the rules, some history, and maybe even some about what is happening in the volleyball world now.

I did find a few blogs so far that will be ones that I will try to follow.   Some of them were kept more up to date then others, so we will just see what happens with that.

The first blog that I found was The College Volleyball Coach.  This site was the one that was most kept up to date.  This blog seemed like it was mostly set up as a question and answer type of blog.  Sometimes it looked like the author just talked about whatever was on their mind in regards to coaching volleyball.  I didn't find many drills or rules, I think most of the information is about just being a coach and how to become a coach.  I selected this blog mostly because it seemed to be kept up to date.  It seems important, when following a blog, to read one that is kept up to date.  The posts on the page are all very long and wordy, which can get distracting that is for sure.  Like I said a little earlier, it is kind of a question and answer format.  They do have their blog set up with the different topics on the right side.  Most of the topics that are talked about are from questions from the readers.  But the questions are answered very well.  

The next blog that I found wasn't really kept up to date as well, but it seemed to have a little more information in regards to rules and drills.  This one was called Spike it Hard.  The goal of the writer for this blog seems to be to just talk about volleyball, kind of whatever is going on in their volleyball life.  They also said something about talking about some other sports too, but not as much as volleyball.  I did like how they had their posts set up.  Instead of taking up a ton of space you could click on the article to read more about the topic.  We looked at one like this in class the other day.  It makes everything looked a little more organized.  I selected this blog because it looked like it had some good information on it.  I really like the fact that they have pictures, which would be helpful when describing what proper form or technique looks like.  I was still searching to see if they would have any video's about volleyball as well.  The format of the blogs are nice too, like I said they are really organized.  I think they say what needs to be said without just talking a bunch.  They mostly have different clubs or schedules for the teams they are supporting on the site as well.  In some of the posts there are different links to either download something or you can go to other posts or other parts of the blog.

These were the blogs that I have found so far.  They weren't really what I was looking for, mostly just talking about their volleyball lives and not really the sport.  I hope to talk about different rules, drills, find some video's, and have pictures.  This is what I have planned so far.  Which I should be able to find some different web sites that will be some excellent resources.

Thanks for listening.  There will be more to come.  :)