Elementary Math, Ancient Greece-6th Grade, Biomes-6th Grade, and Ancient China-6th Grade

These are groups of websites I’ve put together. When you go to any of the above web pages, you get a Google Search Engine that will use all of Google’s power to search ONLY THOSE SITES!

The advantage of using this is that you can use keyword searches to search several websites at once. Many websites have a database (aka: a search box where you can put in your search terms) that allow you to search their site very easily. One of the best sites, which has one of the cleanest interfaces of all the math sites I’ve seen is the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. But it doesn’t have everything you might want if you’re searching for a good website to use to help you teach math. There are other sites that have a database of their own. The Google Custom Search Engine tool allows you to search all of them at once! It will even include, of course, web sites that don’t have a search box of their own.

I’m excited about this because I can send my students to these search pages and actually teach the concept and skill of performing good keyword searches, rather than sending them to just a list of links to try out, one by one. In the case of the Elementary Math Custom Search, I’m intending to allow other educators to search all of these sites at once.

Another very powerful feature of this tool is that sites can be contributed by up to 100 people!!! I invite anyone reading this who finds a great math website that you think should be part of this group of sites in this Custom Search, please send it to me. I can officially invite you through the Google page where I created the Custom Search, too..

Now, how is this different from http://del.icio.us/ ? This is another tool that I have also jumped into in a big way. I’ve been using my account consistently for quite a while now: http://del.icio.us/wark. I’ve also put a lot of math-specific sites together at this account: http://del.icio.us/math34

With Delicious, you can:

• Tag sites with categories you make up, that might or might not be words that show up when Google searches their titles, URLs, or text of the pages
• Give a quick notation to the sites you’re making public
• Put sites into categories (by the tags you make) for someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking for (and thus wouldn’t know what search terms to enter)
• Search your own (delicious) bookmarks, or all the bookmarks of all delicious users. Because of this feature, I initially thought that these two tools might not be all that different. At first, I thought…so why do this, if I can search delicious, too?

With Google Custom Search, you can

• Unleash Google’s powerful search algorithms to search through all of the sites you include
• Invite others to contribute
• Send people to your Google Custom Search in lots of ways. One is with simple links, as in the links above. Here’s another, like I’ve done with my class website. You can search right from your own website!

I’m mentioning it here, because of the “First CityWide Change Bank” one from years ago with Phil Hartman. This could actually help students learn about making change, or at least affirm their recent knowledge of it. Maybe a fun video to show near the end of the school year, who knows?

Here’s the video:

Here’s the home page for SNL.

Here’s a game for students just learning about how to make change from a very basic level. It’s a game from FunBrain called “ChangeMaker.”

Enjoy!

In planning for this workshop, it occured to me that in order to pass along everything that I would want to pass along to those who come, I would have to give out more than one URL. My goal is certainly to simplify and streamline the tool that I use to provide this kind of content, but for now, a quick solution is to put all 3 locations of my favorite Math links right here in a blog article…

Here’s my first attempt at creating a serious website. Making the pop-up menus gave me the biggest sense of satisfaction on this project, besides actually having a purpose for putting a website together. However, this website is sooooo 20th century! I built it from a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get). Specifically, I used Adobe GoLive – not a bad program. However, I now prefer other methods & tools. This is the math page. From it, you can click to lots of other pages with content in other categories.

Here’s my main del.icio.us page (http://del.icio.us/wark).
This link directs you to the links I’ve tagged “math.” (http://del.icio.us/wark/math)
If you don’t know what that is, read about it in a previous blog article here. As you can see, this del.icio.us account is the place where I put anything that I think is worth sharing. The tags are all over the place: web2.0, funny, volcanoes, pi, kite, home fix-it, etc. Some tags have lots of websites to share, and others only have one or two.

Here’s my math34 del.icio.us page (http://del.icio.us/math34).
I designed it with only math in mind. I specifically used the bundles (folders) to help categorize the links into the chapters in my school’s math textbook, and into the the strands of the math standards in California.

I’d be interested in any feedback from anyone to how useful (or not) these two del.icio.us accounts are to you….

On Wednesday, Pi day, we had an Albert Einstein look-alike contest. I was crazy and brave enough to really go all out for this one.

We also sang a song together about Pi. I got the idea from this website. We were also amused, but a little freaked out by, this song:

At exactly 3/14, 1:59 and 26 seconds, my students made as much racket as possible! I had brought in my congas, mini-djembes, tambourine, etc., etc. Some of my students had brought in their band instruments like trumpets, etc. I gave my neighbor-teacher fair warning about the inevitable disruption this noise would cause! She decided to have her students join in the joviality.

When I wasn’t Albert Einstein, I wore this shirt a couple of days.

To my surprise, my colleagues didn’t just think it was cool or nerdy… They were all jealous! They wished I would have told them how to buy one for themselves long enough ago so we could all wear them together! How cool is THAT?!

One of my colleagues did have one. Here’s a couple of pictures of us wearing them.

There was a negative boy who couldn’t decide whether or not to go to a radical party.
The boy was a square, and he missed out on 4 awesome chicks.
The party was over at 2 am.

Here’s the equation itself.

Math Final Exam

1. Divide 50 by 1/2 and add 10. What is the result?
2. How many times can you subtract 10 from 100?
3. How many animals of each kind did Moses take aboard the ark with him?
4. Take two apples from three apples. What do you have?
5. If it takes twelve one cent stamps to make a dozen, how many two cent stamps will it take?
6. Which is correct: 9 and 6 ARE 14 or 9 and 6 IS 14?
7. A butcher is 33 years old, 6 feet tall, wears size fifteen shirts, and size 10 shoes. What does he weigh?
8. If your doctor gave you three pills and said to take one every half hour, how long would they last?
9. How far can a dog run into the forest?
10. Some months have 30 days, and some have 31. How many months have 28 days?
11. Do they have a fourth of July in England?
12. It has been said that two is company and three is a crowd. What are four and five?
13. How many cubic feet of dirt are there in a hole that is 3 feet deep, 2 feet wide, and 10 feet long?
14. If a plane crashes exactly on the border of Canada and the United States, where would you bury the survivors?
15. Why can’t a man living in Baltimore, Maryland be buried west of the Mississippi River?
16. If you had one match and had to light an oil lamp, a candle, a stove, and a fire place: which one would you light first?
17. What do you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with?
18. In which month do women talk the least?
19. You are the pilot of an airplane that flies from New York to Chicago, a distance of 1,000 miles. The plane goes 200 miles per hour, makes one stop for 30 minutes, and the stewardess’ name is Mary Jones. What is the pilot’s name?
20. Is it legal in California for a man to marry his widow’s sister?
21. How many eggs can you eat on an empty stomach?
22. How many birthdays does the average man have?
23. A farmer has 17 sheep. All but nine of them die. How many sheep are left?
24. What was the President’s name in 1960?
25. How many outs are there in an inning?

My reaction was, “This would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad and frustrating!” I suppose we as educators would have a unique perspective on things like this…

Before I change the subject: A follow-up to this story (before you all get ticked off at Verizon and call them to set their little math-ignorant brains straight) is that they did, finally, respond appropriately – they adjusted the caller’s bill, and they educated their call reps. This is a powerful lesson about how one individual, through using Web 2.0 tools, can really make a change! All those listening to the YouTube recording of his call were educated (if not merely entertained). A company changed it policy, etc. Kinda interesting…

I’ve been sort of on a crusade for many years to make sure that any student that goes through my classroom knows darn well the difference between 99¢, $0.99, and .99¢ I’ve been shocked with how many times I’ve seen prices marked .99¢ in stores, and on big signs. I’ve put pictures of errors in stores on my school website.
I even took the price (.99¢) off of something at the local Rite-Aid, and had my students all write letters to the manager, correcting the error. The guy felt really bad – kept asking me, “How old are these kids?”, like he was embarrassed… I didn’t do it again.
Buuuuuuut…… I might have the kids find an error and blog about it. I wonder how many students will take me up on that invitation.
One time, my dad (a high school math teacher) paid at Baskin-Robbins by putting a penny on the counter and saying “keep the change.” – a single-scoop was advertised as .99¢ (you know – almost a penny!) I don’t recall if he went through with it, and didn’t go back to pay what they MEANT to charge, or if he left it…