Sunday, July 22, 2012

Math Mistakes

Math Mistakes http://mathmistakes.org/.  Thanks to dy/dan for leading me to this.  A very interesting blog about mistakes made in math with prompts to help reader solve the error.  I love it.

Classroom idea:  Create a similar curation of common mistakes for your own class.
Reading this regularly seems like a great way to improve your own teaching skills.


Invitiation to World Literature

 Invitation to World Literature http://www.learner.org/courses/worldlit/  is  produced by Annenberg Learner and offers  streaming video of  discussions of very important world litearture,

Classroom idea:  Things Fall Apart http://www.learner.org/courses/worldlit/things-fall-apart/watch/

Quest

Quest KQED multimedia series at  http://science.kqed.org/quest/
offers a good collection of articles of interest in science, including biology, chemistry and the environment.  With continuing emphasis on students gaining the ability to read, understand informational text, these are a good resource.

Classroom idea: Use these as a model for students to produce their own curation with explanation.

Use the RSS feed http://science.kqed.org/quest/feed/   for student reading assignments.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

MentorMob

MentorMob http://www.mentormob.com 
I saw this tool on Joyce Valenza's excellent blog Never Ending Search.
I dislike making step by step instructions, because so often the steps change.  This  tool seems to me  to counteract that  flaw, because it lets the crowd update the instructions, so theoretically if steps change, someone will catch the error and change the instructions, And maybe that someone won't be me :)  I think this may work best with videos, but below I made a step by step lesson plan., which had mostly text instructions



Create your own Playlist on MentorMob!

Classroom Ideas:
 This might work well as a supplement to lesson plans for substitute teachers, especially if  there is much to show from various sources.
This might work well as pathfinder in research projects.  In fact, I am going to try this out.

In chemistry classes, this might be a tool for students to explain specific chemical reactions.

In Math classes, this might work in combination with Kahn Academy.