3 Free Apps that You Can Use in Your Classroom Today: Math

Each month, we’ll tell you about three FREE apps you can use in your classroom. This month, we’re focused on math !

Apps and animations can be a great way to teach math, because you provide students with a visual representation of a concept that they can see, hear, and in some cases, touch and manipulate.

The first two apps this month would be great for a unit on fractions in conjunction with our Focus on Fractions assessments.

• Pearl Diver HD (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) – Learn the number line while diving for pearls amidst shipwrecks and sunken ruins. Address NCTM standards including: understanding numbers, ways of representing numbers and number systems; understanding and representing commonly used fractions; understanding fractions as part of unit wholes and as locations on number lines; and comparing and ordering fractions.
• Virtual Manipulatives! (iPad) – Virtual fraction bars and tiles.

Our last app this month is a cool graphing tool, that makes use of touch interface to help kids better understand linear relationships. 

• Slope Slider(iPad and iPhone) – increase student understanding of linear relationships by allowing students to manipulate graphs and lines to reflect changes in equations.

Incorporate apps into your math lessons and share the results with your peers on PowerUp!

The Trouble with Quotes on the Internet: Teaching your Students how to Search Effectively

“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that it's difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine." - Abraham Lincoln (Source)

Common Core Standards: 
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.8 , CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.8, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.6-8.8, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6.8

Access to online resources has been both a blessing and a curse for many teachers. On the one hand, students have the ability to find resources and research from a wide variety of sources when doing their class work. They are no longer limited by what is available in their local library. On the other hand, the internet is a vast place, and without someone to help students navigate, evaluate, and curate information, students may get overwhelmed. Determining which pieces of information are credible may pose a particular challenge for many of your students.

The ability to instantly look something up has enormous educational benefit. Knowing that a world of information is at their fingertips can make kids more self-sufficient researchers. However, instant access can also mean that students expect to be able to find an answer immediately. The most quickly found answer isn’t always the best or most accurate one, as our Abraham Lincoln quote demonstrates, so students need to know how search critically.

As you PowerUp your classroom with more technology tools, think about how you can teach your students digital literacy skills and help them become power researchers:

• Tailor lessons to avoid over-reliance on search engines and Wikipedia. Most kids gravitate towards these two resources, so consider directing your students towards specific resources that are appropriate to the assignment.
• Teach your students to use more sophisticated search habits – for example, metasearching sites like Dogpile will include suggestions and keywords to help you further target your search.
• Show students how to use advanced search features on sites like Google and how they can structure their search to get the most relevant results.
• Help students learn how to look critically at URLs – in general, websites with .gov or .edu names are more likely to provide accurate and unbiased information.

Check out this great video from Google on determining the credibility of information online:

Are you focusing on digital research and critical thinking skills in your classes? Share your ideas in the comments!  

Professional Development in 140 Characters: Getting Started with Twitter for PD

When it comes to professional development, sometimes the best approach is a collaborative one; teachers and administrators sharing what works and helping each other succeed. PowerUp WHAT WORKS can help you work together and plan with other educators in your building as you PowerUp your school and classrooms.

Social media is a great way to engage with other educators – whether right next door or around the world – and get ideas, inspiration, and support as you integrate technology into your classrooms. Many school administrators and teachers have turned to Twitter as a way to interact with other educators interested in teaching with technology. Twitter is easy to use, and there are tons of great tutorials out there that cover the basics. So how do you get started using Twitter for PD?

One great first step is to find Twitter users who are already using the service to improve their teaching. Once you do, you can follow the people they follow, or use an app like ShadowMe (for iPhone and iPad), which allows you to “shadow” a Twitter user and see what they’re tweeting, who they follow, and how they use Twitter. If an educator is engaged in an online discussion on elearning for example, you can follow along and see what’s happening.

Twitter also makes use of keywords or “hashtags” to help you find what people are talking about. Searching for #edtech will show you all the resources and conversations about educational technology. Hashtags can be a great tool for finding users and resources aligned with your interests.

Each week we’ll suggest more great educators to follow on Twitter as well as suggestions for making the most out of social media tools for PD. Here are a few to get you started:

• https://twitter.com/NMHS_Principal
• https://twitter.com/cti_powerup
• https://twitter.com/gcouros
• https://twitter.com/OfficeofEdTech
• https://twitter.com/iPodsibilities

Left to Right: Integrating Technology and the Election in Your Classroom

As November approaches, we are surrounded by tons of resources and information related to the upcoming election. Between the news, rallies, debates, and even bumper stickers, political stories are everywhere this time of year, so why not incorporate them into your teaching? Here are some fun ways to introduce the material to students and even get them involved in their own electronic poll!

At Scholastic's website, students can learn election basics like who is running for President and the history of Election Day. There is a student interview with President Obama, political vocabulary, and an area to virtually “Meet the Candidates!”. Check out these great resources for an election-themed math lesson:

• Once students have an idea of who is running, teachers can create a free online poll. Students can see the results instantly, and class results can then be compared online to the Scholastic Student Vote Winner.
• The New York Times FiveThirtyEight Blog is a great source of election-related charts and graphs you can share with your students. 
• If you’re looking for election-related videos to help reinforce your lesson, NBC Learn’s Decision 2012 has pulled together a collection of videos and related resources on the 2012 election.

Engage your class in a discussion of how we use polls, charts, graphs, and other organizational tools to help us understand the election, identify patterns in different groups, and predict possible outcomes.  Check out PowerUp’s resources on Organizing strategies in math for more ideas.

Image source:
  by  DonkeyHotey