Thing #

I was working with my students on the gmail Google documents. In my research paper requirements I had directed students to double space and use font size of 12. When I collected the papers I began to see many of the papers without double spacing. On the Google documents toolbar its not obvious to me as to how to create the double spaced documents. Many of the students had to put their writing in a Word document and use the tools available there. I will still have to look at the Google documents to see if that feature is really there. Any ideas?

Thing #2 or 3

today we set up an rss feed to my gmail account with some periodicals that some of my students may be interested in accessing for research info on the Pythagoras theorem. I have only looked at a small piece of information, but it looks as though that would feed us at least 57 connections. I have attempted the web page. I hope that it worked. I will have to look at that again soon. The information was helpful during today's class.

Thing#35

When I was driving home from work on Friday I was listening to MPR and they were talking about putting our arms around numbers. The question was posed, " What is a trillion?" I was very interested in their discussion and facts provided that could get kids interested in numbers. In fact they were just talking about children's seemingly natural curiosity of numbers and how just posing a question lead children into asking more questions and seeking more answers. I decided since my Algebra class will begin numbers on Monday that I should check out the MPR site. Well today is Sunday and I did check out the website of NPR. There is a neat video on Ira Flatow's Science Friday web page called the Power of 10. I plan to show it on Monday to my classes and use a Nickelodeon quiz along with it. I should get some of the students interested exponential in a little different way than just presenting notes. Wish me Luck.

Thing 9

In this project that my students will continue to work on we discussed giving credit to the person who wrote the information and using MLA style citations. I wish I had the laminated poster that the class had promised, but so far I have not recieved it. THat was very nice layout of information. I hope to have that in my room soon to refer to in our discussions with students the expectation that they understand and adhere to those copyright and plagiarsm protocols.

thing# research project

I have created a lesson plan for a small research project in my geometry class. The topic is the Pythagorean Theorem. There are several parts to the project, but the part I will discuss here is the research. I arranged with our librarian ahead of time for the students to make a library visit. There the students were introducedto the connect. spps.org site for their reliable resources by our wonderful librarian. She was able to walk them through the reseach process and show them grolier online. The students were able to find a bit of history abour Pythagoras. She explained that although google was indeed an easy search engine it was not always reliable. She also took the time to talk about typing documents using a gmail account so that students can access their papers to print them in the school library. She had sheets available for the students to set up an account and many of the students were able to do this quickly. I had also arranged for a cart of Ibooks so that each of the students could begin their research. Some of the students did not think that it made sense to research in a Math class. Research is for Social Studies and English. I find that very interesting....