Simulating Life in a 3rd World Country

Ayati: The Cost of Life is a game that has been created to help create awareness of the reality of life for many people in the country of Haiti.  Giving students an awareness of what life is like in a third world country is not an easy thing to do, but this game is a great opportunity to give them a glimpse of it.  This simulation game gives you the opportunity to live 4 years as a family of five in Haiti, and make decisions based on your priorities.  You have to choose between happiness, money, education, and health in order to survive as a family.  This game is not easy to be successful at.  In fact, it is extremely difficult to focus on much other than survival.  If you are familiar with Oregon Trail (...ahhh the good old days) - this game is very similar in the way that it is formatted.  Throughout the game your family will deal with many factors (both good and bad) as they continue to live a fulfilling life.  Students will definitely find this game challenging, but it will be self-motivating for them to want to continue to try to improve at it.  When playing the game, students could even focus on one family member and keep a "journal" from that person's point-of-view.  However you incorporate this game, it does a good job at bringing up an important discussion, and giving students some perspective of living conditions in other parts of the world.

Kicking it Old School

 If anyone grew up with an Apple iie computer as their introduction to technology, then you probably remember the LOGO program that allowed you to control a turtle with commands.  This allowed you to create a 2-D image according to the commands that you gave it.  Essentially, it was an etch-a-sketch that was controlled by computer language.  In order to properly draw your image, you needed to understand angles and the length of pixels.  The original program allowed the user to also define functions that could be stored for future use. Have I lost you yet?  If you are not familiar with the application, believe me - it is anything but complicated.

Mathsnet has created an applet that re-creates the LOGO program in a simple fashion.  The commands are listed at the top of the screen, and it is very easy to use.  You just type the command at the bottom of the applet to control the arrow.  What value does this have?  Well, I think that it is a fun way for students to practice their understanding of angles and mental math.  After introducing, and allowing students to play with the program in order to get acclimated, it would be a fun activity for them to plan a picture, and write the script that they would need in order to create the picture.  Then have them put the script into the application and see if the picture comes out as planned, or discuss any issues that unexpectedly appeared.  This could also be a great on-going activity for students to work on if they get finished early with class work, or have earned reward time.  Although the concept is simple, it gives students the chance to become "programmers", which is probably not something they are used to.  It fuses math and creativity in a fun way.

Below are some screenshots of what the application looks like.  Keep in mind, this is a very simplistic version of the program.  If you want to explore the capabilities of LOGO in a more in-depth way, you can download a windows version of the program here for free.

The Impact of Internet Videos in the Classroom

Khan Academy is a website that was developed by Salman Khan in order to give tutorials in math.  If you have not visited the site before, I strongly suggest that you do.  It is a HUGE resource for students and teachers.   Since it has started, it has continued to grow with the development of tutorial videos in every area of basic and advanced math, along with other content areas.  Another great thing that has changed, is that it no longer uses YouTube to stream the videos.  The videos are now streamed from the website, so school computers are no longer blocked from accessing them.

These videos are great because they truly allow students to access a lesson on a topic at their own pace.  Below is a talk that Salmon Khan recently gave focusing on the change that his videos and other videos like them are making in the classroom.  When students have the homework of watching the video on the next day's concept - they are able to watch it on their own time, replay anything they don't understand, or go back to a previous concept that they haven't mastered in order to be successful.  This gives them the opportunity to come to the classroom the next day to practice and reinforce the concept the way that "homework" would normally do.  His reasoning makes complete sense, and it is exciting to think about the effect that it can have on your students.  This is how our kids are learning about things - and it makes sense why.

Google Cloud Connect

Good news for Google users who want to start saving their Microsoft documents to the cloud for easy access.  Google has introduced Cloud Connect for Microsoft, which is very easy to use.  You will need to go here for the free download.  It will install a toolbar at the top of your Microsoft Office program that allows you to sync the document that you are working on into your Google Docs account.  You can set it up so that you click on the sync button to save it to your Docs, or anytime you save the document as you would normally do - it will automatically save it to your Docs.  The best thing about it, is that it allows you to work in Word or other Office program as you would normally, with the added feature to also save it to your Google Docs account.

For those of you who are not familiar with Google Docs, as long as you have a Google account - then you have a Google Docs account already.  Just click on the "Documents" link from the "more" tab at the top of the google screen.  It will show you any document that has been added to your library.

A search for answers - not websites

Along the same lines as Qwiki, is the search engine WolframAlpha. The idea is to give you information about what you are searching for - instead of links. What is really great about this search engine, is that you can type in math equations and it will solve them for you along with accompanying visual aides if available. You can also compare two items by entering them both into the search.  Another nice feature is that it allows you to save the information from any search as a pdf file for future use (or to post on your website as a resource). There are many examples that you can take a look by just clicking on the examples link above the search box. Checking these out will give you a better idea of how to use this tool. This is like a free, updated encyclopedia at the tips of your fingers.  Below is a screen shot of the results when i typed in 2x+10=20