I first heard about this through Twitter. It’s pretty cool. Basically it’s Google’s image search, except the results are in a completely different form. I don’t have much to say about it, you just need to go check it out yourself!
For one of my ECMP mentorships I put together another problem for them to solve. I put it together for the sixth grade math class in Michigan (you can see their class wiki here). The class is currently learning about decimals, fractions and percentages. Mr. Kaechele said he has been trying to explain to the students how the concepts apply to sports. In a Skype call with him, he told me that he tried to get his students to use the internet to find some sports stats. He found that this didn’t work as he had planned, and figured it was a little too vague of an assignment. We came up with the idea to put together a question relating to the sports stats and fractions, decimals and percentages.
I decided to make the problem relating to hockey, mostly because it is my favorite sport and it allows the students to learn something new about me. I wasn’t able to make a fancy video like I did for my last problem, mostly because I didn’t have the time this week with papers and a midterm piling up. For this problem, I simply put together a Google Document and posed some questions for the students. The video is just a screen recording of the doc (nothing fancy) and me talking about it briefly.
The Google Doc I used can be found here, and is accessible to the students so they don’t have to hear me repeating the questions over and over again (I feel sorry for anyone that would ever have to sit through that).
I wish I would have more time to make a nicer looking video. However, I think the problem will be effective for getting the students to use their new decimal, fractions and percentage skills. I tried to use Dan Meyer’s recommendation of being less helpful from his comments on my last problem. I think I was less helpful than the last problem and hopefully I can get the students thinking on their own without me guiding them towards the problem. However, I do feel like this could be a problem you find in a text book.
I would love to hear some comments and criticisms on this problem.
First things first: if you have an iPod touch or iPhone and don’t have the TED application, you need to get it. And you can get it from the App Store here. It has been a great way to kill time when I’m bored and to find ispiration. I now have about 20 items saved as favorites, but have watched many, many TED presentations. I’ve been putting off this post for a while since it seemed like I didn’t have enough time to do it. Here it goes.
One that I watched a few weeks back that has been blowing my mind ever since I watched it was entitled “Eric Giler demos wireless electricity (2009)”. I’ve embedded it in this post below:
He starts off by talking about how much “we humans love electricity” . He states that every year there are over 40 billion disposable batteries manufactured every year, for power that is mostly used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power available. He reminds us about how much wires suck and how much batteries suck, mostly because their so inefficient. He talks about how a group of MIT physicists came up with a way to transfer power over a distance. They were able to light up light bulb from 2 meters away. He talks about all the technical, physics aspects regarding the experiment, which I won’t get into because I’m not an expert by any means. The issue of safety comes up. He explains why it is completely safe, just as safe as living on the Earth, actually. Next, he blows our minds by showing us the technology in action.
Unbelievable. My jaw dropped instantly. Maybe I’m easily amused, but this seems incredible. I hate cords! I hate batteries! Like he said, they suck! This must have been how people felt when cell phones and wifi came out. Maybe in the near future it will be part of every day life and no one will think anything of it.
What witricity might look like in your home (from Flickr)
With all the buzz on electric cars, the idea that they would be able to charge by themselves is pretty incredible. It’s not like it would be a big effort to plug a cord into your car, but it’s still pretty cool. In the field of medicine, this could come in really handy. My younger brother is deaf and has a Cochlear Implant (which I will likely post more about in the future) and is always having to recharge the batteries for it. If it could simply charge itself while he was at home all day, or at his place of work in the future, this would be incredible!
Everyone wants less cords. I don’t know about you, but underneath my desk is a mess. The TV in our place isn’t much better. Sure, there are great tools to help organize your cords, but I’m sure most people don’t use them, or change things so often it doesn’t make a difference.
I would love to come home one day and not have to dig around to find my cell phone charger’s cord or my iPod charger cord. It would be great just to throw it on the table knowing that it was recharging via Witricity.
I think this technology could change technology as we currently know it. I hope they are able to develop it further and eventually it will find its way into our everyday lives. I can’t see this happening over night, or even within the next year. But I do imagine very soon that this technology will emerge and will likely be an expensive feature on only the top line products. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
For my final project in ECMP 355 I’m putting together a wiki dealing with implementing iPods into Math education. I have been bookmarking sites through Delicious that may be useful for the project for the past while, you can view them here.
(from Flickr)
The wiki will include:
I’ve started putting everything together with Google Sites (you can see what’s been started here, all that’s really been done is a review on a Battery Status app), however I’ve just realized it doesn’t function very nicely as a wiki. I may switch it over to Wikispaces since the University of Regina has set up a wikispaces area for students and staff.
Do you have any suggestions for the wiki? Or do you have anything you think you could contribute?
Today I downloaded Windows 7 and got it up and running. I have to thank Dan for giving some great help that I wouldn’t have known about if it wasn’t for his post. I’ve been playing around with it and it is very nice. It looks great and has some really cool features. The upgrade only cost me $40 since I was able to get a discount because I am a University student, check it out here. I would highly recommend anyone who has Vista or XP to make the update and if you decide to do so, read Dan’s blog post about it here. It will save you some serious time and stress as you go through the installation process. I created a Screenr recording so you can see some of the cool feature I’ve come across so far.
Hopefully I’ll find some more cool features to share. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to get my Microsoft Office back since I don’t have the disk for it with me.
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