Two of my student mentorships for ECMP 355 have already begun.

The First Email from a Student!

Over the weekend, I created this video for Ms. Ionno’s class in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida to introduce myself to her students.  I’ve had one student already email me informing me that NASCAR fans are crazier than Saskatchewan Roughrider fans.  (The video is at the bottom of this blog post)

This morning I also got up early and spoke with Michael Kaechele‘s Grade 6 Math Class and his Grade 8 Tech Class later on.  I did this through Skype, which was really neat as the students were all able to ask me questions.  The most interesting question?: “Why don’t you have a Canadian accent?”

These were both scary but exciting experiences.  It boggles my mind that 11 and 12 year olds in Florida were watching a video of me.  And talking to 6th and 8th graders in Michigan over the internet was really neat.

I can’t wait to get deeper into these mentorships and get my other two going!

Screen Shot from My Picasa

Recently,  after being immersed in the wonders of Google I found out I could upload my pictures to a Google site called Picasa (much like you can with Flickr).  I then got into it and noticed that it was taking forever to upload them through my browser and noticed that I could download a program that would upload them for me.  After downloading the Google Picasa program I quickly realized what a discovery I had made!

It was really easy to use right from the start.  It automatically started importing all the images on my computer into it and organizing them into different albums.  This took a little while, but saved me the hassle of doing it myself.   I noticed I could “Sync to Web” where it would upload my pictures to my online account and every time I changed the album, it would update them automatically.  It also had the really cool option to “Create a Collage” which would throw all my pictures from specified albums into a collage that I could rearrange any way I liked.  You can create really cool borders this way.  There is also a “Create a Movie Presentation” option that I haven’t tried out yet.  It will also let you do all sorts of photo fixes (contrast, redeye, retouch, etc).  If you have Google Earth installed also, you can tag on a map exactly where the photos were taken; I haven’t used this yet but I intend to once I find some time.

The most impressive feature I found is that it will recognize all the faces in your pictures and once you start tagging a few people it will automatically start detecting who people are in photos!   Find out more here.  It blew me away and made going through all my photos to tag people an effortless process.

The best part of all?  It’s FREE! (Can you tell I’m a poor student?)

I would definately recommend everyone to check this out.  I’m not sure how well it works on Macs since I’m on a PC, but I imagine it would work just as well!  If you want more information before downloading take a look at the Learn More page or watch this video!  (The video is talking about Picasa 3.0, I have 3.5 which has the face/name tags)

I think Picasso would have used Picasa. Let me know if you find it as handy as I did!

Screenshot of my iGoogle Page (click to enlarge)

After Lisa Thumann introduced my ECMP 355 class to iGoogle, our class went out and started exploring it.  After playing with it for quite a while I  created a page that included pictures from my Google Picasa Web Photos, my Google Reader, a to-do list,  a Google Scholar search box, my Google Docs, my Delicious bookmarks, the Environment Canada Weather for Regina, as well as some news feeds (Edublogs – teacher and student blogs, Educational Technology, and TechLEARNING.com).

iGoogle is now my new homepage as it has everyone I need right in there!  I like that I am able to change the theme if I’d like.  It’s so handy to have everything I regularly use all in one spot that I can customize myself!  I hope to explore iGoogle more and let me know if there are any great gadgets that I’m missing out on!

The other day I was trying to do some vector calculus homework. Not exactly the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. It wasn’t particularly hard stuff as we’re only two weeks into classes, but I was struggling with trying to visualize the graphs of the functions I was doing questions on. I’m not too sure how many people can easily visualize what the graphs of f(x,y)=x^2y or f(x,y)=cos(x^2-y) look like.

The graph of f(x,y)=x^2y courtesy of Quick Graph (click to enlarge)

Trying to find any excuse to put off my homework, I started playing around on my iPod touch. I found myself in the App Store looking for some free game to amuse me. So I played for a little while, then realized I had to buckle down and get to work again. I was still really struggling with these graphs, they were taking forever to figure out. Then I thought to myself, maybe there is an App in the App Store that is capable of doing these kind of graphs. So I searched “graph calculator” into the search box and found “Quick Graph” (and it was FREE!). After I got into the application I got playing around and got the hang of it really quickly.

I typed in my functions (f(x,y)=x^2y and f(x,y)=cos(x^2-y)) and was able to see what they actually looked like! I found i could also zoom in or out and rotate it however I wanted. This was so incredibly useful for the duration of my homework.  With a few touches, I could see what exactly I was working with in my questions.  I flew through the rest of my homework with the help of this app!

I will likely have to memorize how these functions actually work since I’m quite sure I won’t be allowed to use my iPod in exams. Despite not being able to use it on exam, I will be able to get through many many more problems compared to before. Plus the more different graphs I see, the more I’ll get a better understanding of they work in general.

The graph of f(x,y)=cos(x^2-y) courtesy of Quick Graph (click to enlarge)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but almost every kid has an iPod or something very similar. As a kid with an iPod, I know I want to use it for everything I can. I know it’s capable of more than just playing my music. Now I’ve discovered it could be a great educational tool. Students would probably enjoy their homework more if they got to “play” on their iPods as they did it. If, as teachers, we allow our students to use and explore these excellent resources, they could get through much more work at a faster rate while enjoying it.

But will tools like this just make students lazy? They definitely could if they aren’t utilized properly. I think that as long as a we continue to push them to understand what they’re doing this shouldn’t’ happen. A tool like Quick Graph could certainly enhance a students learning experience.

While in the App Store, I noticed there is an entire category devoted to Education with 282 pages of apps with 20 apps per page.  That’s just over 5600 apps!  I haven’t had the opportunity to look closer at them, but there has to be some great apps dealing with every subject there is.

Why don’t we start letting kids “play” with their education a little and enjoy it more?   The more fun it is for them, the more fun it will be for us too!