Interactive Math Glossary

So I went to a PD last week and it was for online Math resources for 8th grade. Well, the website that I want to share with you guys works for any subject or grade level, so long as you're in Texas, that is.

Okay so right now, open up a new tab and go to www.texasgateway.org

1. Click the blue Sign Up button on the top right
2. Enter your Name, district info, and email
3. I think you might have to go to your email and confirm the address, and then you're good!

Once you've created your account, click on search at the top. On the left side there's some boxes that you can check to narrow down your search to grade level and subject area. Select Math, and as long as you teach K-8, then what I want you to find will work for you! 

You are going to be looking for the Interactive Math Glossary. Click the link, and on the right there's a green plus sign that says "Add to list" do that and add it to your favorites. When you click on "Dashboard" at the top right later, it'll be there waiting for you. You are going to have to click on the blue "Interactive Math Glossary" link that will open the glossary in a new tab. But once you're there feel free to search around and click the list of words on the left.

 I love, love, love the interactive glossary, because it has a definition, key characteristics, an example and a non-example. Sometimes there are even some quick videos put in there to help explain things (hence the interactive). 

Have some fun with it, play around, and let your students know about it!

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Yea it wouldn't be a real blog if there was no complaining....

End of the 9 weeks is Friday, I have the district Mathematics writing prompt to grade by Thursday, and I have the district benchmark to give tomorrow and zero motivation to do any of it!

I'm 2/3 of the way done grading the writing prompts, and I feel like I've failed as an educator. I don't know how I can stand up there and give them the information and have so little retention. And if I read another paper where they misuse they're, their, and there I might go postal!

I'm three weeks behind on grading and I don't even want to get started on the Pythagorean Theorem projects sitting next to me. I think that my last bit of motivation was used writing this post...

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo done with this evening, up next is dinner and then maybe some relaxation before bed.

TI Graphing Calculator Emulator

This just in!!!
Texas Instruments is currently running an offer until December 31, 2016. If you have ANY of their online calculator programs (emulators) they are offering a FREE, yes a FREE upgrade on the software.

To claim, you do need a product or license number handy. If you no longer have these things, you can contact customer support and they will help you out as best as they can.

https://education.ti.com/en/us/sv-upgrade

OMG NO WAY!!!!

So totally geeking out, because I just got a new laptop!

It's a PC, and one of the reasons I got a laptop instead of just making do with my iPad, is because I wanted to use Microsoft Office. One of the new things that Microsoft is doing is they have Office 365, which is all cloud based (yay for no more losing USB drives) so they can compete with Google Drive. Well they have yearly subscriptions for about $70-100 or just downloading the newest version of Office is about $150. YIKES!

Well after clicking around (and talking to my dad) there's a student version of Office FOR FREE!!!!!!! All you have to do is type in your school email, and they send you a link to finish filling out your account. And it's for forever!!

Once you have your account activated, there's a button at the top of the screen that says "Download Office 2016" and you can get everything for free.
Best.
Deal.
Ever.

https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-educationon

Kahoot

First off, Happy Columbus Day!

In 1492 

Columbus sailed the ocean blue

I have the day off today, so instead of making the Kahoot review for the 1st 9 weeks benchmark I decided to make a blog post explaining what Kahoot is and how to use it.

I first learned about Kahoot from my least favorite professor in college, so I was very skeptical about it at first. After getting to play with it, it is by far my favorite classroom technology to use (and the kids love it too).

What is Kahoot?
Kahoot is an online quiz that you can make, or borrow from other users. Students can either download the app, or go to Kahoot.it and enter the game pin. They then pic a user name (if it's inappropriate you can remove them from the quiz).

How to play
Each question has a time limit and students answer by picking the colored tile that corresponds to their answer choice. Whoever answers first correctly wins the most points. The game keeps track of everything and you can even save the results at the end of the quiz. I like this because it's a competition so it motivates my students to get involved. Just a little side note, to increase competition and further motivate students it's also a good idea to bring small treats for your winners. Secret teacher rule #1 always have a bag of fun size candy hidden somewhere in your room for occasions such as this.

Creating an account
To access the site as a teacher, you need to go to getkahoot.com. Making an account is easy, all you need is an email address. I always use my personal email account, mostly because I made all these things when I was still in college, but also because if I ever move districts, or get married then my school email changes and then I lose all the stuff I had stored on that account. From there, you can either search for quizzes made by other users, or make your own.

Making your own
After you sign in, it redirects you to your profile page. Now I've only messed with making quizzes, I have no idea about the discussions or surveys. That might be a later blog post when I've had time to investigate, or you guys could investigate and tell me how it works in the comments. If you're ever searching through Kahoot and decide that you have to make one right then and there, at the very top left there is a purple button that says New Kahoot which will take you into making your own quiz.
Once you have your idea, it's time to create! You have to have a quiz title, a description (use lots of #), maybe include some pictures and then make some questions. I always recommend adding your own pictures, so that way there's no extra distractions, or to add a diagram that goes with the question.

Searching for other user quizzes
At the very top of the page in the gray bar there's something that says Public Kahoots. Click on it and it takes you to any Kahoot that has been made that isn't marked private. There's also a handy search bar so you don't have to scroll all through the 10.3 million some odd quizzes on your own. JUST MAKE SURE YOU FAVORITE  THE ONES YOU WANT TO USE so you can find it later (in my favorites).

Hope I made that easy enough for everyone to follow. If not, Kahoot also has great tutorial videos to watch. Thanks for reading and happy teaching!

Let's try this again

So yea trying the whole blog thing again!

I went ahead and deleted my old blog because, let's face it, I KNEW NOTHING! Jon Snow actually knew more about teaching than I did (haha nerd humor). Last time I was blogging, I was still in college, and I hadn't started my Student Teaching semester yet. Since then, I've done my semester of Student Teaching, I graduated, I tried looking for a job teaching Science, I got a job teaching Math (funny how life works), I survived my first year in the classroom, I enjoyed a great and much deserved Summer vacation, and now I'm 7 weeks in to my second year of teaching Math. Luckily I'm not an English teacher or that run-on sentence might have killed me.

One of the things I tried to do in my original blog was to talk about technology that's available to use in the classroom. That's still what I want to do, but now that I have ACTUAL CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE there's so much more that I can contribute to my fellow teachers (who I hope are reading this). Since I'm only 23, which makes me the youngest teacher in my department (second youngest teacher in the school *insert Millennial whoop*), I was voluntold that I was the technology person at our Math meetings. I'm not complaining, I LOVE THE INTERNET, technology is awesome, I'm glad that there's something that I can contribute, but there's still so much that I don't know about technology in the classroom (comment if you have any cool website/technology).

Something new that I want to try is also posting how these things work in an ACTUAL CLASSROOM (yea it's probably always going to be in all caps...), and my suggestions on how to change things. Being able to reflect on these things is part of the teaching process, recognizing what changes need to be made to better fit your students. I also want a place to vent, because let's be honest, teachers are almost solely supporting the alcohol industry since the dawn of the classroom. One thing that has taken me until last week to learn, is that you have to get it off your chest or it'll kill you. So be on the look out for ranting posts!

I think that's all I have to say for now, but here's what you can expect in the days and weeks to come:
Upcoming posts

• Kahoot
• Nearpod
• Classdojo
• Socrative
• Pinterest (just the educational section, no recipes)
• Teachers Pay Teachers
• Twitter
• And miscellaneous apps

Thanks and Gig 'em,

Casey O'Hare