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Monday, February 16, 2009

Digital Story: Solving Systems of Equations

In our Algebra 1 class, students were given a project involving a systems of equations. The project began with an outline of information that was needed: the problem, the equations, the table of values, the graph, and solving the system by substitution and elimination. After the initial phase had been completed and approved, students then went into the electronic world using their 1 to 1 laptops. Their first task was to write the narrative for their movie. Then using programs like Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and imovie the digital story began to come alive.

I created a sample digital story for the project. To begin, I used a story map to create the story and this can be viewed here. My sample video can be view at youtube at this link!

Students creativity with this project was impressive. From students who were determined to only use real information and truly seek out the better cell company based on their texting plans to students who dream of wooed by two different NBA teams and the deals that they'd be offered. The project was completed by pairs of students. To grade this project, I created a rubric. It can be viewed at this link.

Internet Resources I like



Here is a list of three of my favorite online resources that I have used as a teacher.



1: One resource I found especially helpful integrating technology into my mathematics classroom is illuminations. This resource is brought to us by NCTM is the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics so any of the lessons or activities are all linked back to standards.


2: Another resource that I have recently been able to integrate more fully into my class is
classzone. This is a link to a specific activity that was already set up to help reinforce newly introduced mathematical vocabulary. It is by the same folks who make the textbook so activities are directly related to lessons I'm teaching.


3: My last favorite website that I'll take time to mention is
catchvideo where you can captures and download youtube videos to use in the classroom since JSD restricts youtube from it's servers.