Reflections of a Techie

Dust off Donald, Let's see the Magic in the Golden Ratio

I'm old so I remember the glory days of Disney.  I have to admit that this little jewel had slipped my memory, but when we dusted it off and used it with our students....wow....the power of Disney to make something interesting came to life.

Donald in MathMagic Land does many great things.  We are in the process of studying ratios, specifically the golden ratio.  This is the perfect movie to show them.  I think one of the most amazing parts of the movie is where Donald shows how this ratio comes into play with musical instruments...ha!  get the pun?  (We have an old VCR copy of the movie, but you'll get the idea from this YouTube clip.)

Well, we tried it.  Some of the strings students went and dragged their instruments into our classroom.  At first we couldn't stretch the string tight enough to just do as in the movie.  But eventually we were able to replicate Donald's experience.

Students at this time of the year are darn hard to engage nevermind impress.  This old, old movie did it.  Now the kids are totally pumped to learn about the 2nd most famous irrational number.  In our class opinion, pi takes 1st place and phi takes 2nd place.

It will be fun to see what kinds of drawings they are able to make of the nautilus shell.  The best part of all this is that learning is fun and it is setting them up for their next unit at the start of 7th grade.

Simply Amazing

What a marvelous website and the possibilities for fun are boundless. Try your hand at placing your favorite musician in this site and see all the connections. This is a blast. Can't describe it because you'll just have to try it and then describe it for yourself.

Timelines, Intel's Journey Inside and Merging Converging Points---Multimedia Extravaganza

Intel's Journey Inside has been revamped. Our introductory lessons for students couldn't be better for how the basic functioning of how the computer works. Today we worked on how we'll incorporate the new mini videos into our old lesson plans.

well, it just isn't going to work. AT all.

So we scrapped that mess.

And started over. With seven new mini videos, we think students will pretty much get the idea from watching those videos and completing the teacher made worksheets we'll create from the websites. They only had one transparency we thought we could use. After they finish watching the videos they should have a good working knowledge. So how to assess they that really learned it?

First we thought they could do a Window Movie Maker. It was perfect but we use it later on when we do the robotics rotation. So that was out.

Instead we decided to do a Timeliner Multimedia timeline project. It will allow us to have them not only merge the information they acquire through the Intel site, but also the events that were happening in the world during the development of computers. Timeliner will allow us to merge and overlay the two timelines. We are also able to let the kids to superimpose the timelines, add multimedia and overlay music and videos that they pick.

We'll have to see if they'll be able to import the videos from the Intel site into their Timeliner timelines. I don't know if they will be able to get the copyright permsission from Intel or not. They'll have to write and see. But it's a great idea with or with out the Intel movies.

I think the kids will enjoy the project and collection of informaiton. I also think it will help them contextualize the information in such a way that they'll really learn all the computer basics in a longterm way so that it will stick with them longafter they leave our class.

NPR comes through again with Great Content

Don't you just love NPR? I do. Yesterday I heard a radio article about file sharing and downloading music. So I found it in the news section, downloaded it and played for my students. It really raised questions that interested them because of their use of Kaaza or Morpheus. This article reported on the record industry's move to sue uploaders of music every day....they filed 1000 subpeonas already.

That had an impact on my students and it was a great way to talk about file sharing which branched into viruses and on and on and on and on.