Saturday, May 30, 2009

Coordinate Battleship for the eBeam

JC: This is a fun game for the eBeam interactive whiteboard. It was created using excel. In it's simplest form it teaches coordinates but it can include rotations, translations, reflections, slope, etc...

Here are the basic rules:
1) Write down the coordinates for the selected ships.
2) You have 5 seconds to read the answer from your list.
3) Mark off any HITs from your list







click for bigger image and save to your desktop

Running the game:
1) Call on the students one at a time. I like to go straight down the rows.

2) Give the students a few minutes to write down the coordinates.

3) Once called on, only give them a few seconds to answer. This will ensure that they are keeping up with their list and will waste less time.

4) If you are giving prizes or extra credit, only give it to the students who are

5) Once they have done it a few times, have a student run the game. An alternative (if you have extra time), have students swap out getting to use the stylus when they get a hit.

Green Ships make a translation
Purple Ships make a reflection
Blue Ships make a rotation

For Quick Games:
If you don’t have time to sink all of the ships you could have them just sink:
- Ships from one quadrant
- parallel ships
- translations, rotations, or reflection
- orange ships

Cheers,
Caswell

Friday, May 29, 2009

Making Math Real with Flip video

If your in education you've heard the phrase "When am I ever going to use this?" Yes, it still makes my eyes cross and smoke shoot from ears. My favorite response is "You know you're right, we should strive to be as ignorant as possible." Snappy comebacks quickly put an end to the conversation, but they do little in the way of motivating or educating the student. I know I use math all of the time, but it's a bit difficult to tote around 120 students to the grocery store to prove my point. So, I decided to start documenting times when I use math in the real world with a mini video camera. I am currently using a Flip Ultra because of it's simplicity and reasonable price. I'll do a full review on this product soon.

Once I've taken the video, I usually edit it with iMovie. This step isn't a necessity, but I like being able to change around the dialogue and add music. Here are four videos I took during the Memorial Day weekend while visiting Gatlinburg TN. I plan on including solutions using eBeam recordings for the next batch.



Links to the other videos: Breakfast, Games Time, & Driving

Cheers,
Caswell