Colin Ed

Monday, December 7, 2009

Rhyming

Rhyme Zone: A site to help you find rhyming words.
www.rhymezone.com

Monday, November 30, 2009

Recognizing simple machines

Egg Heads: Activate your mind!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Simple Machines Activity

Museum of Science and Industry: Simple Machines

Click picture to start-

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Web Awareness

After some interesting reading on internet use concerns, I've put together a mind map of some of the main ideas. Here is what I've come up with.

The program I used is available free at Cmap Tools.

Integrating Excel into classroom activities

I've put together a small excel spreadsheet based on basal metabolic rate calculations. I have used these calculations when meal planning for personal weight loss regimes. I've always found the calculations interesting and thought it would be a challenge to put a comprehensive spreadsheet together for this project. I believe it could be put to some use in the middle school health curriculum.

If you're interested, I've made the file available here.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Integrating internet resoucres into lessons

An Introduction to 3-D Shapes (Grade 2)

GLO:
Name, describe and construct a variety of 3-D objects and 2-D shapes.
SLOs:
18. Explore faces, vertices and edges of 3-D objects.
19. Identify, name and describe specific 3-D objects as:cubes, spheres,cones, cylinders, pyramids.

Activity:
Utilizing an interactive geometric solids utility(National Council of Teachers of Mathematics), the teacher can accurately articulate and display to the students the definition of a face, a vertex, and an edge. With the utility, students can count faces, vertices and edges on a number of different 3-D shapes.
With the aid of another online resource (Primary Resources), a simple slide show, the basic 3-D shapes can be viewed and named. While each new shape is viewed, students can mark on the smartboard each shape's faces, vertices and edges.

Online Resources Referenced:
National Council of Teachers of Mathmatics (n.d). Illuminations: Resources for Teaching Math - Geomentric Solids. Retrieved Sept. 30, 2009 from http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=70
Primary Resources (n.d). Maths: Measures, Shape and Space: 2-D and 3-D Shape. Retrieved Sept. 30, 2009 from http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/maths/mathsE3.htm

Relevant ICT Outcomes:
C6 Students will use technology to investigate and/or solve problems.

Rationale for integrating technology into this lesson:
Two different resources were used as visual aids in the lesson. The first made use of the technology to visually express a concept which can be difficult to get across to students when limited to 3-D models or drawings on a whiteboard. The second resource was a simple pictorial presentation of shapes which may have taken the place of flash cards or a teacher drawing on a whiteboard. The benefit of the slide show is it's speed and simplicity in presenting a straight-forward introduction of the lesson. An added benefit is the possibility of having students approach the smartboard and draw on the shapes to assess their understanding of the concepts of faces, vertices, and edges.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Power Point Presentation

I've completed my powerpoint presentation. The original presentation was a mess, so improving upon it was simple. However, creating a quality slide show with the material provided was a bit tricky. While I'm pleased with my work, I still feel there are things that I could do to improve on it.

The major changes I made to the presentation were as follows:
1. I cleaned up the text. This included checking spelling and grammar as well as re-writing some of the material to make it less repetitive and meaningful within the context of the presentation.

2. I created a unifying theme. This included an appropriately contrasted colour scheme as well as a uniform layout that spanned the entirety of the slide show.

3. I added photos relevant to the story. I did take some creative license in adding photos which matched the subject matter but were unrelated to the actual events. However, I believe that, regardless of origin, the photos do benefit the presentation.

4. I attempted to manage white space. In the majority of my slides I tried to keep the text simple, big and well spaced to promote an efficient transmission of information.

5. I added movement and set out patterns to entice the viewer to follow and focus on specific areas of information on the slides.

Here is my presentation provided care of slideshare.net