Good Math Tool - Geogebra

I was hunting for new programs for the school year and came across Geogebra. It has apparently been around for a long time as it has won many awards, but this was the first time I have ever heard of it.
It is available for download on your computer for Windows, Macs and Linux. It has a great web site that accompanies it to show all the ways that you can use this program in your math classes. You can use it to show how to do something as similar as perimeters and area. (This is probably the main way I will use it.) Students can "play" with the graphs to see how changing the shape will impact the area and perimeter. You can also do much more, such as showing complex math formulas or playing with a Kaleidoscope in Geogebra. There are many examples from elementary school to college. I recommend you take a minute and download the program just to see what a good FREE program could do for your understanding of math.

Test of a Widget -

I found this widget and thought we might want to put it on the school pages for students to work with parts of speech. I thought I would test it on this blog first.

Recommended web site for Maps

I found this web site, recommended by a blog that I have been reading that I do think would add much to the student's understanding of history. The David Rumsey Map Collection has over 20,000 maps and other related images at their site. As far as I could tell, all of the maps could be downloaded to use. Some of these maps (now over 150) can be opened in Google Earth for further exploration. You can overlap maps of ancient globes or Civil War sites onto Google Earth.
A very different type of map is The Breathing Earth. This is a simulation that shows how many people are being born and die, the population of countries and the world and the CO2 emissions of each place. While it is just an approximation, it is very interesting.

Open Office School - Free

There is a great resource for anyone that wants to improve their spreadsheet skills and it is free.
It focuses on Open Office, but in actual fact, much of what is here could easily be used for Microsoft Office Excel as well. You can find the information here at OpenOfficeSchool. I really do think that for serious students of spreadsheets, this is the place to start. If you subscribe to the blog that accompanies this, you will be notified when they have posted another lesson. Right now, the course at Open Office School is only about their spreadsheet program, Calc.

Numbers Web Site - A break from Open Office/Word

I just found this site all about numbers. It has a lot of information in it, a good place for students to have a math dictionary with places to practice their math and it is able to be downloaded and placed on a computer so you are not dependent on a good internet connection. Numbers has many good features. If you are working on teaching students pictograms, you can go to the pictogram graph and have a wonderful interactive web site. At the bottom of the pictogram page, there is a farm animal pictograph link that would be good with a kindergarten or first grade.

Researching while working in document

This is another case of Open Office being a little more friendly than Microsoft Office. In both programs, you can check on word meaning or get a thesaurus. In both programs you can also do web searching of any phrases that are in your document. In Microsoft Office, you can use Encarta or MSN to do your research. Click on the toolbar in Microsoft Office and click on the Reference Tools. It will probably be set to scrapbook. The Reference Tool looks like a set of books. You can then choose your highlighted phrase to either use the dictionary, thesaurus or Encarta or MSN. In Open Office, go to View > Toolbar. Locate Hyperlink bar and put a check beside it. A new toolbar will now appear. Whenever you highlight a word, it will appear in the new toolbar. On the extreme right, you will see a glove and magnifying glass with a dropdown option. click on your favorite search engine and that will open up. If you want to add new sites for Open Office, go to Tool>Options>Internet>Search. Click on New button to add your favorite sites.

Sending your document as email

You have to have a non web mail account to do this, but many mail programs can be configured as a pop account so you can use your mail program, Outlook Express or Mail.
If you do have this type of mail program, you can easily send your work right from the program. In Open Office, you would go to File>Send>Document as email. In Microsoft, you go to File>Send To> Mail as attachment.
I find this much easier than trying to later find the exact document I was working on. Quick and easy.

Making Number Lines for Math Worksheets

I was helping a teacher make math pages for her class math assessments this summer. I was trying to draw lines using word and was successful with it, but found it difficult to get the lines exact! I was talking to my daughter who uses Excel all the time and she assured me, I was going about it in a more difficult way than I needed to.

Open Excel.

You want to select a group of cells. I did this by highlighting all the columns from A to Z. When they were selected, they will be a different color, put your mouse on the line between any two columns. You can drag that column line until it is about 3. When you release the mouse, you will see that all of the columns that you selected are now exactly the same size.

Open the Toolbar that is drawing. Go to View, select Toolbars and then select Drawing. You can make a line with arrows on both end. Put in your gridlines and even change a tool to make lines a different color.

This is a new use for me using Excel. I made this graphic by removing the gridlines before I went and printed the picture.

I will say that I should have known this before I struggled with the drawing. Having the gridlines really does make a difference in being able to be exact about the number line.

Just for Fun - Total Nonsense

I have been doing a lot of reading about Open Office and Microsoft and did discover that Open Office has a hidden Easter Egg in the Calc program. If in a spreadsheet cell you type, =GAME("StarWars")

And then hit enter - it will open an old fashioned space invaders game, in German. However, everyone knows how to play this game.

If you open a Microsoft Word document and type in =rand() and then hit enter, it will type a very famous line of typing for you. This might be interesting if you had a bet with someone about typing speed.

I know, nothing useful, but still enertaining.

Powerpoint /Open Office Templates

I have been continuing my research on presentation tools in Powerpoint or Open Office. I haven't found any other real differences between the two of them except for the links within the document. I did find a nice site that has a lot of different templates. A lot of the templates are in .ppt format (Powerpoint) or .odp format (Open Office Impress). I really recommend that if you are looking for a place to start - Presentation Helper for Open Office or use any of these powerpoint templates, which will open in either Microsoft Office or Open Office. I really recommend that you spend some time looking at the entire site.