It was funny that part of our challenge this month was to create a station at Pandora online music. Right before Christmas break I was with my first grade group and they were doing rainbow writing to practice their high frequency trick words. I thought it would be fun to listen to a little music so I used Pandora to find a few songs. After spending more time to create "my station" I tried many types of music. I tried some easy listening stations and then created an instrumental station. I could see myself using this at times in the classroom just to set us all at ease.
The next part of the challenge was to check out podcasts at iTunes University. First, I explored the subject of math. and watched a video on K-12 Teachers TV. The video was on geometry and showed a sixth grade class. The focus was on polygons, angles, ratio, and explicit and implicit shapes. The teacher had the students take pictures around the school of different shapes(polygons) that they observed. He called these polygons out in the world the "real life story" and then when we call these polygons by math terms it is the "math story." They are windows in our real life, but in our math life they are called rectangles, quadrilaterals, and they have four right angles. They used their photographs to outline polygons they saw in their photographs and labeled them with capitals letters. Some came to the front of the class and outlined their polygons for their classmates and labeled them on the smart board for all to see. The teacher went on to question students as to the name of the polygons and used math terms to describe them. Some of the math terms I observed was quadrilateral, isosceles, scalene, right triangle, parallelogram, parallel sides, acute, estimating the number of degrees in an angle, etc. The kids were really engaged and I liked how they first took photographs and could then make the connection between "real life story" and "math story". Cool lesson!
There were a few podcasts that I listened to. One was through "Study Partner Math-Grade 4" and it told how to place mixed numbers on a number line and another was about factoring numbers. The pod cast was helpful, but I think the teacher would have to be in the front of the room illustrating the important points of the podcast for those who learn best from visuals.
It definitely took some time to find the podcasts and videos that might be helpful to your grade level. There were lots for higher level math and I have not found an easy way to narrow your search. I'll have to spend more time checking out this site. Thanks you technology teachers for introducing me to more technology ideas!
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