Upcoming (Really Soon!): Google Camp 6.0

TDSB Google Camp 6.0 is next Saturday. It's sold out, naturally, but if you are lucky enough to go, I'll be presenting three sessions in room 218.

Session 1 is an updated and expanded version of Taking Math Digital with Desmos, Geogebra, and Equatio. Come explore tools that can make investigation in math, science, and STEM easy and fun. The Desmos graphing calculator, in particular the activity builder and activities such as Card Sort, Polygraph, and Marbleslides, is a valuable tool that makes helping students explore math concepts easy and interactive. Geogebra is a GSuite and user-friendly version of Geometer's Sketchpad. We will also talk about the updates to the Chrome extension EquatIO, helps write your math using predictive text, handwriting, and speech input, not to mention integration across all GSuite platforms.

Update: John McGowan, the creator of EquatIO, will be doing a Global Math webinar this coming Tuesday to talk about Digital Math Flow with EquatIO, Desmos, and Google. How timely!

In session 2, I will be giving an updated version of Flipping the Learning. This session will show you what a flipped lesson looks like, and how I am currently integrating flipped lessons into my math and physics classes. We will discuss the pros and cons, how it can be used for differentiated learning, and how to increase buy-in. In addition, we will discuss the technical aspects of flipping, specifically the specialized flipping platform EDpuzzle (but you can keep it as simple as YouTube and Google Forms). If you watch the video ahead of time, you will get the opportunity to delve deeper into some of the nifty features of EdPuzzle and have your first curated video ready for Monday's class!

In session 4, I'll be presenting How Random! Infinite Possibilities Using Sheets, which will talk about how to make the randomized practice sheets that are my pride and joy.  Sheets is useful for so much more than just accounting and graphs! Learn how the random number functions can be used to automagically create vocabulary lists, math problems, matching exercises, and yes, graphs... the possibilities are quite literally endless. Want to create a random question of the day? Sheets! Want the answer key, too? Sheets! Even better, you can link them to other GSuite products such as Docs, Slides, or Drawings to make collaboration easy. Sample templates will be provided so you can have a finished product ready to go for Monday's class.

It'll be a busy day, with lots of great workshops to choose from. If you can't make it to one of mine, I'll put links to the resources.

Hope to see you there!

Google Camp and Renewing Math Summit are coming...

There are some fantastic PD opportunities coming up in the next few weeks.

Google Camp 5.0 will be on November 4; sadly it has already sold out, but you can put your name on the waiting list and some of the sessions will be simulcast on Twitter. I'm thrilled to be joining some amazing speakers; I'll be presenting a follow-up session to my Flipping Your Classroom session from March -- I'm going to try modelling a flipped lesson! There will be pre-session homework (if you so choose)! I'm very excited to be talking about EquatIO and Desmos, which are two really amazing ways to take math and STEM digital. As usual during the day there will be a room with helpful helpers available if you've been running into difficulties with GAFE and need someone to walk you through the solution.

More info will be available soon at http://bit.ly/tdsbcamp, 

The TDSB's Renewing Math Summit on the Friday, December 1 PD day is offered to secondary teachers. The focus is on Teaching/Leading in an Equitable Classroom and 21st Century Global Competencies. I'll be giving a session called Rope-a-Slope: Inquiry in Grade 9 Math where a simple piece of rope and a measuring tape and guided inquiry can lead to learning about relationships between variables, slope, direct and indirect variation, and more. The other sessions look amazing as well -- I'd love to be able to attend them all. There might also be a drop-in room to learn more about digital math tools like Knowledgehook, Desmos, Geogebra, etc. 

Registration for TDSB secondary teachers is on K2L until November 23, or they reach capacity.

Join me!

Updated: Fidget spinner math

Update: I've added a link to the data in Desmos and TI lists below.

Yes, I jumped on board the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" boat.

Inspired mostly by Harry O'Malley's site, I brought a fidget spinner^* and my phone to grade 11U math class one day and the students modelled the spin. The above graph is the one of my student's results. It's a bit wonky because in the two days since I had bought it, one of the end caps had fallen off, which made the central bearing ring shift off centre. This made it slow down a lot; the above graph shows a few tries at spinning. The student at the top of the post took an average of the cycles while other students just looked at the first.

To make a good video, mark one of the edges of the spinner so you have a reference point to track. The app I used is VidAnalysis Free for Android (for Apple fans, Vernier has an app for LoggerPro that lets you do the same stuff, if not more). Don't spin it too quickly unless you have much better equipment than I do -- I tried to analyse that lovely first video and got goobledeegook because it's spinning too fast for the video to capture properly.

You then pick reference points (known length and origin of coordinate system) and track your mark. You can skip forward and backward in time to get to the section you want to analyse. I goofed because I forgot that I had made a spin without my finger in the way; by the time I remembered, I had already invested too much time getting the other data. Hence the starts and stops.

I didn't want to take up class time getting the analysis ready, so we discussed what equation we were likely to see, and then worked on other problems. Before the next class, I made the analysis and turned the data into graphs in Google Sheets. The next class, I put the x-distance graph up on the screen and got the students to figure out the model. When they had an equation, I graphed it against the data (if you do this, remember that spreadsheets do trig with radians, not degrees).

It was a really good exercise, considering it's the first time I've officially used the VidAnalysis in class. We had some great discussions about the vertical translation (did I deliberately make the coordinate system off-centre? no, but I will next time because that led to interesting math); how to deal with the increasing period; how the amplitude of our function compared with the actual measured distance.

I've since shifted the centre bearings back and made another, better video analysis. The screen shots are below:

		What I like about this, mathematically, is a) how it shows the spinner slowing down; b) how it shows that I didn't hold the camera completely still -- notice that the "zero line" of the equation shifts up (nice for composition of functions!); and c) the x- and y-distances are essentially translations of each other (sin vs cos). I could have really expanded on this activity and got them to break the functions into different domains.
		The velocities show the same math effects as the distances; this could be used to show that the derivative of sinusoidal functions are still sinusoidal (and how). If only Google Sheets would get their act together and let us connect points in scatter plots.
		More screenshots. What I really like is that you can upload the data as a csv file to Drive. Copy-paste makes it simple to create a spreadsheet. Note that the Free part of the app means ads. I was still giving it a trial run, but I think I will upgrade to the premium version because it's a great little app.

I started the trig functions section by creating a periodic wave using a salt-shaker pendulum (an idea I cribbed from someone on Twitter -- I can't remember who it was, but I'd love to give her the credit). I now wish we had filmed the pendulum at the same time so we could compare our rough model to the data. Future ideas!

I have a graphing calculator assignment that grabs tuning fork data from a microphone; I get the students to model the function and work backwards to determine the frequency of the fork. We didn't get to it this year, but it would go well with this exercise.

If you'd like to use my data, feel free to make a copy of fidget spinner 2, or download the csv file. I'm going to import this into a Desmos activity and graphing calculator lists at some point; when I do, I'll update this post with links. Update:Here are links to the data in Desmos and as TI lists.

^*I meant to use one of the students' spinners in my MCF3M class, but ran into difficulties because that student wasn't in class the day we were supposed to do the model. Since I wanted a permanent mark on the spinner, I decided to not buy trouble and get my own. Plus, they're fun.

I did this exercise with the 11M students as well, but we wound up doing it as a class instead of individually.