BSHS 2018-2019 Week 1:
Welcome Back!
Yippy, it's our first week of classes back from Summer break! Tuesday was all about Seating Charts and Book Cards and Syllabi with the Original Sound Track of Dragon Heart playing in the background. I posted everything I could on Google Classroom so as not to kill trees and have more time to start a lesson! PreCalc Honors and AP Calculus BC were amazed by SAGE. AP CompSci got to log into CS50.io via EDX and began HelloWorld.java!
Wednesday was our first YouTube Wednesday. Of course, we had to start with Tom Lehrer's New Math with an explanation of base 8 numbers, aka Octal, and positional arithmetic! Every month will start with a Filk. Next week, YouTube Wednesday will come from Star Talk TV in 10 minute installments each week.
So, I'm switching gears this year:
1) Edmodo to Google Classroom
2) Dropbox to Google Drive
3) Word to Google Docs
Most of my students have experience with Google Classroom, so it's time to switch! Also, I'm using my new Samsung Chromebook Plus a lot lately which is very closely integrated with Google Drive and Google docs. The Chromebook came with an extra 100 GB of Google Drive storage, so I moved all my files over from Dropbox.
Google Docs is also very easy to use. You can easily create new documents or upload existing Word documents that automagically convert to Google Docs. If you want to download a document from the cloud, it coverts to Word format for you automagically also. Using Google Docs is a lot like Word with the possible exception of the fact that you don't need to click save. All edits are automagically saved too. I'm also very happy to note that LaTex is built into Google Docs for editing equations.
This year I'll be using SAGE on Tuesdays in Math class and Processing in AP CompSci, so most weeks will now look like this:
MCQ Mondays,
SAGE or Processing Tuesdays,
YouTube Wednesdays,
Think Pair Share Thursdays,
FRQ Fridays.
Each month will see 3 Socrative Mondays and 1 GradeCam Monday Quiz practicing MCQs from past AP and Regents exams.
Tuesdays will switch from TI Graphing Calculators to SAGE in Math class and from Java programming on c9.io to graphics programming on Processing. I like to expose my students to as many tools as I can so they have choices on how to solve problems or check their work.
Wednesdays start with a clip from YouTube followed be a short class discussion before the lesson of the day. The first YouTube Wednesday is usually a fun STEM related Filk. Other Wednesdays will be mostly 10 minute clips from National Geographic like StarTalk or PBS lIke Nova. I think of this as a "Poor Man's Field Trip" with great expert guest speakers talking about STEM!
Think Pair Thursdays are about students working in pairs practicing the concept of the day. We use 2' x 3' WhiteBoards in groups of 2 or 3 to share our solutions with the rest of the class.
FRQ Fridays will be about Modeling real world problems by writing our own equations to solve and practicing past FRQs. Some FRQ Fridays will be reserved for reviewing the latest unit with a pretest followed by a Take Home Exam. Some times we will have an in-class Quiz.
I will be using the TI84C in preCalc and the TI nSpire CX CAS in AP Calculus BC. I send ScreenCasts home using TI Graphing Calculators and SAGE to encourage students to practice at home. I like to give my students the option of using SAGE or TI on Take Home Tests and in-class Quizzes.
Otherwise, we'll be computing in the cloud!
SAGE: Google Compute Engine
CS50: Amazon EC2 Cloud (c9.io)
Last year we used CS50.io for most of the year in AP Computer Science. CS50.io is a great choice for us as it emulates the Ubuntu Linux desktop we used to have in class. Also, CS50 is really Cloud9, aka c9.io, plus everything apt-get installed for you that you need to learn to code! Don't forget about Processing! We'll work with Processing on Tuesdays for graphical projects since CS50.io is primarily text based.
1) Edmodo to Google Classroom
2) Dropbox to Google Drive
3) Word to Google Docs
Most of my students have experience with Google Classroom, so it's time to switch! Also, I'm using my new Samsung Chromebook Plus a lot lately which is very closely integrated with Google Drive and Google docs. The Chromebook came with an extra 100 GB of Google Drive storage, so I moved all my files over from Dropbox.
Last but not least, here's some of the handouts from the first day:
Well, that's all folks!
Generally Speaking,
A. Jorge Garcia
Applied Math, Physics & CompSci
Applied Math, Physics & CompSci
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