Day number of a year

Calculate DAY NUMBER OF A YEAR using this online tool

http://mistupid.com/calendar/dayofyear.htm

Estimation of Angles

Play 'n' Learn

Teaching and learning of mathematics is fun. While teaching my daughter about angles , I used an e tool which is basically a game of start and stop of a stop watch kind of a thing. This tool is available here. Here is a screenshot of estimating 45 degrees. It is much closer to accurate result, so the score is 10 points. Try this!

Measurements in Math

Learning about measurements is an integral part of learning math concepts. Be it about measuring length , mass or time, all play a significant role in mathematics.

I stumbled upon this interesting website on learning measurements when I was exploring some readymade e resources for teaching my daughter.

Here is its screenshot

menu via kwout

3D Visualisation Applet

It is no longer a question now, how visualisation is important in understanding 3 dimensional concepts? Recently, while exploring some software , I stumbled upon this interactive applet.
It is basically to have an idea of spatial geometry.
The title is Rotating Houses.
Try with kids. They will like to explore.

Reward and Motivation

Reward and motivation for students is a key for self improvement and growth in life. Being a teacher , I have felt this many times that in a classroom, only good teaching is not sufficient for students.

Are you motivating your students ? No problem. There is an easy way to reward your students.

I found something interseting ...an online certificate creater.

All you need to do is type the name of your student ...choose a style...and print.

Making e Snowflake

Today, I thought of sharing with my students , making e snowflakes as their mathematics project. I made a screencast using camstudio on how to make an e snowflake on the given link.

The sreencast created was in .avi format and it was quite a heavy file. I was in a hunt of some software to shrink the size ,restoring the quality and sound effects. I left a message on twitter. In this process I got a solution to my problem from a twitter friend Pdonaghy .

I downloaded Rivaencoder and converted .avi format file to .flv . After this I tried uploading the flash video file to Blogger/Ning ....but could not. Then I again asked Pdonaghy for help. She is so kind to suggest me to upload the file on You Tube. I tried and succeeded in uploading the video.

Here is so called techventrous video...

I am happy to see it here. Thanks Pdonaghy.

My day with Kids

Yesterday was full of exploration,experiment,excitement, entertainment ,enthusiasm and enrichment. It was all because of 7 special kids Prachi,Ishani ,Vishrut ,Sidak ,Rajpreet , Kanav and Aditya. These kids helped me in my new project of using e tools for new session 2008-09 for primary kids. We did the following ...

• Firstly I clicked their individual photographs and started with my experiment which was using http://www.blabberize.com/ and asked all of them to introduce themselve .They loved this activity and laughed so much after watching their flipping mouths .
• Then, I gave them a project work on having a discussion on the topic "Polybags are harmful" They came up with an excellent report. I recorded their project work which is uploaded on my daughter's blog.
• All of them were so happy to do this activity. I think , if a teacher would try these kind of small small new strategies for teaching then surely there will be enhancement in learning . Also there would be an added life in the class environment.

I would like to thank all of them for raising my confidence in making my experiment successful and presenting this idea.

My this idea may be used by a teacher for teaching mathematics also.

A teacher can make a difference! All kids are special!

Incredible Patterns

Mathematics is a subject of incredible creativity and hidden symmetries. Geometry patterns are so fascinating and captivating. As a teacher I believe, it is important to realise the beauty of mathematics. Students must be given a chance to atleast visualise and appreciate the geometrical presence all around. There are variety of shapes and patterns. I am not going to deep into the details but yes, would name few of them. During my exploration of e journey, I came across an interesting online symmetric pattern generator in which one can freely experiment with wallpaper patterns, Rossette and Frieze patterns. I find it quite interesting and amazing too!

Here is the link.

Kali: Symmetric Sketching (Science U) via kwout

Here are some sample pictures...created by me

Enjoy exploring patterns...

Image editing is fun

Image Editing
Today, on my passionate teachers network Kelly shared about an image editing tool Phixr. As usual, I could not wait for a long and started doing some experiments on it. I found quite an interesting feature in it , swirl, which changes the original picture into curvy pictures. Then, I tried doing an experiment with famous tangram puzzle picture. I got amazed to see a wonderful observation. A square cut into 7 curvy shapes instead of 7 regular ones as in a tangram

( 5 isosceles triangles/1 parallelogram and a small square).
This is the original tangram picture...

And this is a curvy tangram...

Then I thought of experimenting with the shape of a cat which is formed by joining seven cutouts of original tangram.
I uploaded it on Phixr and then again used the swirl feature. A curvy cat is the result.

Writing Mathematics

In mathematics we need to type it as it is done in the classroom or given in the text books.By this I mean to say that we have to write correct mathematics also, when we are posting information for our students.I was looking for some free software or facility which could solve this problem of mine as well as the students. While surfing internet, I stumbled upon a free equation editor. It has solved all my problems of writing mathematics. And the best part is ,it is free and can be inserted in a blog/website ,through the HTML code provided.
You may get this from http://www.sitmo.com/latex/

Venn diagram Interactive tool

Sharing with all of you a useful link containing an interactive tool to study the concept of Venn diagrams in Sets. I think if the students will be learning this concept with this approach,they will understand it in a better manner and will retain this knowledge for longer.Thanks.http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~west/applets/Venn.html