Multi-faceted Refractions

• Getting ready to present to parents in the Palos Park District 118. They are having their Tech-Stravaganza
  http://tinyurl.com/6m6uv9 #
• presenting at http://tinyurl.com/6qq2cx join in the conversation #

When catching up on my twitter feeds this morning, I saw a “tweet” from Susan Carter Morgan asked for me to post how I was able to add mathematical notation into a wiki. While I have done so and will share here, a bulk of the credit has to go to Darren Kuropatwa’s willingness to point me in the right directions in the first place.

Getting the notation

The direction that Darren pointed me in was to embed LaTeX, which is a document markup language which was developed to allow mathematicians, scientists, and engineers the ability to embed notation into a typeset document.

The EquaPlus.net website was a great resource that allowed me to search for the different types of equations and then would provide both the LaTex and MathType code necessary to produce that type of equation. For example, if one wanted to embed the sum of logarithms, such as

you could navigate to the Algebra section of the EquaPlus.net site to the logarithm page and click on the example to find the LaTeX code below:

\log _b \left( {xy} \right) = \log _b \left( x \right) + \log _b \left( y \right)

Embedding in PBWiki

To embed the code into a wiki created using PBWiki, you go to your edit tab to begin to edit. Once there, you can click on the Insert Plugin button in the Rich Text Editor, select the PBWiki Magic and select the Equation link from the pop-up menu. Simply paste the LaTeX code into the box and preview and then click on ok. Your equation magically will appear.

Embedding in Wikispaces

There is probably an easier way to do this, but I was unable to find it. In Wikispaces, you also go to your edit the page mode. From the toolbar, click on the last button, the insert code button. From the list, choose LaTeX and paste your code into the box. It will insert the code into a shaped box. Now, click on the text editor and you will see your equation look like:

[[code format="latex"]]
\log _b \left( {xy} \right) = \log _b \left( x \right) + \log _b \left( y \right)
[[code]]

Change the code format=”latex” to math and the closing code to math, and then the equation will display correctly.

For Users of MathType

If you use MathType, and I don’t, there is supposed to be a way to convert your MathType code into LaTeX. But I did not test this feature out.

Lately, I have been coming home exhausted. I guess the accumulation of this year’s events, both professionally and personally are finally catching up with me. It has kept me from reflecting here in a meaningful way. I miss it and have a series of ideas for conversations that I am not going to let go and still may post, even though they may be a bit dated.

Today was an invigorating day. It started with me coming to the realization of  what my next huge goal for both me and the school has to be and I began to planning on the next action steps to take towards achieving it. I will share the details of over the next four weeks to five months, depending on how successful I am.

I worked with one of our high school algebra teachers today. I showed her how to use a wiki and how to embed mathematical notation into it, thanks to some help from Darren Kuropatwa. Based upon the ease of use, I have set her up using PBWiki rather than Wikispaces, since it handles the mathematical notation in one step rather than two. I showed her how to use Windows Journal with Jing to create short tutorials to embed into the wiki. It is my hope that she will introduce this to her class and allow them to create the Ultimate Reference Sheet to be used by the students during their final exam. What a novel concept, students collaborating on what the essential lessons were in their algebra class, helping each other review for the final.

I then had the opportunity to work with two groups of seniors in the history electives on their final projects. The first was the group I worked with on Monday, which was the subject of my last post. Today, they used Google Presentations to import all of their PowerPoint files that the three groups had created and began to individually edit them. Their project is to take a look at the events which may result in long term closures, such as tornadoes,  epidemics, or acts of terrorism. They are examining the issues from a national, state, local, and school community perspective. Their goal is to be able to present their findings, which include strategies on how to deal with these emergencies, so that school could continue as normally as possible, to some of the adults in charge of planning with these contigencies. Once completed, I hope to share their final presentation.

The second group of seniors are in a psychology class. Using the model of Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, the students are creating digital stories which they are going to share the significance of their lives as they prepare for the next part of their journey, graduation and matriculation in a college or university. I answered a few technical questions and both the students, teacher of the course, and I added to the supporting wiki we are using for the project. I am looking forward to seeing the outcome of their projects and will share when completed.

I next worked with a third grade teacher who is creating a blog to support his North Shore Names, a series of audio projects he and his students have been doing for the past two years. While the blog is still being tweaked, it presents a wonderful example of the type of research that students can do and the types of projects that they are capable of producing. This year, the students created stories to be sent to Moshi, Tanzania, by our seniors who are going to do a service project that there. This is the culmination of a service project that they begain 18 months ago after reading Greg Mortenson’s  Three Cups of Tea. We are fortunate to have Greg coming to campus one week from today and I look forward to meeting him once again. As the teacher said upon my leaving, “It is good to work on a project once again.” Yes, it has been too long.

And what did I do in my spare time you ask, well I taught my programming class and began researching for and planning on creating some VoiceThread tutorials that we will be kicking off for our AP US History class next week. More on that next week. I also attended our Lower and Middle School band and chorus concert Morning Ex (assembly) and faculty meetings in the afternoon. So yes, I have a reason to feel tired and worn down today.

But it is a good tired.

This morning, I found out that one ideas that  I planted last spring emerged and took root. At that point in time, I was brainstorming about unit ideas for one of our senior history electives, US Government. The teacher and I thought it would be interesting to have the students to begin to brainstorm and create contingency plans for a prolonged school shutdown due to a natural or man-made disaster, such as a tornado or earthquake. This teacher, who spent 20+ years in the Naval reserves was excited, as this approach fit his natural approach to problem solving.

On Friday of last week, he shared a memo that he had requesting for the opportunity for the group of students to present their findings to groups of adults in charge. He passed it along to me saying that he wanted to follow up more today.

This morning, he came into my office. During our conversation, we talked about how the students should model the approach that they were suggesting in their small group work and use one of the collaborative tools to construct their presentation, such as a wiki, Google Presentation, or Google Docs. I shared the strengths and weaknesses of each of the tools with him. I also asked if I could come into his class and share my thoughts. He agreed and asked if I could come the last period today.

He dropped off their research papers and drafts of their solutions. I scanned through the solutions that they were proposing and I was very impressed with their work. They suggested solutions employing either Web 2.0 solutions or other distance learning environments, such as YouTube, Second Life, or Moodle to facilitate education in case of a long term shutdown. They suggested the creation of a series of recorded content from teachers that could be posted. A few also suggested the use of conferencing tools such as Elluminate in order to have groups come together in virtual space at the same time to conduct their learning.

In meeting with the class, it was interesting to note that other than using a wiki for either their US History class or AP US History class, that many of them did not know about Skype, uStream, or collaborative applications such as Google Docs or Presentations which may provide the ability to solutions to the problems they were examining. Modeling the use, I showed them how to create a uStream broadcast which Arvind Grover was kind enough to join in. I would post it, but I accidentally deleted the file rather than save it. But my message was heard.

I spoke about the challenges of making sure that all faculty and students have tools (computers and Internet access) so that they could use the tools. I talked about how it was important to have a way to communicate to where people should go  in case of such a closure. We talked about creating a solution that would be flexible to adapt to upgrades in software and be scalable. I also spoke about the need to teach both students and faculty how to use the tools. We also talked about the need to create both synchronous and asynchronous solutions, to allow for a blended learning environment.

Underlying their papers and my conversation was how would teachers adapt to the new media. Having created a presentation for the K12 Online Conference last fall, I am personally aware of the challenges of creating an asynchronous . We didn’t talk about the fact that these shifts are those which are currently beginning to support teaching and learning for tomorrow, without the need of a extended closure to shift us today.

I look forward to seeing what happens as they complete the project over the next week. I am glad that I am allowed to be part of the process and I look forward to continuing to provide expertise and guidance if needed.

For those interested, I have included my Google Presentation that I created for the class.