Two new Learning Tools available

The Ministry Digital Resources Development team is delighted to announce that two new apps, Money by Mathies and Notepad by Mathies, are now available at the App Store, the Google Play Store and for Desktop.  

Please visit www.mathies.ca/LearningTools.php to access them.  

There is also an email list that you can subscribe to if you would like to receive updates about new resources.  Visit http://oame.on.ca/CLIPS/WhatsNewEmailList.html or click the link at the top of the What’s New dialog inside http://mathclips.ca .

The Money by Mathies app allows students to represent values using realistic coin and bill images provided by the Royal Canadian Mint and the Bank of Canada.

  

The Notepad by Mathies app allows annotations to be made on top of blank, lined, isometric or grid backgrounds.

Supports, including wiki pages with sample screen shots, can be accessed using the i button in each app or from http://mathclips.wikispaces.com/MathCLIPS+Tools . 

Representations of Linear Growing Patterns Cluster Launched

It is with a lot of pleasure that I am able to announce the launch of a new cluster of CLIPS.

Representations of Linear Growing Patterns is based on research conducted by Ruth Beatty at the Institute for Child Studies in Toronto. Although it does not flesh out the experiences that students would have in Grades 4-6 with concrete materials, it certainly alludes to them. Students take pictorial representations, based on coloured tiles, of a pattern and develop graphical representations and algebraic rules. They then explore the role of the constant and multiplier in the pattern rules. One Near North teacher blogged about the change it made in her understanding and about her experience trying it in her classroom.

Among the material created for the cluster are a graphing tool and an open-ended tool to explore the relationships between the representations, including stories and the algebraic equation. The graphing tool is described carefully in Clip 2, Activity 4: Practice Graphing. The Rainbow DSB is conducting a "book study" of this cluster. I hope that soon we can feature some innovative ways to use the Exploring Representations tool resulting from their work. I am hoping to engage the Web 2.0 math teacher community to address the question "What can we do with this?".



The cluster movie is quite different from the "Who Cares?" movies developed for Fractions and Periodic Functions. The overview movie, which should be viewed after working through the development, summarizes the cluster nicely.

There are several improvements to the CLIPS "wrapper", including the ability to set a volume level or mute that is respected throughout navigation and a new scene selector. The major videos can be viewed fullscreen without downloading a huge source file. Trish Steele narrates a new 12-minute introduction to the wrapper that is well worth the time.

Since the activities are primarily flash animations (SWF) with embedded narration, the files are relatively big. The design of CLIPS does not depend on any server technology. Teachers or students who wish to use the activities, but don't want to depend on an internet connection, can download the entire thing and point to the index.html file at the root, for local use.

We thought it would be done earlier and there are still some rough edges (please use the Feedback link at the top right to record anything that you notice) but we are very happy to now have the work officially in circulation.