Sometimes This Stuff Still Amazes Me

Just a quick post to note that I still find my own personal networked world to be pretty fascinating and amazing. Yesterday I was talking with my wife about a homework assignment Abby had in math where she needed to gather some data. So I threw together a quick Google Form, posted on my blog, and tweeted it out.

Very quickly the responses started coming in, mostly from Twitter I suspect because I doubt that many folks had seen the post at that point. (Next time I may add a question about where they found out about the survey just to confirm that.) About a day later we now have 299 responses (as of this writing) from 43 states and 18 countries (counting the U.S.). (You can see the results embedded in that post.)

Now this particular survey and this particular post are nothing earth-shattering, but it again reminds me of how different the world is from when I was growing up; how easy it is to connect with others around the world, and certainly how easy it is to gather data via Google Forms, a blog and Twitter. While I certainly still need to do a lot of thinking about how best to utilize this capability in meaningful ways, I think we all as educators need to be constantly asking ourselves the question, "What can we do now (that is relevant and meaningful for students) that we couldn't do before?"

Abby playing guitar for Grandma via Skype.

Trivia Survey for a 4th Grade Math Lesson

If you have a moment, please take this short survey (also embedded below). It should take about 2-3 minutes. It's a little contrived as you will only answer some of the questions as there are age requirements in order to manipulate the results to have a different number of responses for each question (this is going to be an intro to percents).

Feel free to take this whenever you read this, but Abby needs her results by Tuesday, March 9th. Thanks in advance.

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Results

What Are Your Best Pre-Algebra Websites?

My Math Department is building a website with resources to help incoming (and existing) freshmen with some of the math skills that will help them be successful in high school mathematics. At this time, they are focusing on three areas:

• Fractions (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing)
• Integers (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing)
• Order of Operations

We would really appreciate it if you would share websites (either explanatory or skills practice, or both) that you think are helpful for students in these areas. If you have a website you think would be really helpful that doesn't fall into one of these areas, feel free to add that as well, as they hope to expand on this site in the future.

If you'd like to contribute, please fill in the following form. The results will automagically update below the form. Thanks for your help.

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Diigo Ideas: Results from my Earlier Post

I posted a couple of weeks ago asking how you used Diigo instructionally, and asking folks to complete a Google Form to share how they used it. Here�s a quick-and-dirty Google Site I created for a brief lunchtime staff development session on it. It includes the embedded results from the Google Form in that previous post. (Note: that Google Form is still active, so you can still add to the results.)

How Do You Use Diigo Instructionally?

I asked a couple of weeks ago about Google Forms and the response was so great, I figured why not ask about Diigo?

Do you use Diigo instructionally? If so, I'd appreciate you sharing that information via this Google Form, it will only take a couple of minutes at most. Feel free to share a description of how you're using it, including any links to blog posts, wikis, etc. that demonstrate how you're using it. You can also optionally include your name and email address if you don't mind being contacted by folks having additional questions (I will be sharing the results on the web, so please keep that in mind before clicking submit).

You can, of course, also leave information in the comments to this post so that everyone can see it immediately as well (although it would be great if you would also add them to the Google Form so I have them in one place). Thanks in advance for anything you're willing to share.

Update from the comments: We are doing a show this Saturday on Classroom 2.0 LIVE about the new features on Diigo v. 4 with Maggie Tsai, Miguel Guhlin and Russ Goerend. The focus will be on using Diigo instructionally and I'm sure there will be lots of sharing in the chat room and via the mic in the Elluminate session. We will announce your survey during the session and invite people to contribute to it. We'd love to have you and your readers join us to participate in the conversation/presentation. Saturday, October 31, 9:00am PDT, http://live.classroom20.com for additional information and login link.

How Do You Use Google Forms Instructionally?

Do you use Google Forms instructionally? If so, I'd appreciate you sharing that information via this Google Form, it will only take a couple of minutes at most. Feel free to share a description of how you're using it, including any links to forms, blog posts, wikis, etc. that demonstrate how you're using it. You can also optionally include your name and email address if you don't mind being contacted by folks having additional questions. (It's possible I'll share this info out at some point beyond my staff, so keep that in mind before clicking submit on the form.)

You can, of course, also leave information in the comments to this post so that everyone can see it as well (although it would be great if you would also add them to the Google Form so I have them in one place). Thanks in advance for anything you're willing to share.

Update: Here are the results.