Check out Edusim and try it out in the classroom or at home.

Edusim is a “3D multi-user virtual world platform and authoring toolkit intended for your classroom interactive whiteboard (but equally powerful on the students laptop or desktop computers !).”

http://edusim3d.com/

http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/math-screencasts.html

or go to http://bit.ly/cWhOgz .

Mathtrain Students featured on Convergemag.com

Or, listen on the November Learning’s iTunes Podcast.

Thanks to students “Bob”, “Billy Billy”, “Jerry” and “Paul”! And thanks to Brian Mull, of November Learning.  We are so excited about this! 

Alan November interviews us:

Talking Student Tutorials with Eric Marcos – Part 1 of 2

Talking Student Tutorials with Eric Marcos – Part 2 of 2

This is always the greatest conference.  This year, I am co-presenting with one of my former students “Jerry”.  We will be discussing and demonstrating our “Kids Teaching Kids” classroom model and student screencasting.

Our sessions:

See you at our sessions.  In the meantime, check out our iTunes Podcast or Mathtrain.TV.

Please come visit us in the TechSmith booth! We don’t work for TechSmith, but they were once again so kind in sponsoring our trip and presentation.  Sadly, our school district and school has never assisted us when we go present our student work.  But thankfully, TechSmith understands.  They paid for us to fly out and stay in Denver to participate in the conference.

Here’s the scoop:

ISTE 2010 Conference, Denver, CO

Wednesday, 06/30/10
1:30PM – 2:30PM
Room 504 (CCC)
Formal Session/Lecture
Sponsored by TechSmith

This session focuses on the positive effects of adopting a collaborative “kids teaching kids” model via student-created screencasts. This collaborative model helped spark student interest and enthusiasm inside and outside of the classroom. Our student-created screencast lessons (also known as mathcasts) have reached a global audience thanks to Alan November, our free Mathtrain.TV web site and our iTunes Podcast.

Actual student-created screencasts will be shown. Attendees will also learn how to create their own screencasts and watch a live student demonstration of the process.
Student, “Bob”, will be co-presenting.

Here is a fast video showing how one can “see” the angle measures in a triangle.

Here is an example I created using my fingers on my iPad and the Pages app.

I think the beginning effects look the most promising. We’ll keep experimenting with the 3D webcam.

The students took a day off from creating math videos to share this video with you.

Percent of a Number

Recorded Live in Santa Monica, CA, during a Skype Call with school
IS 281 – Joseph B. Cavallaro School in Brooklyn, NY.

From Santa Monica, CA to Brooklyn, NY
December 18, 2009

Featuring 7th grader, “Jerry”.

http://screencast.com/t/NDQwOGY4ZWEt

*Revised for ipod/iphone use.

*Re-recorded to play on the iPod/iPhone.

In order to be “allowed” to use this book as a supplement in class, I must have the School Board approve it.  The process sounds simple.  I go to my school librarian, fill-out a form and she forwards it to the school administration.  The administration then probably needs to sign-off on it before forwarding it to the School Board.  No one told me this, but I think the School Board requires or suggests that supplemental books be on display in a public place for at least two weeks.  I only think this is the case because I have seen other books looking for approval go through this display process.

Eventually, the book will be placed onto the Agenda of an upcoming School Board Meeting.  From there, I guess the School Board votes to approve or deny the use of the material.  Once approved, I assume I could finally begin using the resource.

Too bad this process can take the entire time the actual course runs.  It has been about a month and I am getting information that perhaps the book is still in my school on some administrator’s desk – - waiting for a signature.  That puts the book out of my student’s reach for at least another month or so since the book still needs a two-week public display and then approval from a School Board Meeting (which only meets twice per month).

So much for sense of urgency.  I have been patient, but I guess it is almost time to start prodding.  Maybe school officials are fearful of empowering their students?  Obviously, it is not a priority to the school.  But it needs to be a priority for our school and community.  No one is taking the responsibility of teaching and training our students Web/Information Literacy skills.  Many parents/guardians would benefit from this “how to” knowledge of validating and evaluating content from the Internet.  It needs to be a priority for our school to train our students on how to produce better search results and how to deepen their ability for critical thinking.  Using Alan November’s “Web Literacy for Educators” is a great place to start.

You call a number, speak your message, and it gets transcribed for you and sent out to where you requested it to go.  The recipient gets a transcribed message, along with a link to the actually voice message in case they need to listen to it due to a faulty transcribe or something.

You can e-mail people via your voice, send a text or even add to your Google Calendar.  There are other things you can do too, like post to Twitter and WordPress and much more

When you call Dial2Do, a female voice asks what you want done.  This female voice is not as smooth and grand as Jott’s is.  Jott has a much better female voice greeter.  But Jott costs money!

So far, the transcribing has been quick (minutes) and accurate.  Although, it did spell my last name as “Marcus” instead of “Marcos”.  But you can also spell out words for it if you want.

It’s called Duo. The website is http://www.converttotouch.com/index.html .

Here’s an image from their site. You’ll need to go there to watch the video since I couldn’t find an easy way to link that via my iPhone. Tell me if you try this product. I wonder how well it works.

Powered by Jott

It recognized my school math textbook and showed me prices to buy it.  I also enabled it to send me a copy to my e-mail.

The app recognizes “books, DVDs, CDs, and video games sold in the US”.   They state they will cover international products at some point too.

Free iPhone App

It’s free.

(it’s free!)

However, 6th grader “Bob” (not her real name) created this on the spot, with no script and no rehearsal.  It was also her FIRST time ever using Camtasia Studio.  Camtasia Studio is the screen recording software we use.  I thought we should release this as an episode.

*revised for iPod/iPhone

I was invited to present in the TechSmith booth.  It was an amazing experience.  Yeah, I know.  I spoke way too fast.  But hey, I was excited!

Thanks to @loisath New blog post: The Mathtrain @ NECC09 http://bit.ly/tXm09

Jen, Eric, Lois at NECC09

Use this link to read the story if the above one does not work:

http://loisath.edublogs.org/2009/07/11/the-mathtrain-necc09/

6th graders “Ben” and “Jerry” show us a probability example using 2 spinners.

See our related “GEMDAS” video

See our related “Integers” video

Congratulations goes out to one of our favorite Australian techies, Darrel Branson (aka, the ICTGuy and of EdTechCrew.net fame).  He was mentioned in the Washington Post, PC World and MacWorld regarding his Scratch resources!

with 8th grade student, “Matilda”

I composed the music from putting together numerous generic loops in Garageband.

I need to take a survey soon and find which file type is preferred by you.  Here is one specifically for the iPhone and iPod.  Let me know if this version is better, or not necessary since the other mp4 files can easily be converted in iTunes.  Thanks.

Source: Lemay, Laura (1998). SAMS teach yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 days. Indianapolis, IN: Sams Publishing.  By the way, a great resource on Web Literacy can be found in Alan November’s book, “Web Literacy for Educators”:   November, A., (2008). Web Literacy for Educators. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.  Or check out Novemberlearning.com.

This is a remix version with… well, let’s hope you enjoy!

I composed the music from putting together numerous generic loops in Garageband.

By the way, a great resource on Web Literacy can be found in Alan November’s book, “Web Literacy for Educators”:

November, A., (2008). Web Literacy for Educators. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

with 6th Graders “Ruby, Sara and Maxwell”

“Taffy” makes her debut showing us how to find missing angles in a triangle.

Mathtrain Project by Mr. Marcos & his Students at Lincoln Middle School, in Santa Monica, CA.

Google Voice

I’m excited about this!  Google Voice will transcribe my voicemails!

I’ll post more once I figure everything out.

If you are reading this, then I guess the app worked!

I just got a new 3D webcam called, “Minoru 3D Webcam“.  I decided to make my first 3D video a mathcast of course.  It’s silly and really just a demo to see how the 3D effects look.

3D webcam

I think my students will do a better job with this camera.  Stay tuned for future math video lessons in 3D.

Please ignore this episode.  I changed some things and this is a test video.  Thank you.

(originally aired 04/25/08)

(originally aired 02/16/08)

(originally aired 02/16/08)

(originally aired 02/07/09)

(originally aired 01/03/08)

(originally aired 11/27/07)

(originally aired 11/07/07)

(originally aired 10/20/07)

(originally aired 10/01/07)

(originally aired 09/14/09)

(originally aired 09/02/07)

(originally aired 08/24/07)

(originally aired 08/24/07)

*Re-recorded for proper play on the iPod/iPhone.

(originally aired 08/15/07)

(originally aired 08/15/07)

(originally aired 08/14/07)

(originally aired 08/14/07)

We changed the name to Mathtrain.TV with Mr. Marcos.

This is a repeat of Episode 0, our first podcast.  In this show, we briefly introduce you to what the focus of this podcast will be – - namely, student-created mathcasts (video math lessons).  For the most part, Mr. Marcos’ middle school students will be leading the mathcasts via a Tablet PC and Camtasia Studio.

We like the “kids teaching kids” model.  The students are from Lincoln Middle School, in Santa Monica, CA.

(originally aired 08/12/07)