Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Taking Math Outdoors, Part I

Greetings! I have some exciting lesson plans to share with you. During the 2010-2011 school year, several teachers from northwest Ohio have been gathering for what is called the STEM Inquiry Series through NWO (Northwest Ohio Center for Excellence in STEM Education) at Bowling Green State University. Several excellent teachers have been taking a monthly course titled: Taking Math Outdoors, which focuses on bringing mathematics outside through GPS and academically-based geocaching lessons.

These teachers have been working hard, learning how to utilize GPS in their classrooms with their own core content. They have focused on a specific math topic and created relevant lesson plans that can be used today. Here are a few great fractions lessons to wet your appetite!






Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Launch into Educaching with NASA SciFiles

Years ago, NASA put together an educational program for public television called the NASA SciFiles. It did not earn much recognition and only lasted a few seasons, but one episode in particular caught my eye...it's called The Case of the Technical Knockout. It is all about geocaching and how GPS works and it's pretty good. This could be a nice introduction to use with your students before you launch into GPS based lessons. You can follow the link to download an hour long video (which you can show in segments) and the great educator's guide shown below!