Free Online Casio How-to’s & Content Focused lessons – Great Personal Learning Resources

I am clearly on a ‘what should you do with your summer’ kick, if you look at my previous two posts. But – my belief is that summer, while a time for fun and relaxation, is also a time to brush up on some skills you may be lacking or things you want to learn, find new ideas for the classroom….basically, use the time to foster your own personal learning.

This learning doesn’t need to be expensive, it doesn’t need to be long – it’s all about improving skills or learning new ones. With that said, I thought I would remind all of you, whether you are a teacher, a student, or a parent of a student – if you want to brush up on your Casio calculator skills, we have a lot of free online tutorials and how-to’s that might fit the bill. In my interactions with teachers, I am often asked if we have ‘tutorials’ so that the teachers can support all those students coming to class with Casio calculators (because they are more affordable and much more intuitive to use).  The answer is yes!

In this post I am just going to share some links to our free online resources, and highlight a couple of the videos here as well.

Casio Education has a Youtube Channel where we post previous webinars (so these are longer and actual ‘lessons’), shorter how-to’s, and some quick reference videos and overviews as well. Here’s the link to the Casio YouTube Channel.

A couple highlights here:

Here is an example of a short look at the fx-9860 Stat menu:

Here is a much longer lesson with the Casio Prizm on families of functions:

There are also Prizm specific guided tours at this link.

And I have my personal YouTube channel where I do comparisons and how-to’s on the different calculators, so there might be something of interest there as well.

Here’s a quick how-to using the fx-991 Scientific Calculator to solve systems of equations (and use the QR code):

So – if you have a spare 10 minutes or a spare hour, there’s something for you and we will continually add to these so come back often!

Summer Vacation – Use Your Experiences to Create Engaging Lesson Ideas

Sea Turtle at the Big Island, HI. How long do they live? How far do they travel??

I know most students and teachers this time of year are very familiar with Alice Cooper’s song “School’s Out for Summer”  (Seniors are probably focused on the line “school’s out forever….”  Maybe even some teachers!)  No doubt, summer is a time of rejuvenation for students and teachers – a much needed break, both mentally and physically. Note: Those of you who do not teach, and see teachers as having it ‘easy’ with the summers off, might try to spend some time in a teachers shoes before making those ridiculous assumptions, or read up a bit on what teachers actually do (they work more than 40 hours per week) and why summer breaks are so important.

Summer break is fast approaching for many, and some may have even started theirs. I remember those first couple of weeks literally not wanting to even look at anything related to school, students, or teaching. But – as most teachers will attest to, there comes a point where summer vacation weaves into professional learning or preparing for the next school year to begin. We never really turn off completely – we take classes to learn something new, or research some new technology or applications we want to try in class next year, or we revamp some lessons from the previous year. Summer vacation always ends up, at some time or other, connected back to teaching and learning – either personally for our own professional growth, or related to how we can be even better the next school year for our new group of students.

For me personally, everything I do always has me thinking of ways to create an interesting lesson for my students. It’s that pervasive idea that whenever possible, connecting the real world back to what students are learning will make the learning engaging and relevant. Just last week, sitting on the beach in Sea Isle City, NJ, watching this big machine out in the water that was dredging sand to replenish Avalon Beach, all I could think about were questions I would want my students to investigate.  Just a few of my questions, as I sat there:

• How much sand is being pulled up? Is it from the same spot (my observation, since the dredge is in a different location each day, is that no it is not)
• What happens to the sea animals and plant life that are ‘dredged’ up with the sand? Or, is there a filter that only allows sand in?
• What are the impacts on the sea life?
• How many hours a day do the dredges run? (seems like 24 hours to me!)
• How long does beach replenishment last? (if you don’t have any storms to wash it all back to sea) How long does it take to replenish a beach?
• How many pounds of sand is needed and where do they place the sand?

Lots of questions just from sitting and watching. What a great #STEM lesson this would be for students – there’s math, there’s science, there’s engineering and there’s definitely technology – it’s quite the endeavor. There is probably a ton of data out there and information about sand restoration projects, so you could have students researching, doing the math, checking out the science, investigating the machines used and the manpower needed. I did an initial search and found a couple articles already where I learned things like the grain size of the sand determines where the dredge pulls sand from (has to match the beach they are replenishing).  Pipelines are created to carry the sand from the dredge to the beach (so, how big are those pipelines? What happens after they ‘finish’ – do the pipes get removed?) Sometimes this is done to protect sea life, often times to protect commercial and residential properties, so this then begs the questions such as what’s the cost (money wise and to the environment), who benefits, what are the potential dangers and damage (to environment/sea life, etc). Here’s just a few articles I found.

• Beach Replenishment
• Beach Nourishment
• Beach Reclamation

My point here is not to give you a lesson on beach restoration. Instead, my point is that I was just sitting on the beach, enjoying my vacation, and saw the

Two clear streams in Costa Rica that when they meet, the chemicals in them react and turn the water blue. Why

machinery and started thinking. Posing questions. Realizing that there could be an amazing #STEM lesson here, which got me excited and doing research and yes – vacation or not – planning for teaching.  I think it is a natural tendency as a teacher to see a ‘lesson’ pretty much anywhere we go, which is what I want to emphasize here. Even on vacation, if you have a great idea based on something you are doing or seeing, some idea you think would be an engaging lesson, go with it. Take some pictures. Write down some ideas. Do some research. Use your own experiences and ‘time off’ to discover teaching ideas and spark your own enthusiasm for the next school year. Bring your vacation into your classroom and build relevant, real-world, multi-content lesson ideas that will spark student engagement, questioning, critical thinking and problem-solving.

Rethinking Summer School – Equity & Promoting Student Learning

Summer school – I know that it conjures up bad thoughts in most of our minds. Having to go to summer school usually means you failed a course or a grade and you have to make it up.  But – do only the ‘failures’ or the ‘bad kids’ need to go to summer school? Is that what summer school is for? This is what most of us think of when we consider summer school, when in reality, summer school should be a place where all students could go to keep on track, get ahead, or learn some new things. Research shows that the 3-month summer break is often a huge learning set-back for many students, particularly minority students and students living in poverty, causing a widening of the achievement gap, in part because these students are often denied opportunities for summer ‘enrichment’ courses or camps. Summer school options are usually focused on remediation and failures, and not very enticing for students to attend voluntarily, and so we have most students taking a 3 month break from any learning. But what if we approached summer school differently? What if it weren’t a punishment, but rather a place where students were motivated by other students or college student mentors and were engaged in new and interesting topics that kept them learning?

I found this really motivating TedTalk by Karim Abouelnaga, who from his own experiences with school, decided to try to change the way we rethink summer school. It’s not too late, even for this year, for those of you educators out there getting ready for this years summer school to consider making some changes that would make summer school a learning opportunity for all students.

Using Pictures on the Casio Prizm CG-50 Graphing Calculator

I previously wrote a post a while back about the power of using pictures to connect mathematics to the real world. In that prior post I talk about the built-in pictures that already come with the Casio Prizm Calculator (CG-50 and CG-10), and wrote down the steps. With our new model out, the CG-50, I thought I should probably revisit this but make a quick how-to video instead just to demonstrate how easy it is and show off how many pictures are there.

Currently in my online course I am teaching, we are exploring transformations, and creating some real-world dynamic math examples, so Ferris Wheels have come up. Which got me remembering the Ferris Wheel picture that is one of the many available. Keep snowballing my thoughts, and you end up with me thinking of all the possible applications you could do with the calculator just using that one picture – i.e. what is the angle of rotation for one of the cars to ‘move’ onto another? Why are there concentric ‘circles’ as part of the structure of the ferris wheel – is this a strength issue? What is the length of one radius of the Ferris wheel (in real life – how could you calculate this from the picture? Is similarity involved?) Whats the distance between each car (measuring from the point they are attached on the Ferris wheel – so, arc length?)  And this is just one picture!

There are also ‘movies’ within the Picture Plot menu that allow you to see moving objects and plot their path as well, so again, some real-life connections to mathematical concepts right at your fingertips. As the school year is drawing to an end, this is definitely a time when you want to assess if students can make those connections of mathematics to the world around them, so exploring these types of pictures is a great way to engage students and provide them a reason for why they were learning all those math concepts. (Hopefully you were doing that all along as part of the learning process, but never too late….)

Here’s a quick video on how to access the pictures and ‘videos’ on the CG-50 Prizm, though the process is the same for the CG10 Prizm as well. Have fun exploring!

Exam Mode on the Prizm CG50 Graphing Calculator

As my last post stated, it’s that time of year for standardized testing. As part of this, certain states require that students use calculators that have been set to exam mode. This means that certain features of the calculator have been ‘turned off’ or are inaccessible to students while the exam is going on.  I remember spending hours setting all my calculators to exam mode for students and then having to spend hours undoing that once exams were over – quite a pain.

The beautiful thing about the CG50 Prizm graphing calculator is that you never have to undo the exam mode – it will automatically turn off exam mode after 12 hours. Which means, you can set it, students can take their test, and then next day, the calculator is ready to go again with full functionality restored.  Another nice feature is that when the calculator is in exam mode, you can actually see it on the screen – there is a green highlighted border when in exam mode. This makes it easy to walk around and visually check that the calculators are indeed still in exam mode (or were set to exam mode to begin with, if you have your students do the process for you).

I made a quick video on how to put a CG50 Prizm into exam mode. I apologize for the lighting – very hard to film the actual calculator (vs. emulator) while holding my computer video camera…and those shadows?!!  But – hopefully you can get the gist of things!!

Math Fun in San Antonio – NCTM 2017 Annual

Next week is the NCTM Annual Math Conference in San Antonio, TX.  It’s a great time to go to Texas, as the weather hasn’t gotten too hot. I remember the last time NCTM was in San Antonio, when I was still teaching high school, and met up with all my teacher friends. We had such a great time, not only going to different workshops at the conference, but exploring the area (a trip to the Alamo was a must) and eating and shopping along the River Walk. I am going this year as part of the education team for Casio, where there will be a lot of fun to be had at our exhibit booth and sponsored events.  I have been going to NCTM Annuals for over 23 years (what?????), and as usual, I am looking forward to reconnecting with math educators and friends from all over the country, many of whom I only get to see this one time a year. So, it’s more than just a place to learn new ideas and collaborate with like-minded educators, it’s a time to renew friendships and share memories. I certainly am hoping to catch up with as many folks as I can, even if just to share a cup of coffee or a hug as we pass in the conference hall.

Naturally, the goal of attending a conference is to learn new things to bring back to your classroom or to the educators you work with. It’s one of the aspects of these conferences I love the most – the ‘renewed’ energy and excitement that occurs when you see a strategy that you want to take back to your class or you learn a new approach to a familiar concept that you know will resonate with your students, or you find that perfect resource for an upcoming unit. I always consider these conferences as a way to reaffirm why we teach math – seeing what others are doing, sharing stories and ideas, and leaving with at least one or two ideas that are going to spark your students creativity and understanding. For me personally, I always had a key focus (say Algebra, or Geometry or technology or manipulatives) to narrow down the workshops I went to, with the goal to find a few new resources, ideas and strategies to incorporate into my teaching over the summer so that next years classes would be even better. This type of focus helped to make ‘teaching’  a new adventure every year, even if I was teaching the same subjects, and it also made sure that as a teacher, I was always challenging myself to be better and find relevant strategies and multiple ways to help my students learn.

One aspect that I always look for is technology applications and resources. I am a firm believer in the idea that technology, whether it be a calculator, a tablet, a computer, a video, can be a valuable resource to help students both learn and develop mathematical understanding, but more importantly to visualize abstract concepts and explore ‘what if’s’.  I am sure there are many of you out there as well looking for some technology workshops as you attend NCTM this year, so I wanted to share some workshops from some of the amazing teachers that work with Casio, as these are always such great hands-on experiences.

Workshops:

• Thursday, April 6 – 9:30 – 10:30, Room 213AB Conv Center: Exhibitor’s Workshop What’s New At Casio: Viewing Mathematics through a New Prizm (or Two) 

• Thursday, April 6, 3:15 – 4:30, Room 217C Conv. Center: Polar, Parametric, Rectangular Graphs – Really See the Connections! with DeeDee Henderson

• Friday, April 7, 11 – 12:00, Room Presido ABC (Grand Hyatt): Conceptualizing Polynomials with Jennifer N. Morris

• Friday, April 7, 1:30 – 2:45, Room 224 Conv. Center: Conics – The Ugly Duckling of Algebra 2 with Denise Young & Tracey Zak Johnson.

• Friday, April 7, 2:o0 – 3:00, Room 008AB Conv. Center: The Probabilities and Mathematics of “Wheel of Fortune” with Mike Reiners

• Saturday, April 8, 8:00 – 9:15, Room 006D Conv. Center: Hands-on Activities + Technology = Mathematical Understanding through Authentic Modeling with Tom Beatini

We will also be having a fun time at the booth, Thursday – Saturday, playing games, having give-aways, talking and doing mathematics with our hand-held technology, so be sure to stop by and say hi (Booth #631) and come play with math. I will be there most of the time and hope to meet some new math educators and give a hug to old friends!!

The Power of the fx-991EX – It’s Not JUST Solar

I read the Casio Twitter feed and FB feed every day, just to answer questions and see what followers might be saying. Recently there have been some kudos shared about the fx-991EX solar powered scientific calculator that got me curious. In particular. that the fx-991EX does engineering problems so well and they would be lost without it (someone said he uses it in all his higher-ed courses). This was intriguing to me since I assumed engineers, with their complex calculations, would more likely use graphing calculators like the Prizm or ClassPad or even engineering software.  Naturally, I set out to explore some of the ‘engineering’ capabilities of the fx-991EX, since I hadn’t really spent too much time with this aspect of the calculator.

As I refreshed my memory of the menu and capabilities of the fx-991Ex, it kind of boggled my mind how
much this solar-powered scientific calculator can do, and with it’s QR code capabilities, it can even show graphs and printable spreadsheets and tables. (See my previous posts about Graphing & QR code capabilities). After looking a little more closely at all the menu icons and what each does, I understood why this one calculator would in fact be sufficient for engineers, or really anyone. I spent some time playing around with different features that I had not previously explored, and have shared a couple of my explorations in the video below.

For those of you who have not experienced or explored this powerful little calculator, I suggest you do. If you are at NCTM San Antonio this April, stop by the booth and get some hands-on experience, or just explore some of the videos, or download the free 90-day emulator trial and give it a go.  You can access our Quick-Start Guide to get you on your way.