United Streaming

http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/studentCenter/index.cfm?cdCode=TE246-E145

The video that I chose to integrate in my unit plan is one that is interesting and will capture my students attention as well hopefully get them excited about learning their multiplication facts.

The video uses real children that are about the same age as my students and it uses interesting dialogue within a game show atmosphere to introduce students to the topic and to walk them through what will be learned. The video also allows and encourages students to use what they already know in order to help them be successfull.

Through my evaluation of the video, I found it to possess the four general areas of importance. The content is mentioned from the beginning so that students know what they will be learning about by watching the video. The instructional design allows students to use math skills that they already acquire in order to help them solve multiplication problems, and it also demonstrates evaluation of the students within the video as well as gives the students who are watching it a chance to display what they have learned through watching the video. One specific reason that I chose this video was that it technically well-done and portrayed. The picture is clear and it shows various angles throughout the video in order to capture the interest of the students while they are watching.

The video focused on the same objective throughout which was helping students to multiply whole numbers. Through the video, students are exposed to strategies that can be used to help them solve multiplication problems.

I definitely think that the implementation of the video will grab the attention of my students and have them excited about learning multiplication.

Video Questions

1. While watching the "Mom Song" video the camera angle changed on average about 6 times in a 10 second time frame. The "Ask a Ninja" video changed many times during a 30 second time frame, I tallied approximately 14 camera angle changes. So about every 2 seconds the camera angle changed to something different.

2. The rule of thirds was more visible in the "Ask a Ninja" video because the scenery in the video allowed you to focus more on teh ninja, whereas in the "Mom Song" video there were more props in the video to view.

3. The shot selection in both videos was important. The shot selection in the "Mom Song" video was primarily important in order to emphasize the reaction of the audience. The shot selection emphasized the dialogue of the ninja during the "Ask a Ninja" video.
I think that kids would be a little more distracted by the ninja video because the the camera angle changed many times in a 30 second time period, but I think that the continuous camera angle change would keep the kids interested because they would never know where the ninja would be on the screen.

4. On the "Ask a Ninja" video, there were two formats in which could view the video: Quicktime and Flash. When I watched the video in the flash format, I was able to watch it instantly when I clicked to view in this format. But when I clicked to watch the video in Quicktime, I had to install the quicktime software in order to view the video.
By watching the video in both formats, I believe that the video was clearer and had less pauses in it when watching it on quicktime. When I tried to watch the video on flash, the video kept pausing every few seconds so I was only able to watch the video in snip its.

Google Groups

http://groups.google.com/group/multiplication-unit-plan?hl=en

The google groups forum would be a great way to collaborate with colleagues and/or even parents. You could let others see what you plan on teaching in the coming weeks and this would be a great way to plan. This forum would also let parents know what is taking place academically in the classroom. I have given the link for my my group page above.

Final Project Progress

So far I have just worked on finding resources to use for my final project as well as completing my rationale. I have found the rationale to be difficult because I have never had to write one this in depth before. So I am worried that it is not done correctly, but I did follow the rubric in order to complete the task. Within my rationale I included what my final project would be about as well as supported it using resources.

I do like the fact that we are required to do specific parts of our final project as homework because it helps to break up the work.

Marco Polo site and EBSCO

Marco Polo site

I did not find the Marco Polo site to be very useful, because the there were a minimal amount of lesson plans to choose from. Plus there were no elementary lesson plans relating to multiplication, which is what I am getting ready to start teaching in math next week, and only one lesson on government.

EBSCO

Before completing this assignment, I was unaware that you could do all of these particular things on the database: create journal and search alerts and a web page. This would have saved me so much time in my EDU 584 class, because I was continuously searching for the same topics and each time I would have to type in the information and/or write it down so that I could look at it again later. I found some really great articles and educational journals that will be helpful in creating my final project pertaining to multiplication in mathematics. One article that I found discusses how to "Learn Multiplication: the Easy Way" plus I found a journal called "Computer and Mathematics with Applications". I would love to use the EBSCO host website with my students in order to help them learn researching skills, and teach them more about how to identify reliable sources of information instead of just focusing on information found on the web.