Website For Students

For class, we needed to create a website that covered one our academic standards. I found this project very interesting and fun. I am surprised at how many online resources available for math. I have found that YouTube will be a very useful resource for me and my future students. The YouTube user, patrickJMT, I would recommend watching his videos on a variety of math topics. I know that for the site I did not use any of his videos, but they were videos that I discovered after I had already created the site. Feel free to click here for the basic website that I created as a possible teaching tool. This is just a starter site. I hope and plan to modify the site so that it is more intriguing and professional for my teaching career.

Skipping Class

When the discussion of data came up in class, we had to come up with a survey related to education. So for my survey I decided to cover the topic of skipping class. I surveyed a handful of my friends from high school and current college students. The results yielded allowed me to create these graphs using Microsoft Excel:

The following is a brief explanation that I used in a survey report for another assignment: “…here we can see that guys are most likely to skip English class than any other class and that girls are more likely to skip science…”

Here I used the inner circle to represent the male respondents and the outer circle to represent the female respondents. The analysis: “…and more guys said that they wouldn’t skip class based on the given circumstances to skip. However, for the purposes of this survey we will include good weather as their main reason to skip class. The two main reasons for girls to skip a class would be on bad weather days or if they had a rough weekend.”

Finally, with the last graph, I commented, “Good to see that guys were typical and the main reason for not skipping class would be for a possible date. For the female respondents, their main reason for not skipping class is if the professor makes class fun.”

After looking over these graphs for a few minutes I made a few observations for current and future teachers from the survey results, “If your student is absent, and is a male, you’re an English teacher, there’s good weather that day, and nobody in class he’s crushing on…chances are he’s skipping. On the other hand, if your student is absent, and is a female, you’re a Science teacher and not very entertaining with some bad weather…chances are she’s skipping.”

I found this surveying to be interesting. I even decided to modify the original survey to collect more results on the subject of skipping class. Those results are still pending at this time, but be expecting them in the near future.

Use of Concept Map in Math

For my class, we will be discussing and working on the order of operations. For the lecture, I will be using a concept map to help as a visual for students. The concept map will have the order starting at the top with parentheses and on down. The first sub links will list the acronym PEMDAS: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction).  The last two branches will have an example problem, where the students will work out the problem in the space provided and a place to put their answer. The concept will be a good tool for students to see the Order and then work out some problems on their own using the map as a guide.

 For the discussion, we will start out by watching the video from YouTube that has made the acronym into a song.  I feel that the song will be entertaining and helpful to the students for remembering the order. There are two links that will serve as more explanations or practice of the material. The first one under the Exponents will take the students to a site that goes over exponents more and the different ways exponents can appear.  The other link, under the Addition or Subtraction will allow me to go to a site where I can print off more practice work for the students. This is if I feel they could use more practice. The link under Multiplication and subtraction will take students to a site where they can test their skill level over multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction.  After the students have completed that, they can print off their results to see which areas they need to work on. The link under Parentheses is a very good interactive game for the students to take what they have learned from the lesson and try to compete with other classmates. 

lllllllllllllllllllllllllll Theorem

After looking over the teaching standards, I came across one standard that was unknown to my educational experience; "State, prove, and use De Moivre's Theorem." After a moment's pause, I took a few deep breathes and ventured to the mysterious realm of Google in search of De Moivre's Theorem. Following the click of the search button, I came across a theorem more fierce than I had ever experienced. It was the De Moivre's Theorem. For those of you still reading along and need to...


If the complex number z= r(cos a + sin a), then

Which as I scroll down the page I find that:

If  z = r (cos a + sin a), and n is a natural number, then

Horrified by the events that had unfolded, I felt faint, sick, and a little hungry. I became very dizzy, and my head and computer desk came together with a thud. 

Thank you, Cliff Notes, for the theorem and pictures. For information on the theorem: Yay!