Glog Reflection

This was one of those assignments that was cool in concept but not in practice. We had to make an online "poster" type thing called a Glog. It's really hard to explain, if you've ever messed around with any photoshop type program, it makes more sense. I could basically describe it as an online scrapbook page experience: lots of little images and whatnot to play around with for effect. When I started, I got really excited to get all creative up in this bitch, but as I got deeper into trying to put the damn thing together I got frustrated. I dont know what was wrong with this website, but I had to keep reloading the page because the flash sucks. Maybe thats why it's still in beta, I dont know, but I spent more time waiting for the page to reload, or load, or wonder why the entire thing was just white. I basically had everything I wanted to put on it all ready, screen shots, text etc. The problem was the actual functioning of the flash. It loads super slow and half the time when I left the page for a different tab, to take a screenshot and whatnot, it caused the glog I was working on to crash. Thank goodness for the autosave or I would have been screwed seven million times over. I was ready to bash my face into my keyboard by the end of the night, I just wanted it done. I eventually had to open glogster in Safari and it worked better, but it was frustrating that it wasn't compatible with Chrome. And even then, it took forever to upload my images. I would love to try this again of the flash worked correctly. So you can go check out this "masterpiece" by clicking the following link 

-->Coordinate Glog<-- 

If I had more patience with the internet and flash, it's be SO much prettier. But hey, it gets the job done I suppose. Yay graphs....... yeish.

Cups and Beans

So this week in class we practiced one of the more fun ways to teach the basics of algebra, what my professor calls Cups and Beans. It's a great way to show you need to keep the problem "balanced," that whatever you do to one side to solve the problem, you need to do to the other. You set up cups and beans on a "scale," cups are x, black beans are positive while green are negative. I'll use the given sample problem x-3=-7

You start with setting up the problem:

Next, you determine what needs to be added or taken away to isolate x, in this case, +3 to cancel out the -3 on the cup side. When adding the beans, you need to add one bean to each side simultaneously, one bean in each hand:

Here's the problem with the +3 added to each side:

When you add a positive 3 to a negative 3 you get 0, so the next step is to pair the beans and remove the zero's:

The final step is to simply solve for x:

Here are a few more examples

x+4=-6

This one is a bit simpler, you dont have to add anything, just take away the same amount of positives from each side

x+5=8

It makes more sense when you practice yourself, and its more fun the more you do it. This particular method was review to me because I learned it in the first portion of the class I took last semester, but it's still as much fun as I remember. I really do think this helps understand algebra better. I even showed it to my mom, and her reaction was "Ahhhh, fun with math!" So there you have it. Cups and Beans

First Post About..... Me?

Whoever thought a math class would require such a literary themed assignment. Writing and math. Oh, joy. My two favorite things to do. At least this makes the class WAY more interesting than your typical math lecture. So, to begin, I'll talk a little about myself (because I don't do that enough in class). I'm a 20 year old (soon to be 21, yay) college student finishing my last semester at OCC before transferring to U of M Dearborn in January, something I'm very proud of, and would never have dreamed for myself back in high school. I'll be going for my Bachelors Degree in Elementary Education with Early Childhood, minor in Language Arts (or reading, or both I suppose). That will make me able to work with infants up to 5th grade. I would also like to get a masters in High School Language Arts WAY later on. For now I'm also working at a daycare in Rochester Hills, and though the traffic and drivers out there drive me insane, as do some of the kids sometimes, I love my job. It makes me sad I'll have to leave once I transfer, due to needing a full time student status to stay on my step-dads dental insurance, and to get scholarship money. I'm glad I can work somewhere thats related to what my futre goals are. Ideally I want to teach Kindergaren or Preschool. I also want to move to Arizona.