New Spelling Feature Preview

We are pleased to announce that a new spelling feature will be added to Math Facts. With the addition of spelling we've decided to change the name from MathFacts to Apps@ASchool.us. You can check out the preview at http://beta.aschool.us/demo/spelling/
Some of the features include

• emailing of student scores and student responses to the teacher
• learning mode which gives them hints about which letters are correct.
• practice mode which allows them to try again if they get it wrong.
• test mode where they can submit there answer only once.
• students will not be able to use the built in spell checker.
• students will not be able to copy and paste to their answer.
• tracking of what the student type. Allowing the teacher to see corrections that the student made.

Exploring Tumblr in the classroom

I have a student that will be out of the country for at least a month and I've been trying to think of ways to easily communicate with him. Here's my latest idea. Some of our assignments in English class we grade together in class so I will just record our grading process with VR+ on my iPod Touch and send it to my Tumblr email address. This should be quick and easy for me. Now to see how effective it will work for my student. He can pick up his assignment as a PDF from the class website and mark it up using Jarnal and then submit it electronically to the class website after he has graded it.

Update: Nov 4, 2010
Initially I thought this was a great idea but after listening to the interaction between myself and the students in the classroom I decided not to go this route. The reason is that I heard to many student names in the background which I thought would not be advisable to be accessible to the general public.

Preposition Activities

Just finished adding two preposition activities to TpT and WorksheetShare.com. A prepositions crossword puzzle and a prepositions word search. The crossword puzzle even comes with an answer key when you purchase it from TpT. I plan on adding an answer key to the word search later. Both activities are designed to go along with the Easy Grammar® series by Dr. Wanda C. Phillips.

If you are not familiar with Easy Grammar® texts they use the prepositional approach combined with effective strategies. I personally have found the text quite effective in the classroom.

New Random Group Generator

I just finished creating a new script that allows you to create random groups of students with the new Random Group Generator.

I received the idea from someone that made a donation through my random student selector script.

Thanks Susan for the idea.

New Server

ASchool.us is in the process of being moved to a new server. If you find that any strange errors please let me know.

Quick Introduction to Freemind

A quick introduction to Freemind, a free open source application used to create mindmaps. Freemind used on Linux, Windows, and the Mac OS.

Shortcut keys
Ins - add new subnode
Enter - add new sibling/neighbor node

This video was created on an eeePC 1000 with EasyPeasy using Freemind 0.9.0 RC6, ffmpeg, Avidemux, and is hosted by Kaltura.

Moodle Scripts Update

I just finished updating the Moodle Math Questions script at aschool.us so that it uses less of the Algebra Notation. This should help reduce the load on the server and help your students pages to load and render faster.

You may also download a pre-made set of Moodle Math Questions at teacherspayteachers.com.