Chromebooks in the math classroom

For me, as a former English Language Arts teacher, I did not have any trouble imagining the power of the Chromebooks for writing and editing in a collaborative classroom environment.  But when I heard that the devices would be used in the math classrooms, I had no idea where to even start.

Our 8th grade math teacher here at the Magnet is excited to have the Chromebooks in her classroom but needed some help in finding apps, extensions, activities and the like that would enhance her sound instructional practices.  Lucky for me, there is this thing called YouTube which houses Google Hangout recordings, made by tech-savvy educators from around the globe, who talk about and show their viewers all of the cool things they are doing with the Chromebooks.

Take, for instance, the vid I found below.  Yes, it is 48 minutes long, but this one video contains a volume of helpful information for the middle school math teacher who has just been handed 30 Chromebooks.  Do not bother with the first 3 minutes of the recording -- there are long introductions, technical difficulties, and sounds of babies or small children in the background audio at times -- or with the long stretch in the middle (see item 6).  Skip straight to about 3:00 to start.  Some highlights, in order of appearance:

1. (3:00-10:20) Google Draw for:
 * math projects, posters, starter activities, collaborative assignments, student accountability using revision history tool, templates, graph paper
2. (10:21-11:20) Movenote (Movenote.com), Google app:
* These are "presentations with emotion"; recorded at students' desktops; saved and shared via email; examples and tutorials for Chromebook use of this app on movenote.com
3. (12:03) Daum equation editor, an extension available on Chrome web store
4. (15:00) Interesting discussion on problems and solutions of implementation of Chromebooks in math classroom
5. (17:54) Ideas for assessments of math concepts, such as triangle congruences.  This is very cool. The author of fishing4tech.com discusses and shows his students' proofs of understanding on this website. Link: www.fishing4tech.com/triangle-congruences.html
6. (23:00-37:20) The participants discuss at length the problems and solutions of giving Chromebooks to teachers and students without training.
7. (37:20) Brief mention of Scoot and Doodle , a collaborative drawing tool to use with Google Hangout.
8. (40:20 - 43:40) Socrative for exit tickets. Participant refers to Mathy Cathy, a teacher with a blog and great ideas for math teachers. Follow her on Twitter: @mathycathy
9. (43:40) The Chrome extension, Lucid Chart, a tool to create the ubiquitous thinking maps and flowcharts we know and love.

Ideas for Chromebooks in the Middle School Math Classroom

Lavanda Wagenheim is the IB Coordinator for the Tuscaloosa Magnet School - Middle.  Connect with her on Twitter, where her handle is @ELavanda.