MathyCathy has the Right Ideas

Cathy Yenca is a middle school math educator and an award-winning blogger. She finds, uses, and shares web tools teachers can implement for students to use on iPads to enhance their learning and increase their motivation. Cathy's blog is designed to provide teachers with a thorough assessment and description of web resources she finds helpful in the classroom. These range from fun math tools for students, such as Kahoot, a free account for teachers to create questions for students to answer and track their points on iPads, to descriptions about the execution of and the positive experience she had with the online state assessment tools for students. This blog may seem a little overwhelming at first glance, but the site layout is very user-friendly. She includes archives, a tweet tracker, links to sites to purchase and download resources that she and others have created, and lists of recent posts. 

One of the more interesting highlights of her blog is that she incorporates screenshots of student work and videos that they have helped create in her math classroom. By seeing evidence of the success, other teachers may feel more confident about implementing a new tool in the classroom. 

Screenshot of student work that Cathy Yenca posted on her blog. Students were required to use an app called Explain Everything where they showed their work and narrated their steps using an audio recorder built in the iPad.

Although my classroom is not 1:1, I still believe that many of the resources she has found could be beneficial for students, even at the high school level. I could periodically check out iPads from the library and have students use the Kahoot app to answer questions I create. They could compete against one another or themselves to track their points and earn a place in the top 5. I could also incorporate the Desmos graphing calculator to help my students prepare for the upcoming online state assessment, TNReady. By incorporating just a few tools, I am already exposing my students to more than they have seen before. All strategies, even small ones, are important. Cathy Lenca does an excellent job of communicating to teachers about what works in the classroom and what pushes her students to never stop learning. She acknowledges others who work hard alongside her by embedding Twitter conversations and comments left by teachers. Her level of organization and effectiveness in the classroom sets a high standard for teachers and students.