Using Jing and Podcasts as Teaching Tools

I used Jing to create this tutorial to help students recognize distinct patterns when multiplying polynomials so that factoring polynomials will be easier.


When teaching a specific subject, such as math, I like to take 2 days per month and do something different. In this case I would do something that is NOT math related. Usually I like to read poetry and have the students respond or I bring in an art project. With podcasts, assigning fun non-math homework is even easier because I can record myself reading the poem/instructions, asking questions, and giving suggestions. The following podcast is of myself reading a poem and then asking the students their opinion.


The podcast would be accompanied by a typed version of the poem similar to this

The Poet by Jane Hirshfield
"She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by the shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not, she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair-
Let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on."
Moyers, Bill. Fooling with Words. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1999. Print.