Mendi Benigni

It’s beginning to look like I’m on the advertising team for Google lately given my past blog posts but I have to tell you about one more thing, Google-related, that I ran across that I thought you might find interesting.

This site called 3DVinci, created by Bonnie Roskes, has tons of resources for ways to teach math concepts but the main thing they turned me on to was how to use Google Sketchup to teach geometry concepts.  I’ll be the first to tell you that I stink at math, especially geometry.  I also have a really hard time with visualizing 3D objects.  Going through some of these simple video tutorials offered on their sight opened up a whole new world for me.  I was able to create objects in 3D, not just draw them, and them move them around, see them from all sides.  It was amazing and really very easy.

Google SketchUp is a 3D modeling application that is free and works on both Mac and Windows.  Now if you’re like me you are probably thinking 3D modeling sounds like more than you can get into but trust me when I say it’s not hard to do at all.  While this application can be used to do very detailed 3D renderings of buildings and other objects it can also be used to create basic geometric forms and that’s what is focused on in the 3DVinci tutorials.  There is also a great community of users, many of whom are educators, that can help you through as you’re getting started.

Getting Started

Start off by downloading SketchUp.  Once you do that, you may want to take a quick Getting Started Tour, just to familiarize yourself with the interface.  Then dive straight into Bonnie’s videos.  I started with Creating Easy Tessellations in Google SketchUp.   You’ll have so much fun!

Bonnie and 3DVinci have many other videos posted on YouTube.  Check them out at http://www.youtube.com/user/bonnieroskes and make sure to click the “Show All” link in the right side menu or you won’t see them all.  Here’s a short list of just a few of the lessons on this site:

• Making an Icosahedron
• 2D Tesselation: the Hirschorn Tile
• Divide a Cube into Three Pyramids
• Conic Sections

In addition to the videos there are also pre-created models that you can download and use.

Resources and Links

• Download Google Sketchup
• Self-paced Sketchup Tutorials
• 3DVinci: Free Stuff for Everyone

Tags: education, tlt by benignim
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I have no idea how long some of these things have been in Google Docs but I just discovered them today so I thought I’d pass them on to you.  There has actually be a bunch of features added but these are the things I think may be of the most use (at least to me

• Translate document
  You can now translate an entire document into over 40 languages. Learn more
• Drawings and diagrams
  Create your own drawings and diagrams in Google Docs and use them in your text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. As with the rest of Google Docs, your drawings are auto-saved and you can edit them collaboratively. To get started, open a document and select Insert > Drawing. Learn more
  
• Find and replace toolbar for text documents
  The “Find and replace” feature in the text document Edit menu has gotten a makeover and an upgrade. Now it’s a slick toolbar that sports case matching, whole word matching as well as regular expression-style matching. Learn more
  
• Plus the ever awesome Forms feature but that’s for a later post (mmwa ha ha)

Tags: English, New Stuff, Philosophy, education, tlt by benignim
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Seth Anderson just turned me on to this great link from Penn State.  This page gives you all the formulas you would need to make a great and effective gradebook using Excel. Some of the examples it covers are:

• Summing Up Scores
• Calculating a Numeric Percentage
• Convert Numeric Percentage to Letter Grades
• Weighting Assignments by Points
• Weighting Assignments by Percentage
• Dropping Lowest Score
• Dropping the Lowest Two (or More) Scores
• Keeping the Highest Score
• Keeping the Highest Two (or More) Scores
• Maintaining a Running Grade

Tags: English, New Stuff, Philosophy, education, tlt by benignim
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Are you tired of people sending you files you can’t read, like .pub (Publisher) or .docx (new Word)?  Well I’ve been working with a few free, online file converters that may help you out.   I started looking into these when my husband, Vince, sent me a .pub file that I needed to look at.  Being a Mac user I don’t have access to Publisher so I had to find another way to view it.  Enter Zamzar! Zamzar is a free, online file conversion application and it’s very simple to use.

When you file is finished you will be emailed download instructions.  It really was easy and you don’t even need to sign up for an account.  With the free account you can convert up to 5 files at a time with a maximum file size of 100 MB each.

The cool thing about these conversion programs are that they can convert many file types, such as images, videos, documents/spreadsheets, music, and a few others.  There is a downside however, the return of the converted files is a bit slow.

If you check out Zamzar and you don’t like it, fear not.  There are several other programs that you may like more.  Check out Media Convert (good but with a cluttered interface), Media Converter (audio and video only), and YouConvertIt (doesn’t convert the new Office format, .docx).  I’m sure there’s more but these are the ones I’ve used.

So next time you are sent a file you can’t read consider trying one of these converter programs.  They’re not fast but they work.

Tags: English, Philosophy, education, software, tlt by benignim
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