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Saturday, September 15, 2012

Entering Math Equations into Edmodo

One of my favorite twitter math teachers, @druinok, mentioned Edmodo the other day and one of my favorite companies, Discovery Education, actually uses it to easily facilitate discussions among its leadership council.  I had explored quickly glanced at Edmodo before and didn't see how it would work for my dual enrollment math class that is packed with, at times, ugly equations.  There was no obvious "ENTER YOUR EQUATION HERE" buttons and I didn't readily see how it would be possible to type in problems that were properly formatted for student quizzes.  In desperate need of finding something to help pull my class together, I revisited Edmodo last night. We have been in school for 5 weeks and I have collected many assignments electronically.  In that time I have had students who were absent (and some did not join us until 2 weeks in and now are going back to complete missed work!!!)  This past week, I have attempted to chase down missing assignments stored in numerous locations around the web; while I have my class website with specific assignments on specific dates, I still feel a bit disjointed as I run reports from a plethora of quiz generators.  To further add to my feelings of the class getting away from me,  half of the students I teach are not in my district, so I do not have an online gradebook for the kids to monitor their progress in the course or recognize when they have a missing assignment.  Since my students are from different ends of the state (about 3 1/2 hours apart), the collaborative aspect of Edmodo appealed to me.  I had heard so many great things about the social aspect of Edmodo that I wanted to check it out again and see if I could make it work.
But how do you add equations to Edmodo's quiz???? I worked diligently last night and finally gave up around 3AM this morning, only to wake up with Edmodo still on my mind.  After a leisurely cup of coffee and a late breakfast, I tackled it again.  It is amazing how much clearer one's mind is after a little sleep.  Umm..how about googling it?

Oh yeah, great idea!  There were a few articles:)  After checking out the first result, I quickly had my answer...you CAN add equations to the Edmodo quiz!!!
Here's how:

Vision Objects' converter can be used to transform equations written in your own hand writing into a LaTex format that is recognized by Edmodo's Quiz creator; you only need to add [math] at the beginning of the equation and [/math] at the end.  You can see from the video that it is really quite easy!
So, fingers crossed, Edmodo will help me regain order to my class of 40 new friends:)

4 comments:

  1. Thank you! This was VERY helpful. I have been going crazy trying to figure out how to add equations to quizzes.

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  2. Helped the entire math department at our school! You rock.

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  3. You rock Brice for not only finding it and sharing the info with your department, but also for encouraging me. Thanks for the sweet comment. Glad you found the post useful.

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