Monday, July 21, 2014

#July2014Challenge: Google Auto Awesome

Yesterday while in the middle of a Google search I noticed my Google bell flashing, meaning that I had a Google notification.



This rarely happens, so I went to check it out and was presented with the movie below.


Very little information was available about this movie, but it did indicate that it was created by Google Auto Awesome.  I was immediately amazed, flattered, and a bit confused.  I had recently posted my daily blogpost about modeling with trig functions, and this movie had taken all of my pictures from the blogpost and animated them!  I wondered if someone had read my blogpost and made the movie using Google Auto Awesome.  It was an intriguing idea, kind of like having a secret admirer!  But surely if this was the case then I should be able to figure out who made the movie.

After about two minutes of searching I realized that my secret admirer was in fact Google.  Auto awesome can automatically take a series of photos and make an animated .gif file.  This webpage gives more details and says you will receive a notification if Google automatically makes a video for you.  This really is both awesome and amazing!  If you use Blogger to create your blog then all of the photos you upload to the blog will also be copied into your Google Photos page.  I can't tell you why Google chose the photos from my most recent blogpost to make an Auto Awesome video, but I suspect it has something to do with the photos already being on my Google Photos page.  You can make your own Auto Awesome videos if you have an Android device.

A big thanks to Google for giving me an awesome video (automatically), and for making my blogpost for the day so easy.  While we're on the topic of awesome, below is a short list of awesome resources that I have used recently as my district transitions to Common Core.

Phillips Exeter Academy math teaching materials.  These are updated yearly by the math teachers.  If you ever have a chance to attend a summer institute, I highly recommend.  

Mathematics Assessment Project MARS website.  Check out the tasks if you want to learn more about assessment, and the lessons if you want to learn more about math pedagogy or instructional strategies.

Emergent Math Problem Based Curriculum Maps.  These align to the Common Core Standards and are organized using the Pearson Foundation Pacing Guides.

Illustrative Mathematics.  Also aligned to the Common Core Standards, and are easily searchable.

Clovis Unified School District SBAC math page.  They have organized all of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) released test items by claim.  The released performance tasks are under claim 4.  There are four items for grade 11 and three items for grade 8.

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