I got the chance to read an article reviewing the TI-nspire technology.  This is a classroom tool that allows the teacher to not only project a calculator screen for the class to see, but also to save notes and move graphs by hand.  Notes and graph manipulation are what make the biggest between the TI-nspire and a TI-84.  The TI-nspire has more capabilities than a TI-84 because it has computer software connections.  The review was very helpful because it was from an actual teacher, relating her experience with the technology in the classroom.  I appreciated her giving the advantages and disadvantages of using this and other types of technology.  She cautioned using this wonderful tool too much and thereby skimming over some of the needed process of learning.

Title: ReTI-nspire: Math and Science Learning Technology
Author: Liz Berrimann
Journal: Mathematics in School

This is my video from a website tool called VoiceThread. The basic premise is allowing the user to record his/her voice and have it play during the slide show. VoiceThread was very user friendly and so it didn't take me long to figure out. One thing that I wish would have been different is the drawing tool. When I drew the lines would disappear after a few seconds which made it difficult to solve the different math problems that I wanted to. VoiceThread is really nice though in that it allows viewers to comment on each of the slides with either a voice recording, text box, or drawing tool. This makes the slide show interactive and useful for questions and answers. My VoiceThread is about finding triangles at a baseball ballpark. Feel free to take a look at it and comment on the different pages as you go. Once you're finished click here to see how much you learned.

Well, my experience with Trailfire had its ups and downs.  Overall I would say that I like the idea of Trailfire a lot, but it had its kinks.  A big problem that I encountered came when I made my trail on my laptop and then tried to open it in the education computer lab.  There were some things missing and the trail had some glitches.  I think that that has worked itself out, but it makes me nervous to assign Trailfire someday because students might have big problems with it. Again, I like what Trailfire tries to do, especially for work in an elementary classroom.
The first half of my trail takes you through using the trig functions. There is some solving of equations that have the trig functions in them as well as solving word problems involving right triangles. The second half of the trail is about the unit circle. It has you graph degrees and radians on a unit circle as well as solve equations using the unit circle.