How to Make a Number Line in PowerPoint

Making a nice number line in PowerPoint is quick and easy - it should only take about 10-15 minutes. These instructions are really just a frame for learning a few neat formatting tricks that will make using PowerPoint for graphical interfaces like posters (or even presentations!) a snap.

The first thing is to "Insert" a "Shape" (in this case a line) and choose the color, thickness, and other effects using "Format" in "Drawing Tools".
To make sure the line is straight, hold the "Shift" key down as you drag it out.
Make a smaller line for the tick marks, and copy paste however many times you'd like. The position doesn't matter - we'll straighten those out in a minute.

Left-click and drag the mouse  to highlight all of the ticks fully. 
When you release the mouse button, all of the ticks will be selected.
PowerPoint will only select shapes (or images) if it is entirely within the highlighted area, so you can be very selective by leaving out even a tiny particle of a shape.
If you select objects that you didn't want to select, just hold the <CTRL> key down and click on them to deselect.

Once you've selected everything, go to the "Format" window and look to the far left for the "Align" menu.  This menu gives you many options and, if you haven't yet,  you should definitely experiment and figure out what they all do and think about how they can be useful. These tickmarks need to be aligned horizontally, so choose "Align Middle" (although really top or bottom would also work fine in this case.)

Now, click anywhere else on the slide to deselect all of the ticks. Choose one and drag it all the way to one side so that the tick on the left and the tick on the right are in the desired positions.  (You can drag it around without ruining alignment by holding the <Shift> button down.
Once they are in place, go back to the "Align" menu and choose "Distribute Horizontally".  Congratulations! You have a number line (albeit blank).

Adding the numbers is easy too - just use text boxes and the align menu to get them straight and in place.

Microsoft Excel Chart - Clustered and Stacked

I spent some time learning how to do this yesterday, so I'm going to explain  the process before I forget.

Microsoft Excel has pre-built charts - one type of chart is clustered and another is  stacked.  I wanted to be able to do both.

First, I made a copy of my data on Sheet 2 of the workbook.

I wanted it to update in case the numbers change at some point.  I experimented with different paste options and found the "paste links" button.  This keeps the table cells linked to the original data which will keep the copy table up to date. 

Next, I thought about my ultimate goals.  The table I wanted to end up with would really have 9 columns, clustered (using the decrease gap option), but with two blank columns separate the three "clusters".

So I stretched out the table data to change the data from a 9x3 table to a 9x9 table, well really an 11x9 table.

 Since the data values are linked to the original table, using copy/paste will screw it up. Instead, highlight the the data to be moved, and click on the bottom right corner then drag it over and release.  The row names for the two blank lines need to be a space or two so that it will look nice in the finished product.

I then created the stacked chart, selecting the 11x9 table of data.

At first, this didn't look great. This image shows the chart without blank lines in the table.  I did a couple of things to clean it up.  First, I went through the "Select Data" menu (right-click anywhere on the chart) and changed the Series names to the correct values.  You can see I had done three already in this screen shot..

Depending on what you want as your final project, you can keep the legend, deleting all but one of each name.  You can change the names so they are more detailed (which ends up looking a little confusing to the viewer).  Or you can put the names on the chart, deleting the legend. I'll explain how in a minute.

 Let's remove the gaps first.  Click any of the columns and, without moving the cursor, right-click in the same place and select "Format Data Series..."

This will open a menu, usually straight to "Series Options".  For "Gap Width", I chose "10%" because removing the gap entirely made the columns really squish together. 

You can experiment and decide what looks best for you, of course.

Click "Close" on that menu and we're almost done.

Right-click each color in the first cluster.  There are several things you can do here.  Notice that selecting one, will select each box of the same color. If you only want to edit one single box instead of all the corresponding, you can click again.  It saves time to do them all at once though.

Click on the "Shape Fill" icon and choose your color.  Do this for each color box in the first cluster - I chose shades of green for this one but it's really whatever you like.

If you want each column to be a different color, you can do that and add data labels. 

Right-click each color box in the first cluster and choose "Add Data Labels".  This defaults to showing the data value.

When you've gone through them all, do the same process, but select "Format Data Labels".  This will give you several options, and you can experiment, but I chose to unclick "Value" and click "Series Name".  Then you can delete the legend.  (Doing this is not entirely unproblematic since the size of the data boxes might make the labels stack on top of each other.  For boxes with data value "zero", I delete the Data Label.)

Math (and more) with WolframAlpha

First, WolframAlpha can of course be used for simple calculations but it will go far beyond that, trying to give everything to you that you could be looking for:

Here, a relatively simple calculation results in the numeric answer (7), its verbal representation (seven) as well as a visual representation (the seven dots) and number line representation.

WolframAlpha will attempt to guess what the user wants but will tell you what it's assuming. For example, in this case it said "Assuming trigonometric arguments in degrees" and offered to use radians instead.  It also provides links to "Related Queries" on the left side of the results page.


If we up the ante a bit, and try a quadratic equation:

It gives us the type of geometric figure (parabola) as well as a couple of graphs from different perspectives.

You can see that on the "geometric figure" field there is a button for "Properties". Pressing this will yield additional information including the focus, vertex, semi-axis length, focal parameter, eccentricity, and directrix.

The graphs each have buttons to "enable interactivity" (although apparently that is now a WolframAlpha Pro feature).

But wait! That's not all...

It also shows an alternate form, derivatives and the global minimum.

Typing different forms will result in different attempts to answer the user's question.  Try entering just "x^2 - 2" or "solve x^2 - 2 = 0".  There are some limitations, especially when working with lower math skills.  For example, for quadratics it does not seem to recognize "vertex form" or "complete the square".

Notice that for solutions, it will offer the option of "Show Steps" which will walk you step by step through the solution process:

One drawback to this is that some steps are not fully explained, so a student could use it and write each correct step down without understanding why it works or why it is important.  For example, in the third step "Add 1 to both sides" it is not explained why 1 works or how it is chosen.

An advantage is that many examples can be shown quickly, so possibly patterns could be seen. Also, the computer never gets lazy so the steps reflect "proper" mathematics. For example, in the fifth step "Take the square root of both sides" it is shown that the square root of the LHS yields an absolute value instead of skipping straight to the next step.  (Again, it might be even better if there was an option to choose additional information explaining where the absolute value came from.)

For non-mathematical tasks - there is an incredible amount of additional searches that can be made.

For example, you can search your name and see how popular it was when you were born.  I found that my parents were almost 15 years ahead of the times - very few girls my age are named Eryn.

It also states that, with my name, it is most likely that I am ten years old.  This will be helpful when I start pretending to be 25 years younger than I really am someday.

You can also compare two names (or really two of anything!) by typing "compare ___ and ____" or just "___ | ____".

For example, I can type "compare provo and east lansing" or just "provo | east lansing".  Or I can ask to compare a specific characteristic like population or weather:

WolframAlpha uses the most up-to-date information that is available online.

In this case, it tells the user that Provo's weather was last updated 23 minutes ago and East Lansing's was last updated 45 minutes ago.



To sum up, WolframAlpha can be useful in a number of ways and can add relevance to mathematics application questions.  It can also provide some useful information to students, but care should be taken to ensure that they are thinking about the information provided rather than accepting it at face value.

To find more information or participate in an online mathematics educators community centered around teaching math with WolframAlpha, visit WolframAlpha for Educators (some lesson plans) or the Wolfram Demonstrations Project (interactive activities) or even Wolfram MathWorld (definitions).

Math with Microsoft

Microsoft OneNote has many excellent features that support note-taking and searchability, but there are too many to list in one post.  This post will focus on math and OneNote.

First of all, there is a built in calculator in OneNote that can be used when typing.  Just type the calculations, add an equals sign and press enter:

(Note that trigonometric functions in OneNote are in degrees rather than radians.)  For a list of mathematical operations and supported functions, check out the informational page at Microsoft.com.

Microsoft OneNote makes it easy to ink mathematics using the "Ink to Math" option:


It does pretty well at guessing what you mean - but the more information it has, the  better it can guess.  So expect to see it adjust frequently as you write.

Once you are comfortable with the Ink to Math feature, using Microsoft Mathematics can give many more options.  Microsoft Mathematics is a free download and can be used independently, but once you have installed it then you can also install the add-in for OneNote. This gives many options.  You can use the add-in to graph equations.

You can also use it to factor or expand polynomial expressions, find derivatives or integrals, or even plot graphs in 2D or 3D:

The best part about this is that you can use this in class as a substitute for chalk and blackboard, and then print the notes to pdf so the students can use them as a resource, or to create their own activities in OneNote.

In the beginning, it is always dark.

I taught mathematics at the university level for several years and spent quite a bit of time learning neat stuff that I could use in my classes.  Some of it failed spectacularly but some was useful.  It can be overwhelming to find the right tool to do the thing that needs to be done - something that is easy to use, easy to learn and that actually supports the students' learning in a different way.  Affordances that aren't granted by paper, physical objects or discussion.

It is difficult to find the time to be really thoughtful about choice of technology and its implementation without neglecting the day-to-day that teaching requires.  When I taught, I spent too much time learning how to use technologies that I then only used once or that didn't support learning in the way I had expected.

When I taught, I created PowerPoints that the students could print out and write on.  I printed the notes to Windows Journal (and later OneNote) and then used them in class to write on and work out examples. I created websites for the students, online homework using the D2L quizzing tools, videos with Jing and Camtasia, dynamic interactions with Wolfram Demonstrations, Articulate Engage and SoftChalk and even made cardstock manipulatives that students could cut out and use at home.


I'll demonstrate some of the things I created and I'll also continue the search.