This Week in Math Ed: February 26, 2016

Math Ed Said

February 19: Last Friday, six people shared the growing list of "Cool Things We've Done Together." Most everyone was retweeting John Stevens:
Shared by: Regan Galvan, Christopher Parrish, Deidra Baker, Andrew Gael, Shauna Hedgepeth, Carrie Muir

Tina Cardone and Ilana Horn
February 20: Ilana Horn shared the plans for The Best of the Math Teacher Blogs 2015, a book that she's assembling along with Tina Cardone. They're looking for a little bit of help with the project, so see Lani's post if you're interested in lending a hand.

Shared by: Egan Chernoff, Nat Banting, David Coffey, Sherri Adler, Brian Bushart, Malke Rosenfeld, Jonathan Schoolcraft

February 21: Nine people shared Brian Bushart's post "Purposeful Numberless Word Problems." Brian has written in the past here and here about numberless word problems, and he's been thinking about how to present problems to students in a way that reveals the numbers only as students understand the structure of the problem. In the latest post, Brian took the next step of thinking about how numberless world problems might map to the problem types described by Cognitively Guided Instruction. If you're looking for a large collection of numberless problems, there's S. Y. Gillan's classic Problems Without Figures, and an updated take on that called "Numberless Problems for Today" by Farrar Williams. There was also a recent article called "Problems Without Numbers" in the December 2014 issue of Teaching Children Mathematics.

Shared by: Brian Bushart, Mark Chubb, Brett Parker, Bridget Dunbar, Graham Fletcher, Jennifer Bell, Norma Gordon, Jennifer Lawler, Kim Webb

February 22: Lucy Brownstein got a letter published in the New York Times disagreeing with the Andrew Hacker interview from a couple weeks ago. It was a proud moment for her teacher, Patrick Honner, and others were happy to share along.

Shared by: Patrick Honner, Andrew Gael, Dan Anderson, Sherri Burroughs, Danny Brown

February 23: Problem Strings was the topic at the Global Math Department as Pam Harris was this week's presenter.


 Shared by: Pam Harris, Tyler Anderson, Sadie Estrella, Brian Bushart, Global Math, Gregory White, Tyler Anderson, Sadie Estrella, Megan Schmidt, Jessica

February 24: Two resources were popular on Wednesday, both involving favorite math-specific tech tools. The first was "Constructions Crash Course for Teachers," from the folks at GeoGebra, and the second was "Cellular," a resource from NRICH.

Shared by: Jen Silverman, John Golden, Nicholas Smith, Shauna Hedgepeth, Simon Gregg, NRICH maths, Mark Chubb

February 25: Patrick Honner did me a favor and wrote "An Introduction to Desmos." I admit, I do not know Desmos very well as (somewhat ironically) I don't do nearly the amount of mathematics as a graduate student in mathematics education as I did when I was a full-time math teacher. I worked through all the examples Patrick provided on his quick handout and I feel a little more comfortable, but nothing quite replicates using a tool in real problem-solving situations.

Shared by: Math for America, Dan Anderson, Eddi Vulić, Patrick Honner, Bridget Dunbar, Martin Joyce, Shauna Hedgepeth

Around the Math Ed Web

The clock is ticking on these March 1 NCTM deadlines!
The Global Math Departmenthas been been busy refreshing the GMD website. Next Tuesday's GMD talk will be Desmos Activity Builder: Best Practices for Charging Up Lessons, presented by Shelley Carranza.

Research Notes

New in Teachers College Record:
New in Teaching and Teacher Education:
New in the previously dormant Technology Innovations in Statistics Education:

Math Ed in the News


Math Ed in Colorado

The Math on the "Planes" conference is in Greenwood Village today and tomorrow, Feburary 26-27! I looked for hashtag activity on Twitter and saw none, so if you want in on the action I guess you'd better be there. I'll be at the conference tomorrow and hope to share during and afterward.

Rebekah Ottenbreit from CDE's Office of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education is offering a session focused on helping math teachers and ESL/bilingual educators use tools and strategies to make mathematics content more accessible to English learners. The session is scheduled for March 8, in Greeley, and registration closes March 3rd. Scroll to the bottom of this page for location and reservation details.

The Front Range Math Ed Seminar (FRaMES) is on Twitter at @FRaMESMathED. The latest from Spencer Bagley on the listserv is that the next meeting may happen on Friday, March 5, if it's possible to get it organized by then.

There is a CCTM workshop for Region 7 on March 12. The topic of the workshop is fractions, ratios, and rates of change.

Nominations for CCTM board positions are open and will close on February 26, 2016. The CCTM board is also seeking to appoint a technology integration specialist to the board. See the link for details. CCTM is also taking nominations for their leadership award and teaching award, both of which are due by March 11.

The next session of the Northern Colorado Math Circles is March 7. See their website for more details. The Rocky Mountain and Northern Colorado Math Teachers' Circles are teaming up for a summer workshop in Winter Park from July 11-15. There's also a Rocky Mountain Math Teachers' Circle listserv you can sign up for to receive updates.

The "Expanding Your Horizons" symposium for middle school girls interested in STEM registration begins March 1.

The Colorado Math Leaders (CML) met in Englewood on Tuesday, February 23. The main topics of discussion were Principles to Actions, our goals and ideas for CML, and we discussed the possibility of becoming an NCSM affiliate. For our next in-person meeting, we're looking at an all-day (9-3) session on Friday, May 6.
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This Week in Math Ed: February 19, 2016

What a great week! Last week's TWiME was by far the most-read yet, and for me the best part was discovering a bunch of math teachers to add to my MathEd Twitter list. The list passed 1400 members and is close to 200 subscribers, and I like that each new person I add contributes back to TWiME simply by letting me see what they share and retweet.

Math Ed Said

February 12: Ugh. Nothing about this made me want to watch the video, but to share it here I finally brought myself to watch it almost a week later. The most-talked-about story on this day was Kate Taylor's article in the New York Times: "At Success Academy School, a Stumble in Math and a Teacher’s Anger on Video." Some might try to dismiss this as tough love, but I just can't, and most people I saw tweeting about this story can't, either.
Shared by: Ilana Horn, Thad Domina, David Coffey, Patrick Honner, Tracy Johnston Zager, Kent Haines, Dan Bach, Tom Henderson

February 13: "The Math Revolution" by Peg Tyre in The Atlantic was the most-shared story on February 9th and again here on the 13th, so I'll link to it again. After all, it has all the hallmarks of a good weekend read: scope, depth, and a bit too long to read on a busy weekday. If you're feeling robbed of a story, another popular story for several days was "Stop Humiliating Teachers" by David Denby in The New Yorker.

Shared by: Mike Hetherington, Kate Nowak, Samuel Otten, Justin Lanier, Steven Gnagni, Danny Brown, Jennifer Lawler, Leigh Ann Mitchell

February 14: On Valentine's Day Graham Fletcher came to rescue us from all these heavy news/magazine stories with a light-hearted threat to poorly chosen math contexts everywhere. "I'm Placing a Hit on the Pseudo-Context" reworks a fairly typical volume-of-a-box problem into a 3-act task that gives students a chance to mathematize in a more realistic way.

These accusations of "context, but not really" always make me want to write about Edd Taylor's multi-approach engagement framework from an article he wrote in the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. If I don't get around to doing that sometime soon, remind me about it, m'kay?

Shared by: Graham Fletcher, Martin Joyce, Tim Hudson, Mark Chubb, Ms. Khatri, Andrew Gael, Ilona Vashchyshyn, Brett Parker, John Golden, Kate Owens, Joe Schwartz, Federico Chialvo

February 15: Junaid Mubeen wrote "I no longer understand my PhD dissertation (and what this means for Mathematics Education)." Junaid says his Ph.D. was worth it for the problem-solving skills, character, and enjoyment it gave him.

Shared by: Clara Maxcy, Nick Yates, Egan Chernoff, John Scammell, Bridget Dunbar, Mike Thayer, Christine DiPaulo, Ilona Vashchyshyn

February 16: Five posts were each shared by four people:

 February 17: Dan Meyer wrote a short-but-popular post titled, "Ed Begle's First And Second Laws Of Mathematics Education." The real meat of Dan's post comes in the linked text of a talk by Edward Begle, "Research and Evaluation in Mathematics Education" (1971).

Ed Begle's final book, published posthumously
Commentary: Any mention of Ed Begle gets my attention: He was a key figure in my undergraduate thesis and he's my academic great-grandfather. I really do love the history of my subject and posts like Dan's send me into hours of searching through old papers and citations. But, I must be mindful of our tendency to underestimate change when we read from our wisest predecessors. It's too easy for us to throw our hands up and say things like, "Dewey knew it all along!" or "We're stuck in the same damned place we were 25/50/100 years ago." Is Begle's 2nd law ("Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected") still true? I would agree it is. But, as a field, we've made enormous progress since Begle gave this talk in 1971. The danger, as individuals, is to not learn from this progress. To avoid reaching the same conclusions as Begle, we need to avoid starting in the same place as Begle. When I browse the pages of Begle's final book, Critical Variables in Mathematics Education: Findings From a Survey of the Empirical Literature, I'm struck by the sheer number of things Begle and the field knew little or nothing about compared to what we know now. Don't we owe it to ourselves, as individuals and as a field, to push past prior conclusions by starting farther ahead and taking more seriously work already done?

Shared by: Lorraine Males, Nathan Kraft, Dan Meyer, Taylor Belcher, Matt Larson, Theodore Chao, Patrick Honner, Ilona Vashchyshyn, Eddi Vulić, Patrick Callahan

February 18: Folks were buzzing about Nat Banting's annoucnement of Fraction Talks, a site to feature visuals that prompt students to think creatively about fractions.

Shared by: Nat Banting, Michelle, John Golden, Mary Bourassa, Rusty Anderson, Ilona Vashchyshyn, Andrew Gael, Egan Chernoff

Around the Math Ed Web

Maybe the coolest math ed thing I saw in the last week came in a series of posts by Joe Champion of Boise State on Google+:
  1. High school math course sequences
  2. HS math completion by 9th grade course
  3. HS math completion by socioeconomic status
  4. HS math completion by race
High school mathematics course-taking patterns


These "river plots" from Joe were made using a nationally representative sample of transcripts for about 12,000 high school graduates. I can't always make perfect sense of them, but Joe's been happily chatting about them in his posts on Google+ so go there to read more and ask questions.

This week at the Global Math Department, featured "Social Emotional Learning in Mathematics" and next week looks to be "Problem Strings: A Lesson Structure for All Students."


March 1 NCTM deadlines:
If you want to go to TMC and haven't already registered, cross your fingers and add yourself to the waitlist.

Research Notes

New in Cognition and Instruction:
New in Teaching and Teacher Education:
I've also added AERA Open to the list of journals I'll check weekly. They recently published this:

Math Ed in the News

The last of these articles reminds me of a recent article in AERJ, "In the Guise of STEM Education Reform: Opportunity Structures and Outcomes in Inclusive STEM-Focused High Schools" by Weis, Eisenhart, Cipollone, Stich, Nikischer, Hanson, Leibrandt, Allen, and Dominguez (2015). (I happened to read this last night.) They studied public, non-selective, STEM-focused high schools in Denver and Buffalo and found that the schools didn't live up to the hype: hoped-for tracks to medicine, physics, and engineering turned into remedial courses providing little to no opportunity for entering STEM careers. Saying we're preparing the next generation of STEM workers is one thing, but actually doing it is clearly another.

Math Ed in Colorado

Rebekah Ottenbreit from CDE's Office of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education is offering a session focused on helping math teachers and ESL/bilingual educators use tools and strategies to make mathematics content more accessible to English learners. The session is scheduled for March 8, in Greeley, and registration closes March 3rd. Scroll to the bottom of this page for location and reservation details.

The Front Range Math Ed Seminar (FRaMES) is on Twitter at @FRaMESMathED. The latest from Spencer Bagley on the listserv is a request for input regarding a time and place for the March seminar.

The next session of the Northern Colorado Math Circles is on Monday, February 22nd. Contact Gulden Karakok or Delia Haefeli for more information or to RSVP.

There are a number of CCTM workshops on the calendar. Regions 1, 2, 3, and 6 are offering workshops on February 20, while Region 7's workshop will be March 12. The topic of the workshop is fractions, ratios, and rates of change.

Nominations for CCTM board positions are open and will close on February 26, 2016. The CCTM board is also seeking to appoint a technology integration specialist to the board. See the link for details. CCTM is also taking nominations for their leadership award and teaching award, both of which are due by March 11.

The Math on the "Planes" conference is in Greenwood Village on February 26-27.
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Following the Research in Mathematics Education

As a beginning Ph.D. student, most of the readings you do are to provide some breadth and to grow some roots in your field, and most of them are assigned as coursework. Once you get past your comprehensive exam, there tends to be less coursework and the reading you do typically is closely related to your dissertation topic. If I were facing a future as a tenure-track faculty member, I guess 80% of my reading would be done specifically to help me conduct further research or write the next paper, while the other 20% might simply be to keep up with other goings-on in the realm of educational research.

I now know my next job is not that of a tenure-track researcher. Instead, I'm working for the department of education and my primary role is to provide support to math teachers across the state. I need to keep up-to-date on math education research not so much for myself, but for the teachers I'll be working with, and they will certainly have a more diverse set of concerns than the narrow focus of my dissertation. So how do I go about following the breadth of research in mathematics education?

I decided to start with a long list of journals where mathematics educators typically publish. Thankfully, Sam Otten maintains such a list. I think the world of education research journals as it relates to mathematics education looks a bit like this:

Three categories of education journals as they relate to mathematics education

There's basically the big world of all education research, and within that the subset of journals where math educators are likely to publish, and then a smaller subset of journals that publish only work about mathematics education. There's no good way to monitor everything in the big set, as altogether I'm sure that represents hundreds of journals and 10,000+ articles annually. Tracking a set of journals that resembles the middle set might be possible, but it gets pretty noisy: for each article relevant to mathematics education published in Educational Researcher, for example, you'd probably have to wade through 10-20 irrelevant articles. The inner set should be trackable, as now we're probably down to a few dozen journals and a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio.

Thinking about where impactful mathematics education research gets published makes things more complicated. For example, a top researcher in mathematics education is more likely to publish a major article in a high-profile yet non-math education journal like AERA's American Educational Research Journal instead of a lower-profile math ed-specific journal like the Journal of Mathematics Education at Teachers College. (Don't get me wrong - the Journal of Mathematics Education at Teachers College is a fine journal that publishes work from prominent names in math education — but work there doesn't have the exposure and impact as work does in AERJ.)

Sam has about 100 journals on his list, and Pat Thompson's list has even more. The journals on Pat's list that aren't on Sam's list include a lot of non-English journals and ones that probably belong in the outer circle of my diagram. Sam's list focuses more on English-language journals from the inner two subsets. Still, 100 journals is too many for me to track consistently, so I combed through and found 20 that I know I've read from on multiple occasions as a graduate student. I then put those 20 journals in a poll that let other researchers sort and rank, and here's what resulted:

Ranking journals relevant to mathematics education

The poll instructions said, "If you were tasked with keeping up with K-12 research in mathematics education, and had to choose a limited number of journals to follow or subscribe to, which journals would you follow? Use the choices below to rank the importance of each journal." Only five people (I'm one of the five) responded, but you can see that we're in general agreement about which journals are most relevant for keeping up with mathematics education research. Some differences in rankings can be explained: I, for example, was the one who ranked Educational Researcher at #2, because math education articles published in ER typically represent a synthesis of a major body of work and are written to appeal to the broad audience of education researchers. I often feel a bit embarrassed when someone catches me having not read something math ed-related in ER, so I assigned it a higher rank. Opinions about ZDM are all over, ranking as high as 4th on one list and as low as 20th on another. That one is more difficult to explain, but maybe it's higher-volume, international, invitation-only, and themed-issue approach appeals to different researchers in different ways.

When I created the poll, I thought I'd be using the results to narrow my focus down to the top 10-12, but so far for TWiME I've kept up with all 20. I'm also following some open access math education journals, both because I value open access and because I know everyone who reads my blog can also read those articles. I'm not making any effort to check journals in the outer set, but occasionally something relevant published in something like Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis crosses my path and I give it a look. I've tried using RSS and email subscriptions to follow everything, but I'm finding that keeping all the journals in my browser bookmarks and going through them one-by-one is the easiest approach. Below is the list of everything I'm checking weekly:

Open access journals:
If you're asking, "Raymond, are you concerned about your level of access to the paywalled journals above after you're no longer affiliated with the university?" my answer is, "Yes. Yes I am. But I think I'll manage."
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This Week in Math Ed: February 12, 2016

Math Ed Said

February 5: More people were sharing Anne Schwartz's awesome "Why I Am Not Quitting Teaching," but an equal number of people shared Emma Brown's story in the Washington Post, "Kids who took Common Core test online scored lower than those who used paper." This story is of particular interest to me, as I'll work with PARCC in my role with the Colorado Department of Education.

Shared by: Dan Meyer, Karen King, Dan Anderson, Kyle Pearce, Kate Fisher

February 6: Five folks shared some football fun from Desmos. Football season might be over, but math season never stops.

Shared by: Desmos.com, Julia Finneyfrock, Earl Samuelson, Patty Stephens, Leigh Ann Mitchell

February 7: The NYT story "Who Needs Advanced Math? Not Everybody" was shared by many people over several days, but on Sunday, seven people in the Math Ed Twitter list linked to it on Twitter. I'll comment a bit more about this below.

Shared by: Earl Samuelson, Gary Davis, Ilana Horn, Diana Suddreth, Jeremiah Ruesch, T R, Karyn Vogel

February 8: NCTM helped get the word out about a recent TCM blog post, "Even and Odd Numbers, Part 2: A Journey into the Algebraic Thinking Practice of Justification." Taken seriously, it's the kind of article meant to have a dual effect: you think more deeply about how your students can think more deeply.

Shared by: Teaching Children Math, USU TeachMath, NCTM, Jon Wray, Kim Webb, Shelby Aaberg

My MathCounts ruler from 7th grade is right at my desk.
As an extra-curricular math program it had a positive impact on me.
February 9: Peg Tyre's "The Math Revolution" in The Atlantic was a big hit this week. If you missed the article, it celebrates the successes of U.S. students in extra-curricular math programs while grappling with some of the difficulties of making such opportunities available to all.

Commentary: I find the juxtaposition of two popular articles this week interesting: one that suggests fewer people need math (well, the title suggests that...the article/interview itself says...I'm not exactly sure what) and another ("The Math Revolution") that speaks of the benefits to students who get more math. Both articles made me think of Rochelle Gutiérrez's perspectives on equity, which seem to be on my mind lately. Gutiérrez defines equity in mathematics, in part, as "being unable to predict students' mathematics achievement and participation solely upon characteristics such as race, class, ethnicity, gender, beliefs, and proficiency in the dominant language" (p. 41, emphasis original). When someone suggests to me that some students might be fine with less mathematics, and some students might do well with more, I can believe they might be right. BUT, under current systems, I have equal reason to believe that systemic inequalities in our society and educational systems will affect which students tend to get less math and which get more math, and those differences will too often be predictable using the characteristics described by Gutiérrez. Thankfully, Peg Tyre addressed this issue in "The Math Revolution," but we need more than mentions in The Atlantic to solve the problem.

Shared by: Steve Phelps, OCTM, Ilana Horn, Egan Chernoff, Chris Shore, MAA, Gary Davis, Justin Bock, Museum of Math, Gary Petko, Brian Marks, Jesse McNulty, Andrew Paulsen, Anna Blinstein, Andrew Gael

February 10: Even more people shared "The Math Revolution," while an equal number linked to "Make a Mathy Valentine" by Ariel Zych on the Science Friday website. It's more or less a basic activity involving geometric transformations, but with hearts.

Shared by: Earl Samuelson, John Golden, Jessica Faurote, Penny Bentley, Sherri Burroughs, Edmund Harriss

February 11: Keith Devlin blogged "Theorem: You are exceptional." It's a fun and mathy thought-romp through the odds that each of us is really, really good at something.

Shared by: MAA, Keith Devlin, Egan Chernoff, Patrick Honner, Denise Gaskins, Josh Fisher, Federico Chialvo


Around the Math Ed Web

I saw someone mention that TMC registration was open, and I thought, "This weekend I should look into that." I snoozed, and it looks like I...losed? An announcement on Twitter said the conference filled to capacity and that there's now a registration waitlist. I imagine twittermathcamp.com will get updated soon with these details if it hasn't already by the time you read this. The TMC16 program is available if you'd like to know what you might miss.

There seems to have been a change of schedule at the Global Math Department, as the "Social Emotional Learning in Mathematics" topic looks to be on for next Tuesday, February 16. If you missed it, this week we had Robert Berry of the University of Virginia presenting "#blackkidsdomath: Using Identity and Agency as a Framework for Teaching. You can watch it here:



Don't forget that NCTM is accepting proposals for the new "Innov8" conference now! The proposal deadline is March 1.

NCTM's call for chapters for the 2017 Annual Perspectives in Mathematics Education also has a March 1 deadline. The topic will be "Reflective and Collaborative Processes to Improve Mathematics Teaching," which sounds like it could be an outlet for my dissertation work if I feel like wrestling with NCTM to retain some/all of my authorship rights. There is a specific mention of the role of technology and social media...does anyone feel like co-authoring something with me? The intention to submit form asks for abstracts of 200 words or less, so good luck with your proposals, potential authors!

Research Notes

The March 2016 Review of Educational Research is out but none of the articles are math-focused. Still, by some measures RER is the #1 journal in all of education research, so if you'd like to get a sense for what's on people's minds (like intelligent tutoring systems and digital games), the table of contents is worth a look.

Teaching and Teacher Education added an article to their April 2016 issue that isn't math-related, but might be of interest to readers of this blog:
Anna Sfard presenting at ICLS 2014
It's a light week in the research world, it seems. Sure, there are a few "online first" articles that have popped up, but otherwise no new math ed research has appeared in the 30+ journals I'm checking each week. That's okay, because it will give you time to read up on an all-time great article that I recently summarized on the MathEd.net Wiki: Anna Sfard's "On the Dual Nature of Mathematical Conceptions: Reflections on Processes and Objects as Different Sides of the Same Coin (1991). If you want a nuanced view of process vs. object, and what it might mean when a student's "light bulb goes on," then I highly recommend you read this, or the original version if you have access.

Math Ed in the News


Math Ed in Colorado

Rebekah Ottenbreit from CDE's Office of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education will be offering a session focused on helping classroom teachers and ESL/bilingual educators use tools and strategies to make mathematics content more accessible to English learners. The session is scheduled for March 8, in Greeley, and registration closes March 3rd. Scroll to the bottom of this page for location and reservation details.

The Front Range Math Ed Seminar (FRaMES) is on Twitter at @FRaMESMathED. The latest from Spencer Bagley on the listserv is a request for input regarding a time and place for the March seminar.

The next session of the Northern Colorado Math Circles are on Monday, February 22nd. Contact Gulden Karakok or Delia Haefeli for more information or to RSVP.

There are a number of CCTM workshops on the calendar. Regions 1, 2, 3, and 6 are offering workshops on February 20, while Region 7's workshop will be March 12. The topic of the workshop is fractions, ratios, and rates of change.

Nominations for CCTM board positions are open and will close on February 26, 2016. The CCTM board is also seeking to appoint a technology integration specialist to the board. See the link for details. CCTM is also taking nominations for their leadership award and teaching award, both of which are due by March 11.

Math on the "Planes" is fast approaching! The conference is in Greenwood Village on February 26-27, and today (February 12) is the last day to book a hotel room at the conference rate.

References

Gutiérrez, R. (2007). (Re)defining equity: The importance of a critical perspective. In N. S. Nasir & P. Cobb (Eds.), Improving access to mathematics: Diversity and equity in the classroom (pp. 37-50). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
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This Week in Math Ed: February 5, 2016

Math Ed Said

January 29: 11 people shared this Teaching Channel story by Kristin Gray about math resources she's shared on a Pinterest board. Thanks for sharing goes to Jennifer Wilson, Margie Pearse, Rusty Anderson, Simon Gregg, John Golden, Kassia Wedekind, Crystal, Allison Hintz, Jennifer Bell, Jill Gough, and Kristin herself. One note I'll add, however: Just because there's good stuff on a website, that doesn't mean everything on the site is good stuff. Don't be random, and heed these warnings:

January 30: A bunch of things were shared by 3 people in my Math Ed Twitter list. (Hey, it was a Saturday.) I won't name all the sharers and re-sharers, but here are the stories:
January 31: The most-shared post of the past week, and deservedly so, was Graham Fletcher's "The Progression of Division". Emily Campbell, Allison Hintz, Joe Schwartz, Andrew Gael, Jennifer Lawler, John Golden, Mister Suever, Bridget Dunbar, Tim McCaffrey, Simon Gregg, Kristin Gray, Denis Sheeran, and Kent Haines all made sure we didn't miss it.

February 1: I'll just highlight one of the most-shared posts from last Monday: "Many Parents Hated Common Core Math at First, Before Figuring It Out", by Jay Mathews. Thanks to Tracy Johnston Zager, Jody Guarino, Ted Coe, David Coffey, Mike Flynn, and Karen King for sharing. (Five more shared this on February 2, too.)

February 2: Happy MATHog Day! Sharers were Desmos.com, Denis Sheeran, Jeremiah Ruesch, Audrey McLaren, Cathy Yenca, and Norma Gordon.

February 3: Another very popular post from Ben Orlin: "How to Edit Your Math Pessimism". Thanks Dan Anderson, Josh Giesbrecht, John Golden, Joshua Bowman, John Golden, Kate Johnson, TJ Hitchman, Geoff Krall, Eric Retan, Simon Gregg, Robert Talbert, Audrey McLaren, and Taylor Belcher.

February 4: A tie: (1) "Why I Am Not Quitting Teaching" by Anne Schwartz (shared by Anne, Michelle, Jonathan Claydon, Geoff Krall, and Anna Blinstein), and (2) "How Adding Math to a Child's Home Routine Can Advance Achievement" by Eric Westervelt (shared by John Golden, Farshid Safi, Margie Pearse, Alex Jaffurs, and Rusty Anderson).

Around the Math Ed Web

At Global Math this week's talk was about using Google Apps for math and next week's topic is "Social Emotional Learning in Mathematics". This is also a good time to remind you that the GMD has an excellent weekly news update of their own in newsletter form. Sign up!

NCTM is accepting proposals for their new "Innov8" conference to be held this November 16-18 in St. Louis. Act fast: the proposal deadline is March 1!

Research Notes

I usually just look for new issues of journals, instead of noting every "Online First" article that's not yet assigned to an issue. Maybe I should always compile the latest everything, but it makes it more difficult to keep track of things. I'll make an exception this week, though, because I'm one of the authors!

The March 2016 issue of Educational Studies in Mathematics geeks out about commognition, where math learning is seen as a change in a person's mathematical discourse. Articles include:
Sam Severance and Bill Penuel, two of my Inquiry Hub collaborators
In the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, an article titled "Teachers, Tasks, and Tensions: Lessons from a Research-Practice Partnership appeared online. I wrote the article along with Sam Severance, Bill Penuel, and Heather Leary, and it looks at different kinds of design tensions that arose during the math-focused phase of our Inquiry Hub work. I'm working now to get a permanent, open access home for the pre-print on scholar.colorado.edu, and I'll follow up with more details about the article (both the content and the process of publication) soon.

Math Ed in the News


Math Ed in Colorado

I had a great time at my first CCTM board meeting last Saturday in Cherry Creek. It seemed like one way or another, most every conversation related to sharing, outreach, supporting the work of teachers, collaborating...you know—all those things you'd want a well-run professional organization to do. Everyone seemed to have ideas and goals for how to use technology better to reach more Colorado math teachers, and I'm happy I'll be active in CCTM to see that happen.

The next session of the Northern Colorado Math Circles are on Monday, February 22nd. Contact Gulden Karakok or Delia Haefeli for more information or to RSVP.

The Front Range Math Ed Seminar (FRaMES) is now on Twitter at @FRaMESMathED. They had an event today that I missed, but I'll be listening to their listserv for details on the next gathering.
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