Math Ed Said
April 1: Last Friday people were looking forward to Kasi Allen's presentation to the Global Math Department, "Math Trauma: Healing Our Classrooms, Our Students, and Our Discipline." You can watch the replay of her session here:Shared by: Kasi C. Allen, Jennifer Lawler, Gregory White, Global Math, Sahar Khatri
April 2: Three links were each shared three times last Saturday:
- Mathematicians mapped out every “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character on Quartz
- A "Would You Rather…?" post about place value by John Stevens
- NCTM is looking for speakers for next year's conference. (That deadline will be here before you know it!)
April 3: More ties: six people each shared links to the details of Marian Small's upcoming talk at NCTM and a Guardian story about the upcoming movie about Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Shared by: NCTM, Katherine Hansen, Jenni Clausen, Laura Wagenman, Christina Sherman, Daniel Luevanos, Steven Strogatz, Dan Anderson, MAA, George Woodbury, Egan Chernoff, Garrod Musto
April 4: For Square Root Day, a number of people (a perfect square number of people, in fact) re/tweeted a link to an article by Kyle Schultz and Stephen Bismarck in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, "Radical Thoughts on Simplifying Square Roots."
Shared by: NCTM, Connected Math CMP, Ashley Bingenheimer, Theodore Chao, The Math Forum, Brian Brennan, Robert Cop, Greg George, Jennifer Bay-Williams
April 5: Don't extrapolate using only two data points, says Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Shared by: Ashli Black, Shauna Hedgepeth, Taylor Belcher, Kate Nowak, Josh Fisher, John Golden
April 6: Easily the most popular post of the week, 20 people shared the link to Katrina Schwartz's KQED MindShift article, "Could This Digital Math Tool Change Instruction For the Better?." If we stick with Betteridge's law of headlines our answer should be "no," which is generally appropriate when ed tech is involved. But given this is about Desmos and the work Dan Meyer and others are doing with the Desmos platform, I think we can ignore Betteridge's law with this story. If anyone sees Katrina next week at NCTM, please thank her for me for all the solid reporting she's been doing, will ya?
Shared by: Nancy Terry, Tara Maynard, David Coffey, Derek Oldfield, Terry Jones, Dan Meyer, Andrew Gael, Andrew Shauver, Elizabeth Statmore, Joce Dage, Cathy Yenca, Jon Orr, Matt Owen, Jonathan Osters, Julie Kindred, Tyler Anderson, Megan Schmidt, Scott, Regan Galvan, Martin Joyce
April 7: There's been some discussion about mathematical modeling, its importance, and how to to about it over on Dan Meyer's blog. The latest comes in the post, "A Response to Danny Brown & Geoff Wake: Should Modeling Be Important?."
Shared by: Danny Brown, Dan Meyer, Bob Lochel, Brian Lawler, Eddi Vulić, Jennifer Blinzler, Sara VanDerWerf, Nicol Reiner, Mary Williams, Bridget Dunbar
Around the Math Ed Web
NCTM, NCTM, NCTM. The Annual Meeting and associated events are upon us! I don't know about you, but I don't feel like there's room for much else in math ed, at least not for the next week or so.Research Notes
Just a week after putting out the April 2016 issue, the International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education is back for May with these math-related articles:- Students' Use of "Look Back" Strategies in Multiple Solution Methods by Shin-Yi Lee, University of Taipei
- In Pursuit of a Connected Way of Knowing: The Case of One Mathematics Teacher by Cecilia Agudelo-Valderrama and Diana Martínez, Colegio Anexo San Francisco de Asís
- Development of Arithmetical Thinking: Evaluation of Subject Matter Knowledge of Pre-Service Teachers in Order to Design the Appropriate Course by Raisa Guberman, Achva Academic College
- Hierarchical Levels of Abilities that Constitute Fraction Understanding at Elementary School by Aristoklis A. Nicolaou, Cyprus Ministry of Education, and Demetra Pitta-Pantazi, University of Cyprus (Note to self: If I need a learning progression for fractions, I should read this.)
- Prospective Teachers' Conceptions of Proof Comprehension: Revisiting a Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem by Dov Zazkis, Oklahoma State University, and Rina Zazkis, Simon Fraser University
- Learning Is Moving in New Ways: The Ecological Dynamics of Mathematics Education by Dor Abrahamson, University of California, Berkeley, and Raúl Sánchez-García, Universidad Europea de Madrid (This looks like some rather sophisticated theorizing of how students work with digital objects and manipulatives in mathematics)
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| Charalambous Charalambous presenting at AERA in 2014. |
- Investigating the Knowledge Needed for Teaching Mathematics by Charalambos Charalambous, University of Cyprus
Math Ed in the News
The math wars in Canada seem particularly active this week. I'm just including a couple of articles, but a quick Google News search will give you more.- The solution to Ontario's math problem needs work (The Globe and Mail)
- Elementary school students will get 1 hour of mandatory math a day in September: province (CBC News)
- My Wife, My Math, and . . . Education? (Springfield News-Leader)
- Beyond the Classroom: Learning math is a changing equation (Miami Herald)
Math Ed in Colorado
Three big CCTM items:- CCTM members have until April 20 to vote for board members. You can learn more about the candidates here.
- The deadline for submitting CCTM conference proposals is May 1.
- CCTM's Spring 2016 issue of the Colorado Mathematics Teacher is out, featuring articles about mathematical mindsets, the PSAT and SAT, and professional development. While CCTM is now making the CMT journal free to all, it's the membership dues from over 600 Colorado math educators that supports this and the other work of CCTM.
The next FRaMES (Front Range Mathematics Education Seminar) meeting will be held Friday, April 22 at 4pm on the Centerra campus of UNC. Sandra Laursen, Chuck Hayward, and Zachary Haberler, from the Ethnography and Evaluation Research (E&ER) team from CU-Boulder will be presenting about inquiry-based learning. If you're interested in attending, please register here.
The University of Northern Colorado is offering three graduate level math courses this summer as part of their Masters in Mathematics: Teaching Emphasis program. You don't have to be in the program to take the courses. A tentative schedule of courses through Spring 2018 and contact information is here.
Rebekah Ottenbreit from CDE's Office of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education is offering two more sessions focused on helping math teachers and ESL/bilingual educators use tools and strategies to make mathematics content more accessible to English learners. You can grab a flyer here.
- May 10, 2016, from 8:30-noon at the Pueblo City Schools Administration Building, Pueblo, CO (register by 5/5/16)
- May 13, 2016, from 8:30-noon at the NW CO BOCES downstairs conference room in Steamboat Springs (register by 5/8/16)
The "Expanding Your Horizons" symposium for middle school girls interested in STEM registration begins March 1.
NCTM is offering two summer institutes this summer in Denver:
- July 18-20: Algebra Readiness Institute (6-8)
- July 21-23: Number and Operations Institute (Pk-5)
- Peak to Peak Charter Shool in Lafayette is looking for a high school math teacher.
- CU-Boulder is looking for a master teacher in mathematics for their CU Teach program. It's an awesome opportunity to help prepare the next generation of math teachers in Colorado, as well as a great place to work.