Math Links for Week Ending Sept. 19th, 2014

I was in a workshop this week and they showed this video from Marian Small. The video itself might cause a bit of controversy as she suggests that for most calculations beyond one digit by one digit kids should just use estimation and a calculator. I kind of reluctantly agree. Anyway, she tells it better so watch below. But the real reason I mention this is to point out a relatively new resource from the Ministry of Ontario called Learn Teach Lead. The Learn Teach Lead Vimeo page has literally thousands of videos that have been uploaded in the last 6 months.  This particular series was recently released and is called Leaders in Educational Thought: Mathematics K-12 and features speakers such as Damian Cooper, Jo Boaler, Dan Meyer, Cathy Fosnot, George Hart, Sugata Mitra and of course Marian Small. Given the group I suspect that all of these were recorded at OAME this year. They are part of a series Each speaker has a bunch of short video clips on things like assessment, mindset,  the art of mathematics and more. Go to the link below for all of them.

Curriculum Tags: All

http://learnteachlead.ca/projects/leaders-in-educational-thought-mathematics-k-12/

This is a cool thing that you can do with fractions. Basically the post is about decimal expansions of fractions and their special cases ( eg repeated decimals). But the cool stuff showed up in the comment section. For example if you divide 1/99980001 you will get the counting digits in the following way 1.0002000300040005....x10^-8. Check out the one that generates the Fibonacci sequence too. Note that to show these expansions you will definitely have to use Wolfram Alpha. 
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8

http://aperiodical.com/2013/11/from-the-mailbag-dual-inversal-numbers/#comment-611141

I like this post on sampling error. I think when we teach this topic it can often get glossed over but here are several resources (including a video lesson) to help get the idea across on types of sampling error.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/

I don't think this article is saying anything really ground breaking: "Make math interesting for students by showing them the beauty and by making it relevant". It's not a new article either (last year) but it sources both Steven Strogatz and Dan Meyer and points out that just by making a question about Justin Bieber, that won't make it relevant to students. They can see through that.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/10/finding-the-beauty-in-math/

I was in a workshop this week and we were given four different shapes (3 rectangles and a triangle of different colours) and asked to completely cover a regular piece of paper (without overlapping) using the pieces to create a "flag". At first thought this might have seemed like a lame activity for kids but further discussion revealed many different ways this could be connected to the elementary curriculum (fractions, percents, area, spacial geometry and more). The activity was developed by Dr. Cathy Bruce and you can download the instructions and template for cutting the shapes out here and the student BLM here that includes questions that can be asked.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/511939184098283520/photo/1

How many math concepts could students touch on by making flags out of these shapes/colours? #mathchat pic.twitter.com/QIsv1krvy6
— David Petro (@davidpetro314) September 16, 2014