Math Links for Week Ending May 23rd, 2014

How many bird craps does it take to crush a Smart Car? You had me at "bird crap" Mr. Orr. I love this 3Act task that can be used for proportional reasoning. I also love that in the course of the Tweeting and such, Smart actually responded with an info graphic of how many craps it would take from various birds.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://mrorr-isageek.com/?p=3046

And another one from Mr. Orr. This time that classic question of calculating the distance from one corner to the opposite corner of a box. Done as a 3acts, this would be fine for any class working on Pythagorean theorem.
Curriculum Tags, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://mrorr-isageek.com/?p=3028



I am a big fan of personal white boards for students. And John Scammell has done a nice job talking about what he has learned about using them in classes. Here are his pros:

• How their work “pops” off the boards so that I can see it easily. As I circulate, it’s so easy to provide feedback. 
• How comfortable students are working on a dry-erase surface. They are not afraid to try things. They are not afraid to make mistakes. 
• How easy it is to group and pair students to give and receive feedback from peers when their work is on whiteboards.

It is a really strange thing about how kids will take more chances on these white boards then they will on regular paper and pencil. You can check out the rest of his post here.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://thescamdog.wordpress.com/2014/05/19/whiteboards-in-math/

And if we are going to talk about personal whiteboards we might as well talk about the electronic version. That is, using apps like Educreations, Explain Everything, Doceri etc. I wasn't able to see her session but Dan Meyer saw Marion Small talk about how to use one of these apps to capture student thinking. So as student solve a problem, they record what they are thinking with the app (including all the problems and mistakes). In this way, when you review the recording you can get a better idea of misconceptions that a student might have. And I like the street cred that Dan brings here as one of the creators of Educreations was actually participating in the comment section.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2014/the-most-interesting-use-of-educreations/

And while we are on the Dan Meyer train, we might as well talk about this new 3Act task that is about expected value.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2014/3acts-money-duck/

And we might as well finish of with a quote that Dan made at the workshop he gave in Windsor last week that seemed to have a lot of play on the Twitter.
Curriculum Tags: All

"If you got into math teaching because you were good at math then it's tough to understand why kids struggle" - @ddmeyer #oame #mathchat
— David Petro (@davidpetro314) May 17, 2014

A few weeks back I spoke some of the discussion going on on the web about Common Core and "New Math". Here is a nice video that kinda sums it up, I think. Thanks to Cathy Yenca for this one
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0aeyAN0Axo

And finally this week, Randal Munroe's (XKCD, What if) TED talk on his What If website. The best thing about this site (there are many good things) is the fact that he is basically using the Fermi problem as the estimation method.
Curriculum Tags:All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I64CQp6z0Pk

Math Links for Week Ending Dec 28, 2012

Possibly one of the best TED talks on data visualization. David McCandless (who calls himself a data journalist) shows simple representations of data that convey a very definite message. None of the vagueness of normal graphs. Check out the stuff on his website too: http://www.davidmccandless.com/
Curriculum tags: MDM4U, Gr7DM, Gr8DM

How much would a gallon cost? Here is a great ratio & proportions activity that looks at what certain things would cost if purchased by the gallon (for example Mio drink mix). Worksheets are included
http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2012/11/i-am-a-witness-to-perplexity/
Curriculum tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, Gr7PA, Gr8PA

Visual Patterns is a new website launched by Fawn Nguyen (check her own post about it here). The site is for helping students develop algebraic thinking through visual patterns. This should be perfect for the intro to linear growing patterns or linear relations, even non linear growing patterns
http://www.visualpatterns.org/
Curriculum Tags: MPM2d, MFM2P, MPM1D, MFM1P, Gr7PA, Gr8PA

Here is a nice blog post about ideas for using student white boards in class. Need some whiteboards? Check out Spectrum or http://www.dryerase.com/
http://musingmathematically.blogspot.ca/2012/12/my-whiteboarding-framework.html
Curriculum Tags: All

Add to the list another site that students (both math and science) can access for video tutorials and online MC practice questions.
http://www.goorulearning.org/gooru/index.g#!/home
Curriculum Tags: All

Another TED talk, this time about the power of an algorithm. I like the bit about an algorithm that lead to a trench to be dug from NY to Chicago. All to save 3 milliseconds on a transaction. The first graph he shows is also pretty cool.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U, All
Here is a YouTube video of Keith Devlin (NPR's Math Guy) having a debate about whether math is more of an art or a science. Its long though.
Curriculum Tags: All

XKCD doing what they do. Nice reference to Zeno's Paradox
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U

The media often gets it wrong. Here is a simple place value error. What makes it worse is its right in the headline.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7NS, Gr8NS