Get the Math has been around for a couple of years but when it first came out it only had a few activities. Not sure how I cam across it again but I see that it has expanded its content. The premiss is that it would highlight a real context that math was used and then build an interactive activity around it. So far they have fashion, music, video games, basketball, restaurants and special effects. With topics like ratio and rate, percents, plotting points, linear relations, quadratics and exponential relationships. Personally my favourite is the music activity with ratios and sampled beats. Very cool. Below is the intro video for that activity
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MFM2P, MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C, MAP4C, MCT4C http://www.thirteen.org/get-the-math/
I have mixed feelings about the whole effort to make tutorial videos about doing math. Not so much about whether they are a good idea but more about the quality of what is out there. There are certainly large repositories (the Khan Academy) but its navigating those videos can be a problem. Phoenix College has tried to address that with this simple interface. Start with a topic and then that is further broken down into sub topics until you find the video you want. Thanks to Free Technology for Teachers for turning me on to this one. http://www.phoenixcollege.edu/academics/programs/mathematics/math-videos
Curriculum Tags: All
I like this simple experiment. Next time it snows (hopefully not soon), fill up a glas with it and estimate the amount of water when it melts. You could create all sorts of data when doing this and then use that to connect snow fall with regular precipitation. http://emergentmath.com/2013/04/16/snow-cylinder/
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MFM1P, MPM1D
Apparently the portion of the brain that is in charge of doing math is
localized to one area. At least that is what it seems a new research paper is saying. Read more here. Thanks to Mark Esping for this one. http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/your-brain-on-math/
Curriculum Tags: All
Math in the News is a website that puts out a slideshow on a semi regular basis. The slideshows indicate instances where math shows up in the news and includes ideas of where to incorporate them in math curriculum. The most recent one is from November of 2012 and of course includes info about the election. Currently there are 67 of these slideshows so there is quite a back catalog to get caught up with http://www.slideshare.net/Media4Math/
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I know that I have already mentioned the Wild About Math blog but they have just uploaded another Inspired by Math interview. This time with Keith Devlin (The Math Guy -among other things). In this almost 2hour interview Keith talks extensively about teaching his MOOC (massively open online course) Introduction to Mathematical Thinking to over 64,000 students. I have blogged a bit about the concept here but this was really interesting to hear some of the logistical aspects. For example, he talked bit about the validity and method for students grading each other.
He also said a couple of things that really resonated with me. I will paraphrase here "Learning math is like learning to ride a bike. You can't learn by just
having it explained to you. You have to try it and fail at it and try it
and fail at it and then finally you will learn to ride a bike and you
will never forget how to do it again" and "In high school I aced my calculus courses but didn't understand calculus
until I was a graduate student TAing a calculus course"
Look for his new Math gaming app which should be coming out in about 3 weeks. http://wildaboutmath.com/2013/01/22/keith-devlin-%E2%80%93-inspired-by-math-17/
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Here is a great site to get some sinusoidal (and maybe some linear) data for analysis. In fact, I got the sunrise sunset data for Windsor, massaged it into a spreadsheet and then created a Fathom file for you here to use. Have fun. Sundata.csv, Sundata.ftm http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCF3M, MHF4U
With the Superbowl coming up, I thought I would share a slideshow I made for the 2008 Superbowl on all the different ways the money is spent on that one weekend.
I am not completely sure how this could be used in a math class but I was fascinated by the connection of math and economics to show that LeBron James is actually severely underpaid at $17M per year. I am pretty sure you could tie this into statistics. Listen to NPR's Planet Money story here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/01/25/170176590/at-17-5-million-a-year-lebron-james-is-underpaid
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
Dan Meyer did a nice montage of disparaging marks against math in the movies. One of the neat things about this clip was the website Subzin. On that site you can enter any words or phrases and it will search out where and when that appeared in their movie database. http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=16222
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Download this free poster of colour coded trig identities from the Math Four site. A nice visual aid that you could print out for your grade 11 students.
I like this simple experiment. Next time it snows (hopefully not soon), fill up a glas with it and estimate the amount of water when it melts. You could create all sorts of data when doing this and then use that to connect snow fall with regular precipitation.
Apparently the portion of the brain that is in charge of doing math is 
