Back To School
As the school year begins it is a good time to reflect on what you want to get out of your educational experience. There is more to school than "getting by". Find the challenges in the material you are presented with and find a way to put something of yourself into those challenges.
Good Luck with the new school year.
Khan Academy New SAT Prep Goes Live!
The Khan Academy has partnered with the College Board to create free test prep materials for the updated SAT which will be administered starting next March.
Please check it out here I will be checking it out myself and sharing my thoughts here.
Example of Solving a Quadratic Equation
Here is my latest example video for solving a quadratic equation. See the Playlist
A Bumpus Hops!
When I was quite young, I was lucky enough to live in a house with an early computer. To be specific, our family had the TI-99 4A. It was on that machine that I did some of my first tinkering with the BASIC computer language. But before even that, I got my first taste of "programming" a computer through a quirky little game called Story Machine.
The game consisted of writing little sets of commands that were then animated for your viewing pleasure. As silly as the whole thing was, it was mesmerizing to be able to tell the machine what to do and have it obey your commands. In retrospect, it was what kindled my interest in computers and programming. It makes a lot of sense to me then, to see the development of education technology to spark interest in programming and logic through animation and games. When I taught middle school, I was a big proponent of Scratch, a drag and drop coding tool that taught logic as you invented little animations. More recently I have come across Tynker which is a browser-based descendant of the scratch concept. Upon first exploration it also seems to have some incredible possibilities for engaging the logical mind in an exciting way.
The tools get better but the lesson remains, get the kids to start exploring and the learning will come naturally!
A CELEBRATION OF MISTAKES
The website MathMistakes.org, needs to exist. I am happy to report my discovery that it does.
I don't think there are many things better for solidifying understanding and banishing misconceptions than examining the one's own mistakes and those of others. Math Mistakes is a great little authentic collection of student mistakes with accompanying commentary. Looking through these is a great way to understand different ways of thinking about a problem and solidify one's own comprehension by articulating the logic behind the correct solutions.
I think some great assignments could be crafted by asking students to comment on and correct these mistakes.
How can technology supplement classroom learning
Recently, The Atlantic published an article Are iPads a Solution to Snow Days?, outlining a program in a Minnesota school for supplementing curriculum during weather closings. While there are certainly drawbacks to this type of program, I believe that it only mirrors expectations which are emerging in the business world. Many people in the workforce are already able to work remotely when situations require, and I can only imagine this number increasing.
Beyond the immediate concerns about continuity of instruction, this may be helping students prepare for expectations of remote work after graduation.
I am a Numberphile
Lately I have been watching a lot of videos on numberphile.com. As it sounds, the site is the product of a group of people who love numbers and their enthusiasm for it is infectious. The videos are of high quality and are great to get you thinking.
Here is a video about adding 1 + -1 + 1 + -1 ... that I found particularly interesting. What do you think?
SAT Prep on Khan Academy
The Khan Academy has an SAT PREP PROGRAM this has a series of tutorials featuring real SAT questions and a guided tutorial.