Small changes, seemingly inconsequential acts, can have momentous repercussions. Dead birds set off the environmental movement. An assassin’s bullet protesting an exhausted empire started a world war that brought down the ruling monarchies of Europe. A tax on tea turned into a revolution. Such a small change occurred in America’s classrooms a little over a …
We extend the place value generator to 100’s of thousands to show you how the pattern of 1’s, 10’s, 100’s, continues to 1,000’s, 10,000’s, 100,000’s. Enter numbers and watch the expanded and compact forms of place value change. Pay special attention to using text units and take a look at the rule we used to …
Learning Math as a Creative Experience with Spreadsheets UMASS Amherst MTA Summer Conference Guide OUR WORKSHOP: What if your students had the opportunity to learn mathematics in new ways, observe patterns, experience connections between varieties of representations and generate their own solutions to interesting problems? In this 2-session workshop you will have the …
When MOOCs were the rage in higher education, I asked my friend David Kaiser, a physicist and professor of the history of science at MIT, when he was going to do a MOOC. Dave has won teaching awards at MIT and writes brilliant books on the history of physics. Who better to do a MOOC …
The Parker Solar Probe was launched yesterday to study the sun. Sixty years ago, Eugene Parker launched my scientific career. A young physics research scientist at the University of Chicago, Parker volunteered to be a mentor to encourage science-promise high school students to develop their own science projects. I had the awesome fortune to be …
A little over 20 years ago the Harvard Calculus Consortium sought to remake the calculus curriculum. “We believe that the calculus curriculum needs to be completely re-thought,” began the text by Andrew Gleason and Deborah Hughes Hallett, both of Harvard University. They sought to get “our students to think.” In doing so they proposed “The …
Recently, in a history of physics magazine, I came across this picture and a short story on Harvard Project Physics, and I thought about the effect that this project, and these three people in particular, have had on my view of education. We all have mentors and I have the great good fortune to have …
What is the hardest question a teacher has to answer? As teachers, especially math teachers, we face this most painful question all too often, rarely do we have a good answer to it, and even more rarely does our answer enlighten students. The question is less a query and more a bleating call for relevance. …
This program started my career in digital learning. I bought my first computer, an Apple II in February 1978 on their first anniversary. I talked my wife into letting me play with a computer for doing my checkbook and turning our houselights on and off. Though I was an educator who had worked with film …
In a magazine published for college trustees, a recent short article captured the latest statistics from the ACT and SAT tests. The downward trend was notable especially in math. For example, “Forty-nine percent of the class of 2018 that took the SAT (2 million students) showed a strong chance of getting at least a C …
