I was invited to a presentation of free math tools by a
professor/website designer.At the beginning
of his talk, before showing us any materials the founder Dr. Ronald Panoff told
us his story.Having been diagnosed
with a terminal illness, Bob decided to leave his mark on the world by
developing a free website of computational science materials.As it turns out, several years later he
is still with us, contrary to his diagnosis.The second thing I remember about his personal story was his
method for helping us remember the website.
What if more of your students came to school ready to learn math?The Count from Sesame Street will soon have help developing number sense.And Dora the Explorer and Diego will soon have company in the land of educational television.The new show “Team Umizoomi” is Nickelodeon’s new venture aimed at teaching math to preschool students.
Luckily we returned to school one day before the students this semester.A breakfast buffet lined the library tables.Teachers greeted each other with wishes of a happy new year.Casual wear was the norm.Slowly, with enough coffee in our systems to muster up the ability to face schedule changes and lesson planning, everyone moved out from the library to their rooms to begin preparing for the new semester.And then slowly, everyone reappeared in the hallways.
Being home for Christmas brought back tons of memories,especially those of holidays past.My father was always very creative when it came to gift giving when we were kids.For birthdays, we would wake up to a card with a clue.When you solved the riddle, you were able to locate another clue, until at the end of the trail, we would find our gift hidden strategically in the house.Once, my birthday present was hidden up under the kitchen table chair where I had been sitting when I opened the first clue.Christmas was even more unique.We went through a series of Christmas mornings in which we could open one gift each hour.For a kid, this may sound like torture.But in reality it gave us time to savor each gift and probably helped our parents not feel like we tore through gifts without even knowing what we had gotten from Santa.Now how does this have anything to do with math?
With a change of jobs and going back to school this year, this is the first break longer than three days that I have had since last winter break. To send the message, my mom has bought me the calendar “For Women who do too Much” for the past four years or so. So what I do plan to do this break? Now that I have finished the last paper for my graduate courses, I plan on doing nothing related to education. Now that is probably not as realistic as I imagine. For anyone who has answered the call of education, turning off the mind set of “ooh I can use that to teach . . .” is close to impossible. But I am going to try my very, very best to turn down my work motor and relax.
This is it. The last week of school before the well-deserved holiday break. I know people think that the kids are the ones who look forward to two weeks of no classes. I guarantee you the teachers and staff are just as excited to have the time off as well. What to do with two weeks without the jingle of tardy bells?
Browsing the Internet, I ran across a blog entry in which the author posted his child’s math homework assignment asking for assistance.Curious, I clicked to see what the fuss was about.
