Monday, October 8, 2012

Thinking about math. . .

Hey, I'm supposed to be writing about literacy, yes?  I'm taking a wee detour into math literacy on this post.  I've been a fan of Dan Meyer and his blog for a while, since before this TED Talk was recorded. (Best line: I teach high school math. I sell a product to a market that doesn’t want it, but is forced by law to buy it.)

We're at a time when we (the collective, education community "we") need to make some decisions about where math education is going. There are so many fascinating conversations going on around math right now:

Online and/or electronic math resources are finally beginning to appear in real numbers.  The National Virtual Manipulative Lab has  individual activities and entire eModules mapped to standards.   Kinetic has several more traditional ebook offerings.

Teachers in Finland and Utah, frustrated with what's available are writing their own math text books collaboratively, with their standards and students in mind.  Don't want to start from scratch?  Check out CK12--and customize it!

Henri Picciotto and a crew of like minded math teachers share ideas about how to Escape the Textbook.

There's a lot going on in math! Almost makes me want to go back to school (again!).