I cannot tell you how much I LOVE the blog Rational Expressions. But, as you suspected, I will try.

Okay, first, I want to dance a little happy dance every time I see yesterday’s entry in this teacher’s blog.  It does so many thing right.

1.  Story.  ONE (there are many others) very powerful way of learning math is to look at it as a language, as a translation of data (characters, events) into story with verbs (operations) and modifiers (exponents showing quicker growth than multipliers, for instance).  Check out his pictures.  Can you make up a story to go with them?  Nothing is more powerful.

Two.  A blog about teaching and learning that is reflective and questioning in this way is such a wonderful way to learn and teach.  I admire him.

Three.  The title Rational Expressions.  I’m dancing again.  Not only extremely important  mathematical vocabulary but its meaning in the everyday world is compelling too, with its connections to logic and tolerance and voice and sharing.  I love it.

4.  I will stop talking now.  But here are the first three pictures on this post, so you don’t have to go anywhere else to see them, but at the end there is a little button (called “little button”)  Click it and check out his blog.

Ms. LaForge

My J. Alfred Prufrock Wordle and also My Trig Wordle!

Many ways to use Wordle, including analysis.

Here’s my trig wordle:

This, from today’s PLG training.  Laura Girr linked us to a blog that gave 40 ways to use wordle.  Here are some of those ways from

A few mathy things March 27, 2013 and don’t make me explain to you again how EVERYTHING is mathy

NUMBER 1:

The Irresistable Book of the Week to be ordered from Longfellow Books:

Each dated page allows you to fill in your schedule or jot down a creative response to the artwork, turning it into a weird and wonderful hybrid of datebook, sketchbook and daily art journal. Featured in the book are favorite artist

Seems to me an interesting way to record happenings at MY school, OUR school.  Kids will have free access to it.  They can see my schedule but also what I am thinking and learning about during the day.

NUMBER 2:

Oooh.  Click on the tweet to get the link at goodreader.com.

NUMBER 3:  Anything from Greeley High School Librarian Heather Perkinson is worth following up on!  Here’s one from a few days ago…

Each person gives 3 good things to read, watch, and have in their toolkit.  Heather’s excellent suggestion is to have our teachers contribute or (in my mind) do our own one like it.

NUMBER 4:  A writer whose work I respect and like, Steven Brust, keeps a website called the Dream Cafe.  I went to look at the cover art for his next book and also, quite honestly to see what John Scalzi said there that prompted this tweet from Steven Brust:

To continue being honest, I still don’t know because whatever it was that was lovable is either in code or…gone?  Well, in any case, I found myself on this great fantasy writer’s website and in the upper right hand corner he has a little spot where quotations he has chosen come up.  Three that made me think, or laugh, today:

NUMBER 5: Okay, this is really getting to be enough for one day, but I saw a lot of cool things.  One more.  Okay two more.  But that’s it.  Really.  Maybe three.

Seriously, I Love Charts?  This is the best thing ever!  They even have Guest Chartists.  This one was interesting…

If it isn’t obvious why I Love Charts is a great tumbler channel, I don’t know what is.

NUMBER 6:  While using twitter to keep track of sites and bits of news I need to check out later, this tweet from a friend came.  Funny, right?!

NUMBER 7:  In other storytelling news (note to self, mention this to Chris M.) from the Future of Storytelling, a boring (in parts) but also fascinating Virtual Roundtable.

That’s all I am going to put up this afternoon.  I am reading Cold Days by Jim Butcher, and Mary Moore, the FHS librarian, just got in a bunch of new books and I now need to read EON, and also The Unbearable Bookclub for Unsinkable Girls and also The Raven Boys by Maggie Stievalter (did I spell that right?).

LaForge

My life in math March 13, 2013: Mars, Pizza, Pi Day, and What my Librarian Friend Mary Moore is Reading

Look what came in the mail today!

Just in time for Pi Day on Thursday.

I usually dress up fancy for parents on Parent Teacher Conference day, but don’t you think I should wear my new shirt on Pi Day?

In other exciting news, as Joe Hanson said on his AWESOME blog

The number of planets that we know about that could support life has now gone up to…

Mars Rover itself tweeted about it today:

Here is a picture of some of the minerals that it analyzed to find the building blocks of life:

For more information, read the entire awesome and not very long piece here at Joe’s Blog.

<<Changing subjects>>

Tomorrow in Honors Geometry class, I am going to share part of the book from David Levithan that Mary Moore, FHS librarian is reading because it has this awesome mathy part.  Also the book looks good.  Here are the details:

Sixteen-year-old Elijah is completely mellow and his 23-year-old brother Danny is completely not, so it’s no wonder they can barely tolerate one another.So what better way to repair their broken relationship than to trick them into taking a trip to Italy together? Soon, though, their parents’ perfect solution has become Danny and Elijah’s nightmare as they’re forced to spend countless hours together. But then Elijah meets Julia, and soon the brothers aren’t together nearly as much. And then Julia meets Danny and soon all three of them are in a mixed-up, turned-around, never-what-you-expect world of brothers, Italy, and love.

Anyway, here are the pages we are going to look at:

ANOTHER TOPIC CHANGE, AND, IN FACT, ANOTHER TWEET:

What do you think?

Moody’s Mega Math Update below…

Done! (Scroll down to the March Craziness post for the update at the end.)

Maine is the 2nd Happiest State according to Twitter analysis

In case you haven’t seen it, the Atlantic’s write up of a project to map the happiest states and citys based on an analysis of language used on twitter. Very cool.

Something a little different from Vi Hart.

Vi Hart’s Guide to Dealing with Negative Comments in a Digital Age

Active Engagement

Did I mention, Active Engagement? If you say it over and over it stops meaning anything. And yet, it is everything. Always was. IMHO

I am me and that means a teacher. It is March and that means craziness!

I refuse to say I am “behind”.  This isn’t a race.  It is March (and before that it was February and January) in Maine in the middle of a school year.  I am working with a student teacher, working as a teacher, as a math strategist, as a department chair, as the student tech team advisor, our Moody’s Mega Math advisor, and more.  I have a whole bunch of things to post as I continue to endeavor to map out an interesting world of links and projects and photos and quotations and stories and ideas for myself as an active learner and for my students, now and in the future.

So hold on, here I go…be prepared for an entry blitz.

But wait, you may ask, why now?  Why do you have time now and not yesterday?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  Today is the day of our Moody’s Mega Math Challenge!  Five students and I are at the school while they, with no help from a live human being, including me or live human beings who are online, attack a fabulous real world problem, formulate their solution and submit it to the experts at SIAM.  Just saying.  Here’s a link to Moody’s if you would like to read more!  Moody’s Mega Math Challenge

 

UPDATE!  Here’s a wallwisher wall of pictures from our day!  And here’s just one, of the team.  And me.

14 hours!

 

In Which a Weight has been Lifted

A story video about what happens when one of the world’s (the physics world at least!) most precious artifacts are stolen. The kilogram standard. Come to me via Joe Hanson of It’s OK to be Smart fame (see previous post!)