Like many of you, I suspect, I learn more and am edified more by the social media math education community than that of academia and your typical district instructional coaching. Also like many of you, I suspect, I’m WAY behind on my math ed blog reading. Much of that is because it just slips through the cracks: if you’re offline for, like, a day you’ve missed out on all sorts of great twitter conversations and/or blog posts. It’s also partially due to the explosion in math blogging this year. Thanks in no small part to some of the pioneers of the math blog world, and specifically by Sam Shah’s amazing project, math blogs are everywhere, which is an amazing thing. But it’s also quite unwieldy There are amazing math blogs that I’m probably not even aware of. That’s insane when you think about it. Less than two years ago I could probably rattle off just about ALL the regularly updated math blogs, and now I can barely keep up with those.
So I’m in need of some holiday reading material. Instead of snuggling up by my fake fire with a good book, I’d like to snuggle up with an e-reader or something and read through your favorite several pieces of math blogging from 2012. Don’t give me some stupid “EDUBLOG” ranking: I want to know what touched you and inspired you this year. Maybe it was a wonderfully written reflection piece, maybe it was just a cool problem idea. Both of those modes and others can be found below: just SOME of my favorites from 2012.
- Kate Nowak’s Logic Game that needs a name.
- Cheesemonkey’s touching account of pink slip day.
- Jeff’s Starting Over post.
- Nat Banting’s Sprinkler Task.
- Jeff’s continued obsession with Ninjas.
- Michael’s quarterly review.
- Grant Wiggins’s interview with Steve Strogratz.
- Timon’s Broken Calculator problem. (Also, his box problem) (Also also, his TV space problem)
- What I believe to be the prologue to Dan Meyer’s Ladder of Abstraction.
- And, duh, the genesis of MTT2K from John and Dave.
There are ten of the pieces of math ed blogging that I found to be helpful, inspiring well-written, creative, and/or moving this past year. I would really appreciate it if you let me know what was one (or several!) of your favorite pieces of math blogging this year in the comments. You know: take a penny, leave a penny. Thanks, and Happy Holidays!
emergent math 
http://mrvaudrey.com/2012/05/03/the-only-lesson-theyll-remember/
http://hyperbolicguitars.blogspot.com/ — smartest person I have ever been lucky enough to teach with and call friend.
Awesome Chris, I know I’ve interacted with @gfrblxt on many occasions, but will definitely dig deeply into his blog. Any particular post suggestions? — Geoff
Geoff,
Seeing that you have Timon’s Pop Box Design here already, I’ll add another one of my favourite 3 Act tasks: Andrew’s File Cabinet (http://mr-stadel.blogspot.ca/2012/04/file-cabinet.html).
Fawn’s story of 6th Grade kindness (http://fawnnguyen.com/2012/04/09/you-are-a-girl-female.aspx). Difficult to pick just one of her lesson ideas, but maybe her investigation of circumference/diameter using bubbles (forhttp://fawnnguyen.com/2012/06/06/20120605.aspx).
Kate on technology: “You don’t go to a twenty-minute inservice about xyz.com and go “I’m going to make an xyz.com lesson.” You use xyz.com for your own purposes, or you suspect its utility and put it in your back pocket, until your awesome instruction idea needs xyz.com in order to exist. Your lesson is the fuel and xyz.com is the oxygen.” Love this! (http://function-of-time.blogspot.ca/2012/03/what-to-do-with-all-technologies.html)
Triangleman’s talking math with your kids series (http://christopherdanielson.wordpress.com/category/talking-math-with-your-kids/). You’re not going to make me choose just one, are you?
Finally, I got a kick out of witnessing Dan’s incredulity at the restaurant over Marc’s golden rectangle claim and Dan’s resulting post. (http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=15500)
Chris
Talked about ideas on what she wanted to start this year, stop this year and continue this year. Reflection, something we all need
http://statteacher.blogspot.com/2012/07/start-continue-stop.html
My Favorite Assessment, quick and easy
http://mathlete06.blogspot.com/2012/10/made4mathmondaythe-best-formative.html
Megan talks about how we should be STEALING from each other to make us better and then links the things she STOLE this year.
http://kalamitykat.com/2012/11/25/stolen-pedagogy/
Another vote for … you gotta read Fawn Nguyen. She came onto my radar this past year or so, and I love her posts.
Malke writes about homeschooling her daughter, and has so many cool observations (this one and this one look good).
I’ll posts some links I’ve been saving up once finals are over, too.
Consider the gift given. I didn’t wrap it though.
http://wp.me/p2zJtD-3I
(Ack!) With looming deadline ahead, here are a few of my quick picks that helped me shape my lessons, made me laugh or cry, and let me think about my practices in 2012.
Timon’s: http://mrpiccmath.weebly.com/1/post/2012/07/3-acts-broken-calculator.html
Kelly’s: http://kellyoshea.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/whiteboarding-mistake-game-a-guide/
Sam’s: http://samjshah.com/2012/06/01/algebra-bootcamp-in-calculus/
Nico’s: http://ynaughtmath.blogspot.ca/search/label/Locker%20Problem
Andrew’s: http://mr-stadel.blogspot.com/2012/05/be-student.html
Frank’s: http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/keep-it-simple-standards-based-grading/
Bryan Meyer’s: http://www.doingmathematics.com/2/post/2012/05/habits-of-a-mathematician-portfolio-assessment.html
Chris Hunter’s: http://reflectionsinthewhy.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/kitchen-table-konversations/
Kate’s: http://function-of-time.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-memo-from-right-now.html
Marshall’s: http://mtsmc.blogspot.com/2012/12/homework-is-tool-use-it-for-good-not.html
Matt Vaudrey’s: http://mrvaudrey.com/2012/09/02/a-come-to-jesus-meeting/
Mimi’s: http://untilnextstop.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-se-asia-solo-trip-part-2-vietnam.html
Nat’s: http://musingmathematically.blogspot.ca/2011/08/first-day-tasks.html
Dan Meyer’s Taco Cart: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=15186
Thank you for the opportunity to share my favorites with you. If you really have nothing better to red, there is, of course, my math blog, begun in August with the math bloggers initiative, http://zicker63.blogspot.com. Then, I fell I,n love with math blogs reading Math Tales From the Spring. One of my favorite posts was from Fawn, at http://fawnnguyen.com/2012/11/14/20121112.aspx, because she is so dang funny, Julie at I Speak Math for introducing me in the blogging initiative and I love Mr. Vaudrey ‘s blog for several reasons, he’s funny, risky, and loves his baby girl. Happy holidays to you, Amy in Sebastopol.