Author: Geoff
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Getting Better: I can improve anything for students, but I can’t improve that
I can get better at almost everything. You can get better at your practice, regardless of your teaching style. I know I often come across as dogmatic with regards to Problem-Based Learning (see Fig. 1), but really, it’s all about steady improvement, irregardless of your teaching style. My personal preference is inquiry and complex task oriented groupwork 100%…
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Equalizing practice and assessment
I’ve made it a habit to retweet this once a month or so from Jenn (@DataDiva) who I look up to as a leader in the field of teacher- and student-friendly assessment. . @emergentmath “Assessment is at its best when it is ongoing and most difficult to distinguish from the teaching that is occurring.” —…
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When to scaffold, if at all
It’s been a while since I’ve revisited the Taxonomy of Problems I threw together a while back, but I think it’ll be helpful to spend some time there when considering the following Most-Wanted question around Problem-Based Learning: At what point after allowing the students to work on a problem do I scaffold the content knowledge?…
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Guy racing another guy in a squirrel costume, obviously a systems problem
Artifact Entry Event: Only the first half of this video of some between-innings entertainment, like so: (Editor’s note: I had to grab the video via a screencast, which doesn’t have the greatest resolution. If anyone can download the video directly, please let me know how. (See update below)) Suggested Questions: Who wins, the regular guy…
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A quick aside from the real-world and my real-world post
Ha. Funnily enough my father tacked this on to an email I received from him this morning, coming on the heels of my defense of the real-world. I enjoyed this decidedly non-real-world problem and thought you might too. Consider a unit square that encloses a unit equilateral triangle: As shown, the area of the square…
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In Defense of the Real World
I’ve been truly enjoying Dan’s blog post series (from last year!) on the “Fake World.” I’d highly recommend you go read those posts if you haven’t already. It deftly exposes the fallacy of authenticity-as-engagement. I would like to offer a defense (three, really) of applied mathematical tasks. 1) Developing Tasks There are basically two ways…
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Your 2013 Math Blogging Retrospectus is Ready to Consume Your School’s Printer Ink
If you’d like to see a smattering of the math education blog posts that inspired some folks who were happy enough to leave the link on our doorstep, head over here: Math Blogging Retrospectus 2013 Auld Lang Syne.
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Prepping the Math Blogging Retrospectus 2013: I need your favorite math reads from this year!
I hope you’ve been bookmarking, fav-ing, feedly-ing, and whatever else you do to keep track of the math blogging posts that you’ve appreciated this past year. Last year’s Math Blogging Retrospectus got a really nice response, if only from myself (I like to reread it from time to time for inspiration and entertainment). I asked…
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This High School football coach plays “Would You Rather” Math, and so should you
Add “Would You Rather?” to your bookmarks. Phrasing math problems in terms of “Would You Rather” is simple and brilliant. I love this framework for three reasons: 1) It’s relatable. We’ve all wondered whether it’s more efficient to mow the lawn in concentric rectangles or in stripes. We’ve all run. We’ve all argued with other…
emergent math 