A thing of geeky beauty today:
This is a Pocket Decoder for Geocachers, for codebreaking on the go! If you are not into geocaching, it’s still a thing of beauty. The dial is replaceable, meaning you can use it to crack a variety of codes.
Find out more here.
If you remember ‘The Wonder Years’ you are probably old enough to remember grunge the first time around and television programmes that didn’t involve so called ‘Reality TV’.
So what happens to female child stars?
Some have a rocky youth, work really hard and become hugely successful (Drew Barrymore). Some have a rocky youth and become hugely notorious (Lindsay Lohan). Some work really hard, do research, writing and acting, have a theorem named after them and become advocates for women and maths education!
Step forward Danica McKellar!
Apart from playing ‘Winnie Cooper’ in ‘The Wonder Years’, Danica is also a successful mathematician. She has written four books aimed at promoting maths to high school students, in particular girls. I strongly suggest you have a look at them or get your school library to purchase them as they are full of inspirational ideas and new ways to think about ‘dusty’ topics.
Her books to date are:
Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape (2013)
Hot X: Algebra Exposed! (2011)
Maths Doesn’t Suck: How to survive year 6 through year 9 maths without losing your mind or breaking a nail (2010)
Kiss my Math: Showing Pre-Algebra who’s boss (2009)
The summer is a memory as we dig out the wellies and jump in puddles.
This photo made me feel summery and geeky all at once. Click here to find out more.
If you are on Twitter, you may have heard of the perfectly titled @MathsBookClub. If not, let me explain.
People were asked to nominate their favourite Maths related book (Fiction or Fact).
People voted and the most popular was chosen.
The winner was: ‘Alex’s Adventures in Numberland’ (‘Here’s looking at Euclid’ USA) by Alex Bellos.
Just like a “meet down the pub bookclub” there will be an online discussion on Wednesday 23rd October. Except with this bookclub, the author has offered to join in! Very cool!
To join in the mathematical literary fun either follow @MathsBookClub on twitter, visit the mathsbookclub website or do both!
(Support your local Library. If that’s not possible then click on the book for a link to the paper version on Amazon.co.uk; ebook also available)
Ah … beloved GCSE students. Why does revising feel like I’m just reteaching a topic for the Nth time?
I’ve been trying some new ideas out on my GCSE group. One of the more popular ones ideas, for an unpopular topic, were these Circle Theorems fact cards. Students were given four cards with a diagram and an open question, for example: What is special about angles ABD and ACD? In the gap, they had to answer the question. They soon realised that the answers they had written were the theorems that they’d learnt. Their solutions had popped into their heads, without being bogged down by number stress. They could then try number questions, referring back to these fact cards if they got stuck.
A short post today. This week J introduced me to the ‘MyScript Calculator’ app.
It’s a rather nifty app that converts freehand writing into mathematical calculations and solves them. It is available for most formats of smartphone and you can visit their website here.
These examples from the website show what it is capable of doing – I’m sure there is a lesson here somewhere.
Confession time!
I like teaching co-ordinates.
I like teaching plotting graphs.
But …..
Getting pupils to draw axes drives me up the y-axis.
Right now I can sense people shaking their heads – why are you doing co-ordinate plotting if they can’t draw axes?
The problem is that they can draw axes, but for some pupils it takes about half an hour to get lines drawn with a ruler, axes marks equally spaced, lines (not gaps) numbered. For other pupils, their particular SEN means it’s a struggle using equipment. Should I be penalising pupils because they are slow to draw axes, when I know they’ll work brilliantly if I give them axes?
So I’ve put together an A4 sheet of axes. There are two identical sets: the x-axis goes from 0-10, the y-axis goes from 0-18. There is also space to write name and Question number so you can keep track of who has done what. I know there are many websites that will generate these for you on demand, but I’ve just used what was available to me at the time to make something that works for my pupils.
You can download it from TES resources here.