I took yesterday off of blogging because of being overwhelmed with todo lists for work. Fixed that. Yay! So, another #BlAugust post for me.
OMG! I also earned a “Star of the Week” from Meg Craig for this post! Wow. That is an honor coming from her. She also made a shortlink for the page: bit.ly/mtbosresources. I guess I better keep it updated!
Okay, on to the post.
I attended a board meeting of the local math group last night. Some of the most amazing educators in my region (not just my county), and it is a pleasure to work with all of them again. I am on the board as the Higher Ed Representative, which is a good fit.
During the course of the meeting, a call was put out by a member for resources, activities, and other things for the newsletter. Of course, I volunteered a list of 5 or so things off the top of my head from the MTBoS. There was concern about the amount of time it would take to “find” these resources, so I volunteered fix that.
This collection of #MTBoS resources is here so I can find it easily in the future and to provide a page where other teachers can be directed.
First off, what is the #MTBoS? The hashtag stands for Math Twitter Blog o’Sphere. Dan Meyer has an interesting take on the MTBoS.
Sites that are ‘organizational’ in nature:
These sites try to organize or provide structure to the #MTBoS in some way.
Exploring the MTBoS: A site created by math teachers to help organize, explain, and yes, explore the MTBoS.
Welcome to the MTBoS: A site created to welcome teachers new to the MTBoS. It gives them support, some guidance, as well as helps them find some good tweeps (Twitter peeps) to follow and get to know.
A dedicated MTBoS search engine: Have you ever wanted a lesson on XXX, but googled it and came up with a bunch of crap? This search engine searches only math teacher blogs, K-12, and will pull up lessons that are tried and tested. If the lesson sucked, the blog post will tell you that, and how to improve it.
TwitterMathCamp: An annual conference that meets in July to connect teachers. It is PD for teachers, by teachers. It also has an archive of blog posts from every year. In addition there is a wiki of sessions, My Favorites, and Keynotes.
The MTBoS Directory: This site lists teachers who are self-identified as members of the #MTBoS. Want to join? Just submit your name. That is all it takes. It has a map of members to help you find local math teachers, as well as multiple ways to sort and select people.
The hashtag #MTBoS on Twitter: Ask a question relating to math or math teaching using the hashtag, you will get an answer.
A Facebook MTBoS group: Another way to connect with math educators
A Padlet of “High Fives” for others in the #MTBoS created by Sam Shah. He is amazing. The “High Five” is relevant because of the speech I gave at TMC15.
A Chat list of Educational Chats: They list themselves as “official” but of course there is no such thing. It is rather comprehensive, and although the chats change times each year, it is pretty complete and accurate.
A MTBoS LiveBinder: This binder collects and organizes resources for the MTBoS. There are a lot of different links in this binder.
Resources / Activities created by the MTBoS (many are crowd sourced, submit your questions too!)
- Global Math Department: Every Tuesday evening, a presentation by a different math educator on a relevant topic.
- Daily Desmos: Different Demos challenges every day. 6-12
- teacher.desmos.com: Yes, Desmos is a company, not a person. However, they are an active member of the MTBoS!
- Estimation 180: Andrew Stadel’s site with different estimation challenges for each day of the year. K-12
- Visual Patterns: Fawn Nguyen’s site with different visual patterns, challenging learners to create the equation / expression for it. K-12
- Math Talks: Fawn Nguyen also curates this site which prompts to get your learners talking math. K-12
- Which One Doesn’t Belong: Mary Bourassa’s site that poses the age old question. K-12
- Math Munch: Justin Lanier’s site that has lots of fun, engaging lessons. K-12
- Would You Rather? John Stevens asks the simple question, would you rather have this, or that? Justify with math. 6-12
- Fraction Talks: A great visual way to get learners talking about fractions. K-12
- Collaborative Mathematics: Poses questions to get learners engaged with each other about math. K-12
- Open Middle: Robert Kaplinksy created this site to collect open middle questions. K-12
- Math Mistakes: Michael Pershan is fascinated by what teachers can learn by looking at mistakes. K-12
- Talking Math with your Kids: Christopher Danielson’s passion for doing math with little ones is celebrated. K-6
- Math Arguments: The Math Curmudgeon curates problems to create math arguments in your classroom. 7-12
Teacher resources (not for learners necessarily)
- NixTheTricks: Tina Cardone is the editor of this book. A great resource for teachers of all levels.
- One Good Thing: Teaching got you down? Find someone else’s “One Good Thing” here. Submit your own too.
- Letters to New Teachers: A collection of exactly what it says.
- A Day in the Life of an Educator: A collection of posts about a Day in the Life.
- Virtual Filing Cabinet: Sam Shah’s cabinet is one of the best!
And this is before we get into lessons from:
- Geoff Krall’s problem-based curriculum maps
- Robert Kaplinsky’s lessons
- Dan Meyer’s three-act tasks
- Andrew Stadel’s three-act tasks
- Illustrative Mathematics tasks
- Lessons from the Shell Centre
- The Alameda County Office of Education collects resources as well and shares them.
Bit.ly links created to archive and store awesome lessons.
- bit.ly/desmosbank – Managed by Jedidiah Butler, a way to store all the awesome things created by teachers around the world with Desmos. Add yours too!
- bit.ly/cardsortbank – Created at the Descon16 by Julie Reulbach to keep track of the amazing Card Sorts her group was creating. Add yours too!
- bit.ly/mtbosresources (this page so I don’t forget it!)
These are just a few of my favorites. For more activities, teacher created materials, sites, and just all around engaging stuff go to the Welcome to the MTBoS site. http://mathtwitterblogosphere.weebly.com/cool-things-weve-done-together.html
I hope this helps. Now that I have it typed up, I am passing it along to teachers in my region for sharing as well.
Have a wonderful day!
Edited: 17 Aug 2016
Edited 22 Aug 2016
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