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Beauty and joy found in a math proof
There may be a perception among high school age learners and some adults that math classrooms are not creative spaces. I have heard with my own ears from both groups of people. How large the groups of people are who believe this is up for debate, but not the goal of this post. Instead, I…
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Why Coding?
One question that comes ups often with math majors in the program is “Why do I have to take a computer science class?” I am not sure where the official requirement comes from, but I can say that I am extremely thankful I had a computer programming class in college. It was over 20 years…
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Asking good questions about teaching math
I have been mulling this question over for a while now, since last summer at least. It is a offshoot of the time I spent working with Exeter materials at an Exeter summer institute, and if anything the question has grown in my mind to the point where I must answer it for myself and…
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Functions, GeoGebra and a question for ourselves
It is spring break, so what am I doing? I am attending AP workshops and volunteering at my local university. All in all, a great spring break. So, Let me start with the question first. Why do we make it so hard to learn functions? I mean really. We treat each topic; linears, quadratics, cubics,…
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Exeter, we have a problem
I am planning several posts on this week’s time I spent with a math teacher from Phillips Exeter Academy. This first one, though, will be radically different from the others, and it is because I have to vent a little and lay out a difficulty I had today. Today was the last day of the…
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My thoughts on #TMC12 & overcoming myself
I am rather late to the gate with these thoughts, in large part because I drove (well, rode my motorcycle) to St. Louis from Reno, which took 4 days to get home. More on that in a different post when I do the math from the trip video. If you ask one of the teachers…
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A PROOF of the visual representation of imaginary solutions
Many people ask me why I ride my motorcycle long distances in the summer. This summer I traveled from Reno, NV to St. Louis, MO. It was around 4000 miles, round trip, and brutally hot for a couple of states worth of riding. But, that traveling allows me one single thing I rarely get. Time…
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A visual representation of Imaginary solutions
For today’s #myfavfriday I am presenting an idea that has been percolating in my head for a while. If you want to know what a #myfavfriday is, then see Druinok’s blog here. Learners have a devil of a time with quadratics. Afterall, there can be 2 solutions, 1 solution, or no solutions in Algebra 1,…
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A tale of two cousins
It was the best of conversations, it was the worst of conversations, but in the end, it was an educational conversation for my cousins and I. Okay, enough with the Dickens reference. During the summer I take a little motorcycle trip. Okay, not so little. I do around 2500 miles from Nevada to Montana and…
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53 Free Android Apps for Education
The other day, this article popped up in my reader (really! I think they were recycling their content). It is from August 2009, and it is a list of 100 iPhone apps for education. It got me thinking, because I don’t use an iPhone. I really have nothing for or against iPhones. I use Verizon…