Well life is always very busy in the spring for teachers... and this year has been no exception. With the release of the draft for the core curriclum standard for mathematic, many of us have been spending time evaluating our curriclum to see how it measures up to these new standards.
So where does that leave the michigan mathematics project? Actually, in great shape!
With only a couple of exceptions, the draft of the textbook for Algebra I thus far has done a supurbe job of lining up the the new standards and recomendations for an algebra I course! But the really nice thing about an open source textbook is that it can ALWAYS be changed or improved to accomidate both inovation and a shifting educational environment.
Although things have been slow in development lately here at Michigan Math, as the spring semester ends and summer time begins, we should again see rapid improvements in existing documents, methodologies and new documents.
By the end of this summer, we will see a first revsion and all existing documents for algebra I. Hopefully we will begin to promote michiganmath.org by the end of the summer. And begin work on the open source Algebra II book by the end of the year.
There is one more consideration to make... a site name change. Although I enjoy the Michigan reference in the name MichiganMath.org, I am considering changing the name of the site to one of the following:
-www.nationalmath.org
-www.corestandardsmathematics.org
-www.corestandardsmath.org
-www.opensourcemathtext.org
-www.mymathtext.org
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Units 4-6... works in progress
Well it was bound to happen... I'm not completely happy with these units yet. In fact unit 4 (exponential funtions) has tremendous potential that I haven't tapped into yet. That is why several of those lessons were taken off line while they are being revised.
Remember that this is a first draft of a continuously evolving textbook! Eventually, I would like to see comments and revisions made by a community of users... so I doubt that the book will ever be completely "finished".
Remember that this is a first draft of a continuously evolving textbook! Eventually, I would like to see comments and revisions made by a community of users... so I doubt that the book will ever be completely "finished".
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Slow going for exponential and quadratic functions units
The latest on these two units is that they are in the process of a re-write. As I taught the lessons for each I had too many examples, processes and just good stuff come up that wasn't included in the original investigations. Some shuffling needed to be done to accommodate these new ideas... so I'm hesitant to post the changes yet. I really want to take a good second look at them before they go live.
Keep posted. I am still looking at the end of Febuary for a complete first draft to be complete of the whole alg 1 textbook.
Keep posted. I am still looking at the end of Febuary for a complete first draft to be complete of the whole alg 1 textbook.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
exponential functions links
Here are two great links that can be used withe unit on exponential functions:
This link takes a look at several common fractels and what happens as the number of iterations increases
http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=17
This link involves paper folding and has some impressive (not intuitive) results:
http://raju.varghese.org/articles/powers2.html
This link takes a look at several common fractels and what happens as the number of iterations increases
http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=17
This link involves paper folding and has some impressive (not intuitive) results:
http://raju.varghese.org/articles/powers2.html
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Math and Haiku
http://www.haikulearning.com/ is really teacher friendly website creator specifically designed for teachers.
Check out a friends site at http://www.myhaikuclass.com/kcmowrey/mowreysclass/cms_page/view/30636
It's free too... always a bonus.
Check out a friends site at http://www.myhaikuclass.com/kcmowrey/mowreysclass/cms_page/view/30636
It's free too... always a bonus.
Nice twist on charitable contrabutions
Recently on a math teacher forum someone posted an interesting link for teachers: www.donorschoose.org
On this site teachers bid for donations to specific projects... for example, since many of the investigations written assuming the use of the ti-83/84 graphing calculator. But what if you don't have a classroom set? At donorschoose.org it is completely reasonable to finance 8 calcualtors with contrabutions.
True this is not a classroom set, but I could be one calculator for a group of four (assuming a class of less than 32)... then next year you could get 8 more and so on... in four years you could have a classroom set.
Not an ideal solution, but defiantly plausible.
On this site teachers bid for donations to specific projects... for example, since many of the investigations written assuming the use of the ti-83/84 graphing calculator. But what if you don't have a classroom set? At donorschoose.org it is completely reasonable to finance 8 calcualtors with contrabutions.
True this is not a classroom set, but I could be one calculator for a group of four (assuming a class of less than 32)... then next year you could get 8 more and so on... in four years you could have a classroom set.
Not an ideal solution, but defiantly plausible.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Using the K.I.S.S philosophy in creating an open source textbook
When I was in high school I signed up for auto shop the spring semester of my Junior year. I really wasn't fired up about it, but I needed something in my schedule and it fit. To my absolute supprise, auto shop with Mr. Taylor turned into one of my most favorite classes of all time! I didn't know anything about cars, but I enjoyed puzzles and solving problems. Mr. Tayor was a no-nonsence, tell-it-like-it-is, practical problem solver who taught me the value of the K.I.S.S. philosophy... Keep It Simple Stupid!
Many of the puzzles and problems that we come across, if they are unfamiliar, we tend to try to over complicate. It's one of those things where, when we know the answer, it seems simple and obvious... but when we don't we develop anxiety within ourselves and thus over complicate the matter.
Take the rubics cube for example. When we first grab that thing, it seems darn near impossible to solve. However, we know that there must be a simple answer because there are people who can solve it in less that 30 seconds!
Mr. Taylor taught me to be practice and keep my solution schemes simple. Some would call this Occam's Razor (the simplest answer tends to be the correct answer), but I prefer Mr. Taylor's KISS (because it makes me smile:)
This is the basic philosophy behind the construction of an open source textbook. The basic idea is to develop content to create viable math textbooks using already existing technology. Certainly fancy graphics would be nice, but cant we just draw what we need and use a scanner to put it into a document? Can't we just use the screen capture feature of the graphing calculator to build the graphics we need? Latex equation editors are open source, very high quality and easy to use in google docs... so why not use them?
The point is that at this point developing a coherent content is more important than displaying computer wizardry... there is certainly enough of that on the internet already. As the community of Open Source grows, perhaps there will be more people to develop things like impressive graphic and interactive applets. But for now... K.I.S.S. does the job. Let the text book companies worry about "keeping up with the Jones'" and spend all their money on half hearted graphics that catch the eye of a potential buyer or endless/empty web resources that are made to impress buyers with volume, not quality.
Mr. Taylor would have encouraged me to look to the cause of the problem. Since textbook companies sell their material to a national audience, they are not really interested in meeting the all needs of local educators... rather to create a product that meets (or appears to meet) as many of the needs in as many places as they can to maximize profit.
An open source textbook may not be flashy, yet. But as the community develops it has the potential of creating an editable resource that has a vast list of contributing authors and multiple versions to choose from... absolutely free!
Imagine if every math teacher could look at their classes at the beginning of the semester and tell them, honestly, that they are the author of the textbook that will be used in class.
How cool would that be?
Many of the puzzles and problems that we come across, if they are unfamiliar, we tend to try to over complicate. It's one of those things where, when we know the answer, it seems simple and obvious... but when we don't we develop anxiety within ourselves and thus over complicate the matter.
Take the rubics cube for example. When we first grab that thing, it seems darn near impossible to solve. However, we know that there must be a simple answer because there are people who can solve it in less that 30 seconds!
Mr. Taylor taught me to be practice and keep my solution schemes simple. Some would call this Occam's Razor (the simplest answer tends to be the correct answer), but I prefer Mr. Taylor's KISS (because it makes me smile:)
This is the basic philosophy behind the construction of an open source textbook. The basic idea is to develop content to create viable math textbooks using already existing technology. Certainly fancy graphics would be nice, but cant we just draw what we need and use a scanner to put it into a document? Can't we just use the screen capture feature of the graphing calculator to build the graphics we need? Latex equation editors are open source, very high quality and easy to use in google docs... so why not use them?
The point is that at this point developing a coherent content is more important than displaying computer wizardry... there is certainly enough of that on the internet already. As the community of Open Source grows, perhaps there will be more people to develop things like impressive graphic and interactive applets. But for now... K.I.S.S. does the job. Let the text book companies worry about "keeping up with the Jones'" and spend all their money on half hearted graphics that catch the eye of a potential buyer or endless/empty web resources that are made to impress buyers with volume, not quality.
Mr. Taylor would have encouraged me to look to the cause of the problem. Since textbook companies sell their material to a national audience, they are not really interested in meeting the all needs of local educators... rather to create a product that meets (or appears to meet) as many of the needs in as many places as they can to maximize profit.
An open source textbook may not be flashy, yet. But as the community develops it has the potential of creating an editable resource that has a vast list of contributing authors and multiple versions to choose from... absolutely free!
Imagine if every math teacher could look at their classes at the beginning of the semester and tell them, honestly, that they are the author of the textbook that will be used in class.
How cool would that be?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
