Category Archives: Real-World Math

Common Core, Educational Technology, Math Software, Professional Development, Real-World Math

Binomial Multiplication and Concreteness Fading

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I was delighted that Daniel recently posted our Binomial Multiplication sketches in Web Sketchpad format. I thought about those sketches when I noticed a fairly new myNCTM thread on "When and How do we phase out the body in math education?" This thread raises a very important question for us as … Continue Reading ››
Advanced Mathematics, Educational Technology, Real-World Math

WCYDWT: A Ball, a Trash Can, and Web Sketchpad

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Dan Meyer has posted a number of "What Can You Do With This?" activities on his blog. (Activities is probably too prescriptive a word; they're more in the nature of prompts for student thinking, noticing, and wondering.) One of the first was the image below, which he made by superimposing frames from a … Continue Reading ››
Real-World Math

Exponential Harmony with Sketchpad

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Last week was the fourth session of my spring Advanced Secondary Math Methods class at the University of Pennsylvania. Each year I assign a semester project in which groups of three students use lesson-study techniques—on a small scale—to create, test, refine, teach, evaluate, and document specific shared instructional products, composed of a (possibly multi-day) lesson … Continue Reading ››
Real-World Math

Data Visualization in the Age of HTML5

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My partner and I spend a fair amount of time talking about data visualization. He's a computer programmer who works on websites that gather and display large amounts of data related to energy production and consumption. This data can be used to answer questions like: "How effective is the California Solar Initiative?" and "Where in … Continue Reading ››