Exponential Harmony with Sketchpad

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 ››

A Swan Song for Sweet Karen Coe

Today I leave for my first proper vacation in a year and a half. Last time I took such a vacation, Key sold its high school textbooks to Kendall Hunt and transformed from a publishing company to a educational technology company. This time I just hope to survive the end of the world. 🙂 Before … Continue Reading ››

Pass the Candy! Sweetening the Study of Probability

As part of our guest blog series, we bring you another post from Kathryn Shafer. A former middle school and high school math teacher, Kathy is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Ball State University, Indiana. She's done a variety of … Continue Reading ››

ICME: The Nature of Students’ Mathematical Thinking

Like other enthusiasts of mathematics, I’m captivated by the way that mathematical ideas can explain things in the physical world around me, and by the way that I can carry out mathematical thought experiments in my mind and then apply the results to control my external physical environment.

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The Standards Are Not The Curriculum

We were so impressed by Jamila Riser's talk at NCSM a couple of years ago that we asked her to present an Ignite! for us this year. Now, we've asked her to guest blog so we can share even more about the amazing work she's doing in Delaware. Jamila is the Director of the Delaware … Continue Reading ››

Exploring the Law of Large Numbers with TinkerPlots

As part of our guest blog series, we bring you a post from Kathryn Shafer. A former middle school and high school math teacher, Kathy is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Ball State University, Indiana. She's done a variety of work for Key, including presenting webinars, moderating online courses, and … Continue Reading ››

Functions Come Alive in a Precalculus Classroom

Ken Gordon has written our first in a series of guest blog posts from people working with Key Curriculum products in schools. Ken teaches Precalculus and Calculus in an accelerated program at Sisler High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He has been using The Geometer’s Sketchpad since first seeing it at an NCTM conference in 2004. … Continue Reading ››

What’s the Appropriate Role for the Teacher when using Computer Games?

I had the privilege this year of participating in the CADRE Fellows Program of NSF's Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education, and met a number of colleagues in the program whose projects, like our Data Games project, are exploring the classroom benefits of computer-game- or simulation-based-learning. (In this post, I’ll refer to technology-oriented … Continue Reading ››

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