Favorite Tweets of the Day

It took me a while to discover that Twitter is great educational resource.  I always thought it was just for people to tweet about what they were doing throughout the day.  Once I realized how many awesome Educators are using Twitter as a PLC, I immediately began to take advantage of all of these learning and networking opportunities.  

As of today, I'm starting the Favorite Tweets of the Day posts.  I may not post this every day, but I'll try to post it at least a few times a week.  If you're on Twitter, share your favorite tweets with me, @kristigrande.  I'd love to include some of them in these posts.

By the way, I'm using Storify to share my Favorite Tweets of the Day.  If you haven't tried Storify, you should check it out.  

Infographic: World Trade Center Reborn

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 draws near, we'll be hearing a lot about the World Trade Center. This infographic from history.com is filled with facts and figures about the rebuilding of the new World Trade Center.

Whether or not you decide to use this infographic for creating math problems, the information on this infographic shows numerous ways that math is used and needed in the "Real World". You could use it to have a discussion about how engineers and construction workers use math every day.

The section about who's involved in the rebuilding efforts demonstrates how many people and organizations are needed to take on such a huge project. What a great way to start a discussion about teamwork! 

Below the infographic, you'll find some possible math questions that could be asked based on the information about the new World Trade Center.

via history.com

 

A few possible math questions that come to mind from this infographic: 

---"MORE THAN 2,500 WORKERS ON AN AVERAGE DAY" 

What do they mean by average? How would they figure out this value? 

---"Each pool holds up to 450,000 gallons of water, which is enough to fill 50 Empire State Buildings to capacity." 

How did they determine the capacity of the Empire State Building? What other mathematical vocabulary word could be used to replace the world capacity? 

___"Total Weight OF ALL TREES IS 7,500 TONS...THAT'S HALF THE WEIGHT OF THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AND 30 TIMES THE WEIGHT OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY." 

How many times more does the Brooklyn Bridge weigh than the Statue of Liberty? 

---"Each pool features a 30-foot man-made waterfall, the largest in North America." 

If the reflecting pools are square, what is the approximate area of the base of each pool? Why wouldn't this be the exact area of the base? (hint: look at the picture) 

---"71 ELEVATORS Five are high-speed express cars moving at 2,000 feet per minute, or almost 23 mph. 45 SECONDS TO THE TOP" 

How many feet will the high-speed elevator travel if it takes 45 seconds for it to go from the ground to the top? 

---"2.6 MILLION SQUARE FEET OF FLOOR SPACE...104 FLOORS" 

What is the average number of square feet of floor space per floor of the building? 

How would you use this infographic?  Leave a comment and share your ideas.

Mathematics and Multimedia Blog Carnival 14 is Out

The Mathematics and Multimedia Carnival 14 is now live at Mathematics, Learning, and Web 2.0. The next edition will be hosted by Learning and Teaching Math and will be posted on September 26. To submit your articles to the next edition, click here.

If you haven't already checked out the Mathematics and Multimedia blog, I highly recommend it.  This blog has some excellent math lesson ideas as well as a lot of GeoGebra tutorials. 

RSS Problem Fixed

Thanks to a reader, Kathy, I discovered a problem with our RSS Feed.  Apparently some unwanted content was appearing in my Feed.  I think I have now corrected the problem.

If you have subscribed to this Feed prior to today, you may want to Unsubscribe and then Resubscribe so you can avoid receiving unwanted content in the Feed.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please leave a comment and let me know if this problem continues for anyone who subscribes as of today.

Socratic Method and Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking: A Path to College and Career is an excellent article from Edutopia which contains numerous resources on using the Socratic Method of questioning to increase critical thinking skills. The article focuses on how KIPP King Collegiate High School in San Lorenzo, California uses critical thinking to prepare students for college. They use the Socratic Method in order to help promote critical thinking skills. The Socratic Method gives students a chance to process and verbalize their learning by formulating and discussing questions related to the content. The Socratic Method is not widely used in math, but it can be a great way to sum up a unit or an alternative assessment.

If you're interested in learning more about the Socratic Method, make sure to view the Free Resources and Tools section that accompanies this article. They have included some excellent rubrics, planning guides, etc.

via edutopia.org

Visual.ly | Infographics & Visualizations. Create, Share, Explore

Looking for infographics? Look no further! Visual.ly contains a huge collection of infographics that can be used to create relevant lessons and/or interesting math problems. Visual.ly is also in the process of creating a tool for you to create your own infographics.

via visual.ly