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

Mathematics and Multimedia Blog Carnival 11

                                             Click image to view source

Welcome to the May 16, 2011 edition of Mathematics and Multimedia blog carnival! 

11 is a fascinating number.  Before we get to the blog carnival articles, let's enjoy a little trivia about the number 11.

• There are exactly 11 stars (together with a Moon) in Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting Starry Night.

                                 Starry Night Photo taken from WebMuseum

• 11 is the atomic number of Sodium (Na).

• 11 is an "honest" number because "five plus six" and "two plus nine" each has 11 English letters.

• The Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) secret handwritten recipe, developed by its founder, Colonel Harland Sanders, consists of 11 herbs and spices.

We had several submissions for this edition of the Mathematics and Multimedia Blog Carnival.  I hope you enjoy these articles as much as I did!

General Articles 

Guillermo Bautista presents Finger Multiplication posted at Mathematics and Multimedia, "Finger Multiplication is a strategy for multiplying numbers from 6-10."

Alicia Arnold presents Creative Ways to Teach Math, Part 2 posted at Daily Creativity.  Alicia shares a story about how her husband used story telling to engage their young sun in learning math. 

Math Connections

Katerina Kalfopoulou presents ΟΤΑΝ Ο ΚΟΜΠΟΣ ΦΤΑΝΕΙ ΣΤΟ ΧΤΕΝΙ posted at Μαθηματικά + Λογοτεχνία.  This article, which explores some history of mathematics, is written in Greek.  You can use Google Translate to translate the article to English.  When translated, the article begins, "It is theoretically impossible to develop a culture of (ethno) mathematics, although not first develop a certain way of writing.  To measure an calculate, to manage and decide, man use some specific tools, devised by the need and desire to record their 'treasures' that had accumulated...". 

Mathematics Teaching

David Cox presents Well, Since You Asked posted at coxmath.blogspot.com. David shares a response from one of his students during a discussion about different types of problem solving.

Erlina Rhonda presents Ten signs that mathematics education is in crisis level » Mathematics for Teaching posted at Mathematics for Teaching.  This article uses a unique perspective to examine the current state of Mathematics Education.

Dana Mosley presents Exercise Helps Overweight Children Think Better, Do Better in Math posted at Dana Mosley.  We are constantly trying new things to improve math teaching and learning.  In this article Dana shares what current brain research says about the exercise and math connection.

David Martin presents Driving and deriving in math class posted at Real Teaching Means Real Learning. David gives an example of teaching through problem solving by incorporating technology rather than just giving students rules to follow in order to complete another worksheet.

Real Life Math

David Wees presents Richard Feynman on Education in Brazil posted at davidwees.com.  This article examines the idea of pseudoteaching in mathematics.  David states, "almost everyone in both groups is pretty feeble at recognizing mathematics in the real world". 

Parentella presents Kitchen Teaching:  Learning Fractions with Measuring Cups posted at Parentella.  Parentella shows how to use measuring cups to gain conceptual understanding of fractions.

Technology Integration

Will Emeny presents 2D shape names and properties posted at MathsMaster.Org.  Will has a lovely suite of resources which show how we can use different ICT technologies to teach the topic of shape names and properties.

Sol Lederman presents Making Sierpinski triangles posted at Playing With Mathematica, This is a fun exploration of a classic fractal pattern with Mathematica.

David Coffey presents How can I use technology to make my thinking visible? posted at Delta Scape.  David shares his experiences from the 2011 NCTM Annual Conference where he attended sessions that focused on modeling mathematical practices.  

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of mathematics and multimedia blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.