Tag Archives: Dynamic Number

Common Core, Educational Technology, Math Software

Starting with Sketchpad Activities on Day One in Grades 5-8

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In the Dynamic Number project, one of our goals has been to create activities in which students actually experience mathematical objects by creating them, manipulating them, and investigating them. (George Lakoff and Rafael Núñez describe, in Where Mathematics Comes From, how students' abstract mathematical concepts are grounded in … Continue Reading ››
Educational Technology

Starting with Sketchpad Activities on Day One in Grades 2-5

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As an 18-year veteran teacher in Philadelphia public schools, my initial reaction when I first saw Sketchpad was “This would have completely changed the way I taught geometry.” I phrase it differently today: “This would have completely changed the way students experience mathematics.” a perspective that differs in two important details. First, I now understand that the … Continue Reading ››
Math Software

Revisiting a Childhood Addition Code with Sketchpad

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As a fourth-grader in 1977, I had a love-hate relationship with my Addison-Wesley textbook. Its contents overflowed with arithmetic problems, but every so often an entertaining brainteaser appeared to break the monotony of drill practice. These puzzles were clearly marked: Each appeared in a box set aside from the main text and featured a bespectacled … Continue Reading ››
Conferences

ICME: The Nature of Students’ Mathematical Thinking

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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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Conferences

The Dynamic Number Project Comes to NCTM Philadelphia

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It’s time for the NCTM Annual Meeting! For the past two and a half years, my colleague Scott Steketee and I have been collaborating with elementary teachers in New York and Philadelphia as they field test curriculum materials for the Dynamic Number project. We’ll be showcasing our work at three sessions during the upcoming … Continue Reading ››
Geometric Functions, Math Software

Parents, Children, and Functions in Sketchpad

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Functions are hard for students. Students seem to master various families of functions – linear, polynomial, exponential, trigonometric, and so forth. They can graph them, evaluate them, transform them, and answer a variety of questions about them. But ask even our better students a question that’s out of the ordinary and we’re likely to be taken … Continue Reading ››
Math Software

The key to Everything Around You Is Right in Your Pocket

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"You won't be carrying a calculator with you everywhere you go." A friend of mine recalled his math teacher telling him that. I'm sure we've all heard this or even have said it before ourselves. However, this particular retelling came over twitter, posted from an iPhone, that he keeps with him everywhere he goes. While it … Continue Reading ››