Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 105

• Where are my model railroad pix?

  By ljd42 on December 18, 2008

  One of my students asked me why I haven’t yet posted any photos of the model railroad I’m building. One answer is that it’s still in such an early stage that I don’t have much to show yet. Another answer… Read More ›

• Strip Search

  By ljd42 on December 17, 2008

  Strip Search, by William Bernhardt, is an irritating novel. Why do I say that? Well, it’s not just because Bernhardt portrays math teachers as weird and psychotic, though that’s certainly a major part of it. And it’s not just because… Read More ›

• Misreading Larry Summers

  By ljd42 on December 16, 2008

  Continuing yesterday’s theme… There has been renewed interest in Larry Summers’s supposed sexist remarks. When Senator Obama (I almost said “President Obama”) announced that he would appoint Summers to be his senior White House economic advisor, bloggers and others revived… Read More ›

• And they say that girls can't do math…

  By ljd42 on December 15, 2008

  So why is it that the top two mathletes on Weston High School’s Math Team are freshmen girls? And a year young for their grade, at that? Check out the situation from ten months ago. But it’s only two data… Read More ›

• Obama and the Achievement Gap

  By ljd42 on December 13, 2008

  Now that we’ve elected an African-American intellectual to the highest office in the land, can a reduction in the achievement gap be far behind? For many years we’ve been observing that black male students see very few role models for… Read More ›

• iPhone games

  By ljd42 on December 12, 2008

  Having been an enthusiastic iPhone user for the past four months, I’m not surprised that many of my students want to play games on it (at least those students who don’t have iPhones themselves; this is Weston, after all). That’s… Read More ›

• Turn your iPhone into an ocarina.

  By ljd42 on December 4, 2008

  I recently installed an unusual application on my iPhone: Ocarina. This program turns your iPhone into a four-hole ocarina, with the holes outlined on the iPhone’s touch-sensitive screen. But the really cool thing is that you actually blow into your… Read More ›

• Teaching spreadsheets in high school math classes

  By ljd42 on December 2, 2008

  Should high-school math classes be teaching Excel? Or, more generally, should we be teaching spreadsheet use — and Excel just happens to dominate the market? We have been exploring these issues at Weston High School. Certainly the right point of… Read More ›

• "Everyone else does it."

  By ljd42 on December 1, 2008

  The Josephson Institute Study of the Ethics of American Youth has been widely reported on such widely varied outlets as National Public Radio, Fox News, and Yahoo News. They report “a troubling picture of our future politicians and parents, cops… Read More ›

• The Big Ideas of Algebra, Part One

  By ljd42 on November 30, 2008

  Earlier this month I participated in a fascinating two-day seminar on The Big Ideas of Algebra, taught by Deborah Hughes-Hallett and sponsored by Teachers as Scholars. Although I undoubtedly talked too much, I figure that that was because I had… Read More ›

• "Opportunity, compassion, honor, excellence, Davidson"

  By ljd42 on November 28, 2008

  I saw this catalog the other day, and I found the cover strangely appealing: I’m not sure which part I liked better: the “Davidson Bill of Rights” at the bottom, or the list of words at the top, terminating in… Read More ›

• The Girl of His Dreams

  By ljd42 on November 27, 2008

  If you can’t travel to Venice in the real world, the next best thing is to travel vicariously in the novels of Donna Leon. Formally speaking, these novels are squarely in the mystery genre, but Leon devotes as much attention… Read More ›

• Meme abuse

  By ljd42 on November 26, 2008

  What’s a meme? Well, those of us who have spent too many years on the Internet (from its inception in 1969, actually, when it was called the ARPAnet) and those of us who have read The Selfish Gene, by Richard… Read More ›

• Reading the OED and The Professor and the Madman

  By ljd42 on November 25, 2008

  I have recently read two unconnected but closely related non-fiction books: Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea, and The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester. Probably I should have read them in the… Read More ›

• Spanish foods?

  By ljd42 on November 24, 2008

  Following up on yesterday’s footnote, I need to mention another linguistic annoyance: the misuse of the word “Spanish.” Yes, it correctly describes the language that is spoken not only in Spain but also in much of Central and South America,… Read More ›

• Midsummer Night's Dream

  By ljd42 on November 23, 2008

  Kudos* to the Weston High School Theater Company for its outstanding production of Midsummer Night’s Dream the past three nights. Among the excellent cast, I first want to mention Katherine Donahue (Helena) and Anna Been (Hermia), who were exceptionally effective… Read More ›

• Teaching RSA in high school

  By ljd42 on July 25, 2008

  By this point I’ve taught simplified versions of the RSA algorithm to ten different cohorts of teens: four years’ worth of Honors Algebra II students at Weston High School, juniors for four summers at Crimson Summer Academy, and two years’… Read More ›

• Dim Sum at Chau Chow

  By ljd42 on July 23, 2008

  Two years ago I promised a review of the dim sum at the then-new branch of Chau Chow in Dorchester, but I don’t think I ever wrote one. So here, at long last, is that review. Barbara and I ate… Read More ›

• Do I look Russian?

  By ljd42 on July 22, 2008

  One day I walk into a Russian grocery store in Watertown, and the owner starts speaking to me in Russian; I don’t understand a word. Another day I walk into a Russian grocery store in Waban, and the employee at… Read More ›

• Interpreting political data

  By ljd42 on July 21, 2008

  I want my CSA sophomores to understand many sorts of visual representations of data — tables, charts, graphs, etc. — especially in the context of elections, since we’re applying mathematics to models of voting. This summer, of course, we have… Read More ›

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