Recent Posts - page 116

  • Ice Chips

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    Barbara and I spent an enjoyable afternoon yesterday at the annual Ice Chips show in Boston (not Cambridge, even though the arena is on the extended Harvard campus). The “special guest star” was Sasha Cohen, but we went primarily to… Read More ›

  • Non-violent video games?

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    My Saturday Course students are designing and programming their own video games. These fifth-graders participate in an intensive introduction to programming, but their “Create Your Own Computer Game” course is also billed as a class in which kids create their… Read More ›

  • Meridian Academy photo show

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    A small but excellent exhibit of photographs by middle-school students at Jamaica Plain’s Meridian Academy was on display for the past two weeks at the JP Art Market. The official description read as follows: Meridian Academy students will show their… Read More ›

  • Math is hard at the Home Despot

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    On the way home from work yesterday, I stopped at the local Home Despot — er, I mean Home Depot — in South Bay in Dorchester, in order to buy some plywood. I picked out a nice sheet, measuring the… Read More ›

  • A Perfect Mess

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    I’ve just read a fascinating book entitled A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder — How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place, by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman. If you’ve ever… Read More ›

  • Roxbury? Perhaps Dorchester? But Back Bay????

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    Check out the website for 1010 Mass Ave in Boston: This six-story building is located at 1010 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston and offers 220,770 square feet of prime office space. Located in Boston’s Back Bay, 1010 Mass Ave is within… Read More ›

  • The Plot Against America

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    I just finished reading Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. This highly fictionalized autobiography is actually an alternative history, based on the postulate that the Republican convention in 1940 was deadlocked and drafted Charles Lindbergh by acclamation. Lindbergh goes on… Read More ›

  • The one worst method

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    All right, we know that there isn’t any “one best method” of teaching. That’s one of the reasons why teachers need to be life-long learners: aside from being models for our students, aside from the continual need to learn new… Read More ›

  • Ends, means, and the content of high-school geometry

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    Interesting post today in Professor Hirta’s blog. Here are a couple of excerpts: Got a phone call today from a high school teacher. He was told by his supervisor that he needs to use more manipulatives in class, so he… Read More ›

  • Global Awareness Day

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    Speaking of professional development…yesterday was Global Awareness Day in the Weston Public Schools. Unlike Art Day, this was an eight-hour endeavor — very elaborate in planning, development, and conception. We began with a presentation about the forthcoming visit to Weston… Read More ›

  • I, Robot

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    So why did I bother watching the movie I, Robot? It’s because I rarely read reviews ahead of time, since reviews too often contain spoilers. But I found this movie poorly done, disrespectful to the memory of my hero Isaac… Read More ›

  • Pi Day

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    Three days ago was Pi Day (3/14). Or maybe I should say 3.14 days ago, since that was Pi Day. Anyhow, a lot of the Weston math teachers celebrated it one way or another with our classes, and Kelly of… Read More ›

  • When is a math issue really a reading issue?

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    It was one of those Jungian synchronicities. My department head returned this morning from yesterday’s all-day conference, and he told us about a talk that ascribed many students’ difficulties with math questions (and questions in other disciplines) to difficulties in… Read More ›

  • Can we have archaic and read it too?

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    If you are translating an archaic language into English, should your writing sound archaic? Or should it be readable? Altogether too many amateur translators think the former. One of my colleagues inadvertently provided a lovely example yesterday. In precalculus class… Read More ›

  • Xerox? photocopy? copy?

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    Yes, we know that Xerox® isn’t a verb. For years we’ve been carefully trying to say, “I photocopied this document,” instead of “I Xeroxed this document.” But now the photo- prefix seems to be disappearing. Some people are even puzzled… Read More ›

  • Pi (not π)

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    I just finished reading Life of Pi, the intriguing novel by Yann Martel. (I owe thanks to my colleague, Donna Gonzalez, for not only recommending this book but also lending her copy to me.) Just to get one thing straight… Read More ›

  • Dorchester described accurately

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    I know, it shouldn’t be news when a major publication describes Dorchester accurately. It should be the dog-bites-man vs. man-bites-dog thing. But, unfortunately, accurate yet positive descriptions of Dorchester have come to be man-bites-dog stories in the mainstream press. Then… Read More ›

  • Average grades

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    What should an average grade be? This question actually has two very different but intertwingled meanings. Some people, when they ask it, are wondering whether the mean (or perhaps median) grade in a school/department/course should be a B or a… Read More ›

  • Being visited by scary reviewers

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    No, they weren’t actually scary. That’s merely what one of my students thought. “Weren’t you scared?” she asked. Each department in the Weston Public Schools gets reviewed every ten years or so. This year it was the Math Department’s turn…. Read More ›

  • Art Day

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    The first Wednesday of (almost) every month is professional development day in the Weston Public Schools. Students have a half-day of classes, after which they can go home and the faculty have workshops and the like. Usually these days have… Read More ›