Recent Posts - page 130

  • Standards-based Education, Part III

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    One key tenet of standards-based education is the observation that some students take more time than others to master any given skill or concept. No one can disagree with the observation, but the conclusions to be drawn from it are… Read More ›

  • No bad puns

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    In this week’s New York Times Magazine, language expert William Safire observes that there are no bad puns: Remember, there are no “bad” puns — all plays on words are good, and the louder the groans they elicit, the better…. Read More ›

  • Shodor

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    Math teachers who are looking for short, narrowly focused math activities should check out the Shodor Foundation. Although they tend to focus mostly on middle-school math, they have plenty of interactive activities that are suitable for high-school students of all… Read More ›

  • Constitution Day unconstitutional?

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    Some lawyers, including one of my colleagues, point out the irony that the new law requiring all schools and colleges to observe yesterday’s Constitution Day may be unconstitutional. (Techically, it’s not “all schools and colleges” — just those receiving federal… Read More ›

  • More on the miraculous iPod

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    This is a follow-up to my post of September 14 concerning my student’s iPod with the picture of Jesus on its screen. First, Keith got himself interviewed by Fox News the other day and showed the iPod on camera; I… Read More ›

  • Standards-based Education, Part II

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    This is a follow-up to my post of September 13. Today’s topic is also testing, but from a different POV: the use of “formative assessment”. We all know that testing has four purposes: To provide feedback, both to the teacher… Read More ›

  • A miraculous iPod

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    One of my ninth-graders accidentally dropped his iPod, and the screen shattered into an image of Jesus! I told him he could probably sell it to the National Enquirer for tens of thousands of dollars, but he decided to sell… Read More ›

  • Standards-based Education, Part I

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    Several years ago the entire faculty of the Weston Public Schools participated in a series of workshops on so-called Standards-based Education (SBE). There were actually a lot of good ideas in these workshops. In fact, I estimated that I had… Read More ›

  • FEMA and Internet Explorer

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    Now that Michael Brown has resigned, maybe we can learn about everything else that’s wrong with FEMA. One thing that’s wrong is that FEMA requires everyone to use Internet Explorer: Hurricane Katrina victims seeking to file claims with the Federal… Read More ›

  • Showing a calculator to a group

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    How do you display a calculator to a large group of people, such as a class? Simple if it’s a TI graphing calculator: just download the free Virtual TI, which displays not only the calculator screen but also the entire… Read More ›

  • The Kutztown 13

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    Bruce Schneier describes the Case of the Kutztown 13: …a group of high schoolers charged with felonies for bypassing security with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden internet goodies and using monitoring software to spy on district administrators. The students, their families,… Read More ›

  • Grade inflation?

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    According to an article in this morning’s Boston Globe, the principal of Hopkinton High School has raised the grades assigned by a math teacher with 25 years of experience: Hopkinton High School teacher Rachel Bartlett appeared before the School Committee… Read More ›

  • Microsoft woes

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    Our westonmath.org website looked great in Safari on Mac OS X. But then we discovered that Microsoft misinterprets much of the CSS code, so the site looked terrible in Internet Explorer on both Macintosh and Windows. Worse yet, it looked… Read More ›

  • Socially sensitive math?

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    In our opening Math Department meeting, we all participated in the following activity. First we drew a two-set Venn Diagram, where one circle would contain everyone who was an oldest child in the family and one would contain everyone who… Read More ›

  • Homework

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    Black-eyed Susan reports on the correlation between homework and quiz scores: So far in calculus, there have been two homework assignments and two quizzes. The students who have turned in no homework have a quiz average of 52%. The students… Read More ›

  • Late to class

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    “Fed up with students routinely strolling into class well after the bell rings, high school principals across the region plan to crack down on excessive tardiness,” according to an article in today’s Boston Globe. It’s not clear to me that… Read More ›

  • How to describe a circle

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    MoebiusStripper writes about MathPower 12, an all-too-popular popular high-school mathematics textbook published by McGraw-Hill. In case the student doesn’t already know what a circle is, the text provides the following explanation: The compact disc player is everywhere these days. Developed… Read More ›

  • Misunderstanding the "Law of Averages"

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    An article in this morning’s Boston Globe begins like this: A Fung Wah bus, part of the low-fare passenger line fleet from Boston to New York, erupted in flames on an interstate highway in Connecticut yesterday, sending frightened passengers scrambling… Read More ›

  • Standardized tests

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    In yesterday’s Boston Globe there’s an interview with Bob Sternberg, psychology professor at Yale, president of the American Psychological Association, and newly appointed dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. Globe correspondent Peter DeMarco asked him about the use of… Read More ›

  • Sudoku revisited

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    I now think my theory about Sudoku in the Globe is wrong, or at least needs to be tweaked: IMHO yesterday’s puzzle was a lot more difficult than today’s.