Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 79

• It's just so much work being a cat all day…

  By ljd42 on August 16, 2015

  

• Missing the point?

  By ljd42 on August 15, 2015

  As you know, the devil is in the details. Details, you say? Well, the Math Curmudgeon is always worth reading…but I often disagree with him, most especially with some of his details. Consider his post “Missing the Point,” which deals primarily… Read More ›

• Temari balls

  By ljd42 on August 14, 2015

  

  We traditionally cap off Honors Geometry by ending the course with a brief exploration of non-Euclidean geometries. In recent years we have focused on geometry on the surface of a sphere; we ask freshmen to pretend that they are living on… Read More ›

• Sea Breeze revisited

  By ljd42 on August 12, 2015

  Just over four years ago, I favorably reviewed the Sea Breeze Mexican Grill, which had just opened in our neighborhood. This restaurant chugged along for a while, being an adequate neighborhood restaurant but nothing special. My initial enthusiasm began to wane…. Read More ›

• How science and math see each other

  By ljd42 on August 10, 2015

  Ben does it again! We’re back to Math with Bad Drawings, with another post that resonates deeply with me as a math teacher. It begins with the somewhat startling claim that “mathematicians and scientists don’t share all that much in common.” How… Read More ›

• The Cats: a photo-essay

  By ljd42 on August 8, 2015

  Back in March…and April…and May…a group of freshmen kept pestering me (nicely, of course) to write a photo-essay about my cats, so I finally gave into the pressure and wrote one. Just follow this link.

• Oliver Sacks

  By ljd42 on August 7, 2015

  I’ve long been an admirer of Oliver Sacks — see, for instance, my post on Musicophilia — but it was his recent announcement that he is fatally ill that led me to want to read more than just that book… Read More ›

• Reactions to the NCTM Annual Meeting

  By ljd42 on August 6, 2015

  Fortunately I didn’t write this report just now! (I wrote it at the end of April, right after the NCTM meeting. I never would have remembered all these details if I had waited three and a half months.) Just follow… Read More ›

• A return to blogging

  By ljd42 on August 5, 2015

  So…how long has it been since I blogged? Almost a year? Well, ten months anyway, which is far too long a hiatus. So I’m resuming as of today. I am hoping for at least four posts a week, and probably… Read More ›

• Delvyn Case explains the Beatles.

  By ljd42 on October 20, 2014

  Music professor and composer Delvyn Case gave a refreshing and informative talk yesterday afternoon about the music of the Beatles. The talk, of course, was part of the Dorchester Historical Society’s lecture series. Of course. What do I hear you… Read More ›

• Another Sunday with the Common Core

  By ljd42 on October 19, 2014

  

  Three more perspectives on the Common Core State Standards: For all my doubts and negative reactions to the Common Core, I start feeling sympathetic to it when I read articles with headlines like “Common Core is Indoctrinating Kids with Socialism”: if right-wing… Read More ›

• Douglas on the world's stage

  By ljd42 on October 18, 2014

  Douglas is world-famous now: he has just appeared on TUAW, and he is very excited about this exposure.

• What we value in students

  By ljd42 on October 11, 2014

  

  Always interesting Tina Barseghian, a blogger for KQED, wrote a recent post about what we should value in our students (beyond test scores, as she explicitly points out). She included a great infographic (by Jackie Gerstein), quoted below. Reading it… Read More ›

• When Desmos fails

  By ljd42 on October 9, 2014

  

  I have become a great fan of Desmos, a free web-based graphing calculator app. It is easy to use and remarkably powerful, providing evaluations, graphs, tables, and probably a lot of other things that I haven’t learned yet. What’s especially… Read More ›

• Turmoil and Transition in Boston: A Political Memoir from the Busing Era

  By ljd42 on October 7, 2014

  This is an engaging memoir by Boston politico Larry DiCara, former City Councillor and former mayoral candidate. Part political history, part personal, it provides a convincing insider’s account of Boston politics in the ’70s and ’80s, focusing on the busing… Read More ›

• More on the Common Core

  By ljd42 on October 5, 2014

  Right when I’m writing several posts about the Common Core, it’s not entirely coincidental that the Boston Globe had a big article about it this morning. Focusing on teacher training (a.k.a. professional development, or PD), the first few paragraphs of Alexandria… Read More ›

• First math meet of 2014–2015

  By ljd42 on October 3, 2014

  Congratulations to the Weston High School Math Team for an outstanding performance in the first math meet of the year. We consider 100 points to be a good score — yesterday the team scored a total of 125, including a… Read More ›

• What works in education (revisited)

  By ljd42 on October 2, 2014

  How do we know what works in education? Educational experiments are always suspect, since it’s impossible to control all the variables. There are also ethical issues involved in experimenting on students. So how can we possibly measure the effectiveness of… Read More ›

• Only in Georgia? The Atlanta teacher scandal

  By ljd42 on September 30, 2014

  Why isn’t there more outrage about this? Yes, teachers are human, so we make mistakes. Mistakes in math are excusable, as long as they aren’t too frequent or too egregious. But mistakes in ethics and law are inexcusable. Teachers who… Read More ›

• The Triple Package

  By ljd42 on September 29, 2014

  

  It doesn’t feel that long, but it turns out that it was three and half years ago that I reviewed Amy Chua’s previous book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Her new book, written in collaboration with her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, is… Read More ›

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