This is Cool! Albert Einstein's Library Online

Through the Open Culture blog I just learned that more than 80,000 of Albert Einstein's documents and drawings are now available to view for free at Einstein Archives Online. The archives include not only his scientific work but also his images and documents from his travels and thoughts on the world in general.

Applications for Education
I haven't had much time to look at the Einstein Archives yet (I'm boarding a plane in two minutes), but I think that it has the potential to be a great resource for science, math, and history teachers who their students to research the development of Einstein's ideas over the course of his life. After I get more time to browse the archives, I'll update this post.

101 Questions - A New Math Questions Site from Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer has just launched a new site called 101 Questions on which he is sharing images and videos as prompts for developing math questions. Each image and video has a 140 character field in which you can enter your question. Questions are compiled and can be Tweeted. Take a look at the top 10 to get a feel for what you will find on 101 Questions. I've embedded one of the videos from 101 Questions below.

Incredible Shrinking Dollar from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

I won't pretend to be able to explain the larger purpose of the site as well as Dan does, so I'll just encourage you to go read his blog post about it. And if you need more background on who Dan Meyer is, watch his TED Talk Math Class Needs a Makeover.

Two Fun Videos for Pi Day

Today is Pi Day! Here are a couple of fun Pi videos to start your day.

Set to the tune of Don McLean's American Pie. (Note, there is another version of this Pi song. This is the cleaned-up version of the song).



And this Pi rap is set to a slightly more modern tune. Go ahead and lose yourself in the digits.

Mathnet on YouTube

I Tweeted this last night and it got reTweeted a bunch of times so I thought I should share it here for people who missed it. When I was in elementary school I really enjoyed watching Mathnet on PBS. For those that aren't familiar with it, Mathnet was part of Square One which was a show designed to teach math lessons in a fun way. I did a quick search on YouTube for Mathnet and sure enough many of the stories are available in their entirety on YouTube. I don't know what kind of copyright restrictions are or are not being broken by the people who uploaded the videos, so I can't say if the videos will be up forever. In the meantime if you want to show an episode to your students or just want to feel a bit of elementary school nostalgia, I've embedded a few episodes below.







And who can forget Mathman?!

Numberphile - Videos About Curious Number Facts

Numberphile is a neat YouTube channel about fun number facts. There are currently thirty-three videos in the Numberphile collection. The videos cover things like 998,001 and its Mysterious Recurring Decimals, Pi and Bouncing Balls, and 1 and Prime Numbers. I've embedded Pi and Bouncing Balls below.

For some reason these videos reminded me of the old Mathnet show that I used to watch on PBS in the 80's. So of course I had to see if Mathnet was on YouTube, it is! A quick search for Mathnet on YouTube will take you to multiple full-length episodes of Mathnet. Here's the pilot episode.



Applications for Education
Numberphile's videos could be a fun way for students to explore and learn some fun facts about numbers. Perhaps you have a student whose thinks the way I did in high school, I wasn't good at math, but I did like and still do like fun facts about numbers (or any fun fact about anything). A fun number fact could be the "hook" to get that student interested in an aspect of mathematics.

Use GeoGebra on the Web

This morning through Jeff Thomas and Guillermo Batista I learned that the popular and free program GeoGebra is now available as a web-based application using HTML5. This means that if your students are using Chromebooks, tablets, or just aren't allowed to download software they can still use GeoGebra. In reading the announcement from GeoGebra it appears that not all GeoGebra functions are available in the web version yet. Here's a sample animation of GeoGebra in HTML5.

Applications for Education
If you have been waiting for a web-based alternative to GeoGebra for your students, the wait appears to be over. Now your students don't have to install any software on their computers to use GeoGebra at home or on the go with their tablets.

Video - What Is a Leap Year?

Earlier this month I posted some resources for teaching about the history calendars and leap years. That post was reTweeted quite a bit yesterday. Thank you to everyone that reTweeted it. This morning through History for Music Lovers I found another video that does a good job of explaining what a leap year is. The video is embedded below.

Mount Everest, How Tall Is It? - A Mathematics Mystery

Image Credit: Carsten.Nebel

Last night I started to read Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance 1921 which I downloaded for free from Google Books. In the introduction there is a three page explanation of the methods used to measure the height of Mount Everest. An explanation of the differences in measurements is also provided in the introduction. Part of that explanation includes differences in snow fall, cyclical deviations of gravity, and differences atmospheric refraction when observations were made. I'm not a mathematics teacher and will never pretend to be one, but reading that introduction did get me thinking about a possible mathematics lesson.

Applications for Education

Turn to pages 10 through 13 of Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance 1921 and read about the difficulties of accurately measuring Mount Everest in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It's interesting to note that most accepted measurements were more than 100 feet higher than today's accepted measurement. Tell your students that Mount Everest has shrunk over the last 100 years and ask them to solve the mystery of the shrinking mountain. 

On a mildly related note and on a promotion of a Mainer note, Snow in the Kingdom: My Storm Years on Everest by Ed Webster is one of the best books ever written about Mount Everest. If you enjoy good adventure stories and or stories about overcoming personal struggles, I think you will enjoy Webster's book. For my money, and I own two copies of it, it is far better than Krakauer's Into Thin Air.

The History of Calendars, Leap Year, and Daylight Savings

This year the child of one of my good friends will be celebrating his birthday on his actual birthday for only the third time. Why is this? He was born on February 29, of course.

Why is George Washington's birthday recorded as both February 11, 1731 and February 22, 1732? It's recorded as both because of the change from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar in 1752 (read more about Washington's birthday on Archives.gov).

Here are a couple of videos that explain the history of our modern calendar and why we have an extra day every four years.



This video was shot on February 29, 2008 which is why you here the narrator say "today is leap year." Four years later it is still a good, brief explanation of leap year.


And while we're on the topic of time, here are a couple of videos about daylight saving time.



H/T to Brain Pickings for the first video.

Peep and the Big Wide World - Educational Games for Children

Peep and the Big Wide World is a nice resource for pre-K and early elementary school that I learned about through Kevin Jarrett's most recent Last Week in Lab post.

Peep and the Big Wide World, produced by WGBH, offers a great collection of online games, videos, and offline activities designed to help students learn and practice skills in math and science. One emphasis of the games that I tried is recognizing patterns. In all there are fifteen online games available through Peep and the Big Wide World.

The offline or Anywhere Activities section of Peep and the Big Wide World offers dozens of activities designed to extend the science and lessons provided in the Peep and the Big Wide World videos. In fact, when you're on the video page you will notice that there is a suggested Anywhere Activity listed with each video.

Applications for Education
Peep and the Big Wide World looks like it could be a great resource for pre-K and early elementary school science and mathematics lessons. Kevin Jarrett is one of the first people I started following when I started this blog and I've always found his work to be insightful and helpful. If he's using Peep and the Big Wide World, I'm inclined to think that it must be good.