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.

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.

Gooru - Great Collections of Science and Math Resources

Gooru is a new service (still carrying the Alpha label) that aims to provide teachers and students with an extensive collection of videos, interactive displays, documents, diagrams, and quizzes for learning about topics in math and science.

As a Gooru member you have access to hundreds of resources according to subject areas such as chemistry, biology, ecology, algebra, calculus, and more. Within each subject area you can look for resources according to media type such as video, interactive display, slides, text, and lesson plans. When you find resources that you want to use, drag them to the resources folder within your account. Gooru also offers you the option to add resources to your folders even if you did not find them within Gooru.

Applications for Education
Gooru could be a great place for math and science teachers to locate lesson plans and other materials to use in their classrooms. Students can create Gooru accounts to find useful review materials and take practice tests on the subjects they're studying.

Five Resources for Visual Fractions Lessons

This is a list that I created in response to a request that I recently received as direct message on Twitter. A couple of these resources I found through a search in the Diigo community. If you don't have a Diigo account or if you do but you have never searched the community bookmarks, I recommend giving it a try.

Who Wants Pizza? is a fun online activity for learning about fractions. Who Wants Pizza was developed by Cynthia Lanius at Rice University. The activity has five parts plus practice activities for students to explore. Teachers will find notes about using this activities in the classroom.

Visual Fractions has eight categories of visualizations, lessons, and games for students to explore and learn the functions of fractions.

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has a lot of interactive activities for students learning the use of fractions, addition and subtraction, and the multiplication of fractions.

Thinking Blocks is a nice site for elementary and middle school mathematics teachers. Thinking Blocks provides interactive templates in which students use brightly colored blocks to model and solve problems. As students work through the problems they are provided with feedback as to whether or not they are using the correct sequence to solve each problem. There are templates and problems for addition, multiplication, fractions, and ratios. You can also develop your own problems using the modeling tool.

Conceptua Math is a provider of interactive visual mathematics lessons. One of Conceptua Math's primary focuses is on the development of tools to aid teachers in the instruction of lessons on fractions. Conceptua Math's offerings are a mix of free and premium (paid) tools. There are a total of fifteen free interactive tools for teachers and students. Each of the free tools has an introductory video and a sample lesson plan.