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2013 — Year in Review

PIH at MT^2-001A nice consequence of maintaining a blog is that it makes year-end reflecting very convenient.  And 2013 was certainly a full, challenging, and fun year!

In February, my talk “g = 4, and Other Lies the Test Told Me” was featured in GothamSchools.  The talk highlights how standardized testing often works in opposition to the work that teachers do, and was part of MfA’s inaugural Master Teachers on Teaching conference.  Video of my talk can be seen here.

In April, I hosted TEDxNYED 2013.  After speaking at the previous TEDxNYED, I was proud to be a part of bringing the event to Brooklyn Tech.  Many students attended and were able to enjoy a number of great, thought-provoking talks.  And two of my students gave a TED talk on the peer-to-peer math enrichment program they created!  You can see the video of their talk here.

In May, I was featured at Scientific American as one of the winners of the inaugural Rosenthal Prize.  And later in the year, my award-winning lesson on Sphere Dressing was published and made freely available by the National Museum of Mathematics.

In July I traveled to Enschede, the Netherlands, for the Bridges Math and Art conference, where I presented a short paper on teaching math through image manipulation and displayed some pieces in the Bridges art gallery.

In August, I ran a workshop at the inaugural MOVES conference at the Museum of Mathematics.  That month, I also wrote a piece for GothamSchools on how the new, common core-aligned New York State tests looked remarkably like the old exams.  The piece generated a lot of great conversation, and led to a thought-provoking blog-exchange with noted educator and curriculum specialist Grant Wiggins about testing, rigor, and mathematics.

In September I was named a New York State finalist for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST). 

In October I ran a workshop on teaching and social media through Math for America, and met Fields Medalist Cedric Villani.

In November I ran a workshop at the annual TIME 2000 conference, and hosted artist and computer programmer Nathan Selikoff at Brooklyn Tech, who inspired our students with a talk about the history and practice of algorithmic art.

Coming full circle, in December I gave a talk at the second annual MT^2 conference, on my mathematical relationship with change.

And throughout the year, I continued to contribute to the New York Times Learning Network, writing many Test Yourself Math questions, and pieces on teaching the mathematics of infinity, how math is beautiful, Bitcoin and currency, and science and religion.

All in all, it was a busy, fun, and productive year, maybe even busier than 2012!  As is tradition, I’ll end this year hoping for a little more downtime in the next.

Related Posts

Desmos Demos

distance from a point to a graph

I employ Desmos, the free, web-based graphing calculator, in a variety of ways:  as a presentation platform, as a exploration environment, and as a tool for students to build with mathematics.

I have presented on Desmos many times, to teachers, administrators, and students.  You can read about one such workshop here.

And this document is part of my standard Introduction to Desmos workshop: Introduction to Desmos

Demonstrations

Here is a short list of some of the demonstrations I have created using Desmos.

Distance from a point to a graph  A nice visualization of the distance from a point to a graph.

Maximize the area of this rectangle!  A simple, engaging introduction to optimization.

The locus of points equidistant to a fixed point and a line segment  A visualization inspired by a James Tanton problem.

Distance from y = \sqrt{x} to the point (b,0)  The interactive that accompanies this neat little result.

Exploring Correlation and Regression  An interactive tool for exploring some elementary concepts in statistics.

Two Vectors Span the Plane  A visualization of linear independence.

Vector Derivatives  A demonstration of vector-valued functions and their derivatives

Circumcircle  The perpendicular bisectors of the sides of a triangle are concurrent at the circumcenter

When Technology Fails!  The interactive that spawned this fascinating conversation, and this talk.

PDFs and CDFs  A tool for building graphs of distribution and density functions.

MVT and Rolle’s Theorem  A demonstration of the connection between the Mean Value Theorem and Rolle’s Theorem.

Student Projects

Here are some example students projects using Desmos.

A variety of student projects from Fall 2015

Maximize the Area of the Corral

Lampost and Shadow

Maximize the Area of the Rectangle Inscribed in the Ellipse

For more examples, go to www.Desmos.com.

TIME 2000 Conference

TIME 2000I am excited to once again be participating in the TIME 2000 conference at Queens College.

This conference showcases the TIME 2000 program at Queen’s College, which supports undergraduate students in studying mathematics and math education.  I will be running a workshop on the geometry of folding and cutting.  James Tanton–mathematician, teacher, and creator of fantastic mathematical challenges–will be giving the keynote address.

The conference is Friday, November 22nd, and is open to high school students who are considering mathematics education as a possible career.

Where are the Good Conversations?

In October, I will be running a workshop through Math for America titled “Professional Development Through Social Media”.  The goal of this two-hour workshop is to provide an overview of the opportunities for professional growth, collaboration, and reflection that teachers can find on various social networks.

As part of the workshop, participants will be invited to peruse interactions–posts, comments, exchanges, conversations–that highlight the nature and strengths of the various digital professional communities.  I have a number of good starting points in mind, but I’d love to have more.

I invite you to leave a suggestion in the comments.  Provide a link to something great and give a brief description of what this highlights about the online professional world.  The workshop will include both math and science teachers, so links to non-math resources are definitely welcome.  And please feel free to suggest your own work!

Thanks in advance for your help.  Assuming this is successful, this post itself will become an example of the value of being connected!

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