Dan Meyer recently shared a fun and telling graph describing his year in math. Inspired by Dan’s idea, and by a Math for America workshop with data visualization innovator Mona Chalabi, I created my own Year in Math entry. Though the real inspiration, I guess, came from the world events that made me want to read more books and less internet.
You can find more takes on the Year in Math theme on Twitter.
I think this could make for a fun student project. I hope the students agree!
Scratch Ed, an organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that supports teaching and learning with Scratch, recently profiled some of my work teaching mathematics using Scratch.
The article, Making Math with Scratch, highlights a Math for America workshop I ran for teachers that centered on approaching mathematical concepts through the lens of coding and computer science. Several projects I use in my classroom are featured, and I also discuss why I like teaching with Scratch and how it’s become a valuable part of my approach to teaching math.
The purpose of the workshop and Patrick’s classroom activities are to demonstrate the power of bringing mathematics and computer science together. “Ultimately the goal is to show how math and computer science are great partners in problem solving. And Scratch provides a terrific platform for that.”
I’m excited to share the work I’ve been doing with math and Scratch over the past few years–including talks and workshops at conferences like Scratch@MIT, SIAM ED, and the upcoming NCTM Annual meeting–and I really appreciate this nice profile from Scratch Ed.
You can read the full article, Making Math with Scratch, at the Scratch Ed website.
Tonight I’ll be running a workshop at the Math for America offices in New York City on Mathematics and Scratch.
I’ve been working to incorporate more computing into my mathematics courses, and Scratch, the free, web-based, block-based programming language developed by the MIT Media Lab, has become an invaluable part of my approach to teaching basic mathematical computing and simulation.
In my workshop participants will engage in elementary mathematical explorations in Scratch that span the mathematics curriculum, from Algebra and Geometry to Calculus and Statistics. We’ll solve some mathematics problems using computer science and some computer science problems using mathematics! And I hope that teachers will leave with some ideas about how to get their own students making math in Scratch.
After the workshop, I’ll be posting links and resources here.
Related Posts
Below are links to activities and resources from my workshop Mathematics and Scratch at the Math for America offices in NYC in January, 2017.
For more information, you can contact me here.
Monte Carlo Area Approximation
I’m looking forward to a a workshop I’ll be running tonight at the Math for America offices on three-dimensional coordinate geometry.
This workshop will cover the basic algebraic and geometric techniques for analyzing functions and relations in x, y, and z, as well as some simple methods for building interesting surfaces in space.
Sketching in space is a favorite topic of mine, and I’m really excited to share it with a group of MfA teachers. Three-dimensional coordinate geometry is an accessible, fun, and rich area that few math teachers have experience with. But given the advances in graphing technology and the applications to 3D printing, it’s something that more people can, and should, learn about!