MariaD’s blog

Maria Droujkova Where is Math 2_0 accepted chapter proposal

We had a good start last week with “Where is Math 2.0?” web event at the Future of Education series. Logs will be available shortly. People said they’d like to see a social meeting place for those interested, a regular Twitter chat, a regular LearnCentral voice/multimedia meeting, and a Diigo tag group.

Visit The Future of Education
Toward these goals:

Here is a start of a Wiki called “Math Future” (not “math 2.0″ since it’s somewhat silly, and also in case we progress beyond 2.0) http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/ There, you can add events you organize or attend to the calendar, tell people about your projects, find collaborators, and work toward some common language (math 2.0, math social objects, learning disintermediation and so on).

Twitter chats will be on Wednesdays, July 15th, 6-7pm Pacific / 9-10pm Eastern, with #mathchat tag used. Please volunteer yourself or colleagues to host! I’d like to see 5-7 rotating hosts. This Wednesday, Colleen King of Math Playground (@colleenk) and I (@mariadroujkova) will host it.

Diigo group we will use is Math Links with “Math 2.0″ tag. If any of your bookmarks relate to the topic, can you please add “Math 2.0″ (in quotations) to them? To add tags to other members’ links, click “save” and then select “save to the group” option.

LearnCentral events will start in August (the NECC debriefing is still going strong).

Because there are two legs on each side!

At a Math Club, we were working with paper punches and folding. Symmetry of all sorts was on everybody’s minds. A. (4) drew a unicorn with two legs. We all started to ask about it, and she said: “It has two legs on this side and two on the other side!” Then she turned the paper over and drew two legs on the other side - on the other side of the paper!

This is a sketch for an Early Algebra activity from Math Clubs. Kids can draw their own family trees, use photographs, or clipart of their favorite characters.

Once the tree is built, it can be used for several activities. Start from common words, gradually moving to mathematical terms:

• How many grandparents are there? (point to the “grandparent” level on the tree). What about great-grandparents?
• We have one child, and we have two parents in the first generation from the child, and four grandparents in the second generation, and eight great-grandparents in the third generation… How many people are in the fourth generation? Fifth? How do you know?
• Mathematicians use the term “power” here. For example, we can say “grandparents” or “the second generation from the child” or “two to the second power.” Two to the first power (parents) is two. Two to the second power (grandparents) is eight. What is two to the third power? There is a symbol for it:

  2³=8

• What generation has eight people? What power of two makes sixteen?
  Figuring out which generation each quantity means is a lot like logarithms.
  We can say, “What generation has sixteen people?” or we can write:
  log₂16=4
• Add up all generations up to a certain level, say, “grandparents”. Compare to the number in the next level. What do you observe? Is it always the case?