In this series of posts, we’ll be featuring mathematical video and streaming channels from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the channel and asking them about what they do.
We spoke to Eddie Woo, author of the YouTube channel Wootube.
My wife’s school recently sent round a form with questions about “a day in the life” of people working in STEM careers, to show to their year 6 children. My job involves the M in STEM, so I agreed to have a go at describing my day.
I quite enjoyed describing about what I do, so I’ve decided to reproduce my answers here. Enjoy!
The Association for Women in Mathematics in the USA is running its annual essay contest again, open to students in three age categories from Grade 6 to undergraduate.
Here’s the blurb:
To increase awareness of women’s ongoing contributions to the mathematical sciences, the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Math for America are co-sponsoring an essay contest for biographies of contemporary women mathematicians and statisticians in academic, industrial, and government careers.
The essays will be based primarily on an interview with a woman currently working in a mathematical sciences career. This contest is open to students in the following categories: Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, and College Undergraduate. At least one winning submission will be chosen from each category. Winners will receive a prize, and their essays will be published online at the AWM web site. Additionally, a grand prize winner will have his or her submission published in the AWM Newsletter.
The deadline for entries is January the 31st 2017, and if you want the AWM to pair you up with an interviewee, you need to get a request in by January 10th.
All the prize-winning essays from previous years are online, including this nice one about Tanya Khovanova by high school student Emily Jia.
Media math-man Alex Bellos has made another programme for BBC Radio 4, this time about How to Teach Maths.
Alex Bellos takes you on a mathematical learning journey from the first stages of number recognition through to an understanding of how children solve sums and calculate answers. On the way he will look at the neuroscience of maths and how our mathematical brain develops. He investigates the scientific evidence behind teaching maths and he’ll compare how modern methods of teaching children differ from those taught to their parents, helping kids today go beyond basic numeracy to develop a passion for numbers.
By the way, Radio 4 have also been repeating Marcus du Sautoy’s enjoyable A Brief History of Mathematics at a quarter to two each afternoon. That’s also available to listen to on the Radio 4 website.
Listen: How to Teach Maths on BBC Radio 4.
In the wake of a flurry of tetrices being constructed in schools all over the country (see this post about fractal Christmas tree worksheets, and this post featuring photos of completed trees), we’ve also been sent a video of a school group constructing an ambitious and impressive fractal structure, using envelopes cleverly folded into tetrahedra. The video is below, and features (eventually) a level 5 Sierpinski Tetrahedron, made from 1024 envelopes!
[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lYj5YcPAIg]
Via teacher Tim Dolan on Twitter.
It’s shaping up to be a busy month for education reform in England. Here’s some news in brief.
Later this year I am to give a session at a teachers conference on using maths in the news for enriching school maths lessons.
In my session, I intend to go over some recent maths news. I would also like to give some real examples of teachers having used some news in class.
Samuel Hansen and I keep track of mathematics news and mathematics in the news for our podcast. I am aware that people have written in from time to time to say they have used some bit or another in class but I haven’t recorded these instances.
My plea, then, is this: Whether from the podcast or not, please could you send me your examples of how you’ve used current events in mathematics class for enrichment? I’d like to know what the news story was, what you did and how it worked.
You can leave a message in the comments of this post or send me a message various ways that are listed on the contact page of my website.
Thank you!