There IS a math holiday in October!

[Maria Droujkova]

My list of math holidays was empty in October until Gathering for Gardner announced the worldwide celebration on the 21st (his birthday). The holiday is called Celebration of the Mind. On this day, participants host a show and tell of math art and puzzles, build math sculptures, and otherwise engage in advanced humanistic mathematics. They can also share math sculptures or math toys as little gifts.

Site for the celebration: http://www.g4g-com.org/

List of all math holidays: http://naturalmath.wikispaces.com/Math+Holidays


Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

[Robin Rider]

Interesting article on video games in learning

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp

 

Robin L. Angotti, PhD

Assistant Professor

Education Program, Box 358531

University of Washington, Bothell

18115 Campus Way NE

Bothell, WA 98011

425.352.3605 (office)

425-352-5234 (fax)

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion."

[Mary O'Keeffe]

Maria, I love your website!  There is another wonderful math holiday in October.

 

"Power of ten day"  10/10   The website for the inspiring Power of Ten film made by the Eames brothers celebrates it every year, but this year is especially awesome, because it is 10/10/10 (and, in binary, 101010 is 42, the secret of the Universe, which is even more delightful!)

 

Check out http://www.powersof10.com/ for more about 10/10 day observations past and present.

 

And to find out more amazing things about 42, check out this post.

 

http://pballew.blogspot.com/2010/10/math-book-for.html

 

Mary

 

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[Maria Droujkova]

Mary,

Thank you for the valuable addition to the list! I added the holiday: http://naturalmath.wikispaces.com/Math+Holidays

It looks like my favorite mix of the Powers of Ten move and the Galaxy Song fell victim to a copyright claim. I wish people switched to Creative Commons already!!!

[Maria Droujkova]

Robin,

This project is a rare case of when I am very jealous of people working at a school. I love the thoughtful design of all aspects of the school to be game-like, not just "games inserted into the traditional setup." I think it has a very high potential for changing the landscape of education.

This year, I am working on a NASA project to design an integrated high school science and math unit of 40 lessons that includes game elements. Some of the Quest to Learn ideas will apply.

One of p2pu people, Michael Nelson, is working on a project called Learning Goals for peer-to-peer tracking of learning projects. We are having a discussion on his brand-new list (three members as of tonight) about his system, and using some game design elements for fun and (learning) profit: http://groups.google.com/group/learning-goals

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

[Mike South]

Also let's not forget that 

31 OCT = 25 DEC

So you can celebrate "funnily coincidental base-conversion day"...

:)

(If anyone is unfamiliar with this, the normal punchline/setup for the equality above is "Halloween is geek Christmas", and the idea is that 31 octal is equal to 25 decimal.  In America, Halloween is celebrated on October 31 and Christmas on December 25.)

mike

 

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[Michael Nelson]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

Robin,

This project is a rare case of when I am very jealous of people working at a school. I love the thoughtful design of all aspects of the school to be game-like, not just "games inserted into the traditional setup." I think it has a very high potential for changing the landscape of education.

Yes, I love that the school grades with  “pre-novice,” “novice,” “apprentice,” “senior” and “master.”, using 'levels' of mastery. On that note, I was once inspired by Kathy Sierra's article "What software can learn from Kung-Fu":

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/07/what_can_softwa.html

to map the boring "Units of competency" that comprised our web-development course onto game-like levels, where the initial levels could be completed in a short, achievable time-frame (3-5 days). It was great fun!

 

This year, I am working on a NASA project to design an integrated high school science and math unit of 40 lessons that includes game elements. Some of the Quest to Learn ideas will apply.

That sounds interesting Maria... is that part of http://quest.nasa.gov , or is there a link where I can read more about your project? 

One of p2pu people, Michael Nelson, is working on a project called Learning Goals for peer-to-peer tracking of learning projects. We are having a discussion on his brand-new list (three members as of tonight) about his system, and using some game design elements for fun and (learning) profit: http://groups.google.com/group/learning-goals

Thanks for the intro :). One of the main reasons that I (personally) see the need for this type of tool came out of the work I did a few years ago that I mentioned above. Once we had people working towards the "next level" in the course, we found that it was (obviously) not helpful to try to keep people all at the same level. Some raced ahead, others worked equally hard but had much less time available to invest etc. Back then, I would have *loved* to be able to look at one page that gave me a visual overview of the progress of all in-progress individual and group goals. If you're interested, you can read more (and see a very raw demo screencast) at:

https://www.drumbeat.org/project/learning-goals

Cheers,

Michael 

--

-

Michael Nelson

http://liveandletlearn.net 

[Maria Droujkova]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 2:54 AM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

Robin,

This project is a rare case of when I am very jealous of people working at a school. I love the thoughtful design of all aspects of the school to be game-like, not just "games inserted into the traditional setup." I think it has a very high potential for changing the landscape of education.

Yes, I love that the school grades with  “pre-novice,” “novice,” “apprentice,” “senior” and “master.”, using 'levels' of mastery.

The idea of telling someone "You did this task poorly. Move on!" seems anti-pedagogical. This is what typical grade systems, in combination with fixed curricular pace, manage to accomplish.

I like levels because they measure useful, satisfactory achievements of varying difficulty. In life, doing the task of any level poorly usually makes no sense, but doing simple, beginner tasks well is useful and can be rewarding.
 

On that note, I was once inspired by Kathy Sierra's article "What software can learn from Kung-Fu":

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/07/what_can_softwa.html

to map the boring "Units of competency" that comprised our web-development course onto game-like levels, where the initial levels could be completed in a short, achievable time-frame (3-5 days). It was great fun!

Another useful reference here: "Princess rescue app." http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/10/princess-rescuing-application-slides.html

It has graphs of difficulty increases, at pages 4-8 of the pdf, that every educator should memorize (at the master level) :-)))
 

 

This year, I am working on a NASA project to design an integrated high school science and math unit of 40 lessons that includes game elements. Some of the Quest to Learn ideas will apply.

That sounds interesting Maria... is that part of http://quest.nasa.gov , or is there a link where I can read more about your project? 

We just started, no public link yet, but I will let people know when there is. It's a brand-new project, though we will use previous interactives.

[Maria Droujkova]

I added this joke, Mike! A classic. I also embedded Kalid's Instacalc converter into the page http://naturalmath.wikispaces.com/Math+Holidays Conveniently, it had octal conversion function built in. Kalid, how did you know we will need it?

[Kalid Azad]

Hah, I think the octal converter has been used more in a joke setting than as a utility! I can't remember the last time I've needed to use it for work ;).

-Kalid

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[Kalid Azad]

Hah, I think the octal converter has been used more in a joke setting than as a utility! I can't remember the last time I've needed to use it for work ;).

-Kalid