Year 2009

Going back six weeks…

So the end of school was a bit of a flurry and I left meetings early to head out to Park City, Utah (home of the Sundance Film Festival) to participate in the Park City Mathematics Institute for the seventh…

Do you want us to jing it?

The English language continues to evolve — jing is now a noun and a verb as far as my students are concerned.Jing is the free (or lost cost pro version) program for the Mac and the PC that quickly allows…

Paperless?

California’s recent announcement that they are moving to e-textbooks will mean a lot more resources for 1:1 schools. Right now, using a tablet computer means either having a CD copy of the textbook (now a departmental requirement for our texts…

Microsoft’s Live Mesh

One of the most successful tools I used this past academic year is Microsoft’s Live Mesh ( ), a cloud-based file-synchronization and desktop-replicator. I had signed up for it when it was in Beta and have never had a…

Three things…

I managed to sign myself up for a How to write a better blog online course. Because, dear reader, this blog isn’t just for you… no, this is to teach me how to be a better writer and a better…

Parents…

I had a great conversation with some parents the other day. When they first emailed, they mentioned they wanted to talk about their students’ math. My first thought was why? Very bright kid, very self-motivated, always at the top of…

KenKen

Over the March Break (when I had some unstructured down time) I ran into a new puzzle form — the KenKen. While it has a superficial similarity to Sodoku in that the numbers can’t be repeated in a column or…

You want how much for wireless?

I’m off in mid-April to the NCTM’s Annual Conference; I’m looking forward to it because I’m also attending the Research PreSession (have to learn how to network with researchers in anticipation of starting my PhD) and also the NCSM, which…

A little off-topic..

While I’m more than happy to rant again about videostreaming/taping conference sessions (MERU on Thursday?), especially after meeting in New York and hearing half the participants explain why they can’t attend the NCTM Annual Meeting in Washington due to hotel…