Thursday, December 11, 2008

Holiday Math

These past few weeks as I wander the malls aimlessly trying to find the perfect gifts, I am amazed at how much "unconscious" math I've done. I say "unconscious" because I am doing these calculations without even thinking math. All I am thinking about is "How much money will I save on this?" Is it true that when money is involved people somehow pay more attention?

It's interesting how much I've used my understanding of percentages during the holiday season. "Take an extra 30% already reduced price". The best one I have seen that I've seen many people have difficulty with, though is "40% lowest ticketed price PLUS an additional 30% today only". I wonder if the stores are betting on the fact that most people think they are saving a total of 70% off the price? In reality, if you knew how to do the math correctly, you would take 40% off the lowest ticketed price, THEN you take 30% off the new price. You would actually save a little more than 50% not 70% as most would think.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

On the Family Table: Family Reading Time: No Age Limit

A friend of mine from high school recently created a blog about encouraging more family time to build healthy relationships. He just posted a blog about the importance of reading out loud and how engaging it can be. I know this is a math blog, but I think that all educators encourage reading and expanding knowledge.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Counting down to the end of the quarter!

I will be finishing up my first quarter in grad school at the end of this week. The two courses I've taken this quarter, Adolescent Development and Education & Technology, have helped me grow as a person, as a student, and as a future math teacher. If you asked me the first week of school if I thought I would learn anything interesting this quarter, I would've said probably not.

I was once a teenager, so understanding adolescents shouldn't too hard, right? As for technology, well, I know how to check my email and surf the web, what more do I need? As I sit here writing this blog, I can't help but reflect on all that I've learned this quarter and feel kind of sad that it is about to come to an end. I have learned so much about adolescent development and how not everyone is the same. Just because I was once a teenager doesn't mean I know everything about what teenagers go through. And the more I learned about adolescent identity development, the more I felt my identity changing, strengthening. What more can I say about my tech class? I'm sitting here blogging and loving it! You can check out all that I've done this quarter by visiting my webpage, Hai's Tech Portfolio. I've learned a lot of cool new tools on the web and surprising (at least to me), I find a lot of them useful to teaching. I have to say, though, that I couldn't have done all this without passionate professors who treated all of us in the program not as students, but as professionals.

Math Games

I was just curious, if you present some math problems as a "game" are students more willing to learn the concepts? For example, when I was learning to type, my keyboarding teacher had this Mario typing game where the faster and more accurate you typed, the faster your character went. The game was great fun and the computer in which the game was one always had a long waiting line. Sure practice had a lot to with it, but learning to type was much more entertaining with the game.


So, can the same be said for math? Do games like Sudoku help kids strengthen problem solving and logic skills while being entertaining? How about other games that may utilize a system of equations? I think that when I am a teacher, I would like to have a "game day" once a quarter to help kids have fun with math.