Would You Rather?

Lots of opportunities here:

https://wyrmath.wordpress.com

Math can Illuminate a History of Racism

http://nyti.ms/1z35GIp

The Distance to Mars

Great for a lesson on scale and perhaps time, distance and speed (linear modeling):

http://www.distancetomars.com/

Raw = Great data tool

All I have to say here is wow: http://raw.densitydesign.org/

Water Facts

Here are stunning water facts that can be integrated into many math units. I will use them for percents, ratios, scientific notation and part of my divergent homework series:

http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/

Deconstructing the top 1%

How is the wealth of the top 1% distributed by occupation? Find out with the clever interactive graph:

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html?ref=business

This is another go to for my scientific notation unit.

What percent are you?

In the United States, it is interesting to see where you stand based on your income. Here is a great interactive graphic to help: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html

I see it as a resource for my scientific notation unit.

Convincing Students to Collaborate

How can we convince our students to collaborate with each other?

I am always looking for resources on collaboration. Today, I found one:

Perfect for the first week of class!



Article Link

Pay it Forward

I am a big fan of the movie Pay it Forward. Not only is the film a tearjerker, but I think "paying it forward" could unfold into a great math lesson.

Here is how "paying it forward" works:

1. Do something nice for three people

2. Don't ask them to pay you back, ask them to pay it forward and do something nice for 3 other people.

Trevor explaining Pay it Forward to his class

I am thinking of questions like "how long would this take to effect everyone on Earth?" Students can interpret the word "long" to represent both iteration and time. 

I think its surprising that it would only take 21 iterations to reach the current population. Its also interesting to discuss how 3^20 is not nearly enough, but 3^21 is way more than enough to reach everyone everywhere. 

We could go pretty far with our modeling around this problem, but I would my students take the lead. They need to ask questions like:

-can everyone pay it forward? (think babies, deaths, etc)

-not everyone would pay it forward, so how do we deal with that in our model?

-why doesn't paying it forward seem to work in the real world?

I am thinking of starting by showing the trailer:

And at some point I want to show a visual of 3^x. I would use Desmos or Geogebra for the function, but I really want to find other ways to show the idea of exponential growth. This tree has up to 3^5 (or you can view it below).

Students can always read the original story.