Over the past year, it’s become difficult to have a conversation about education and education reform without mentioning the words “Khan Academy.” For those who aren’t familiar, Khan Academy is a website that offers free instructional videos on everything from basic arithmetic to multi-variable calculus. Its founder, Sal Khan, originally started the site to help [...]

I was leading a PD recently for a local school district about how to teach more effectively using real-world topics. Before the session a teacher came up to me and asked, “Do you work at Mathalicious?”   “I do,” I said.   “I love your lessons. I used to use them all the time, but [...]

If you’ve opened a newspaper lately, you may be under the impression that teachers are a dying breed. A New York Times article highlights how school districts across the county are increasingly turning to virtual education, while The Nation is even more blunt: How online learning companies bought America’s schools. Indeed, it seems like it’s [...]

In addition to the Golden Rule, Confucius described the concept of jen. According to Wikipedia, jen is the “the good feeling a virtuous human experiences when behaving rightly, especially toward others.” It’s related to kind-heartedness, generosity and benevolence, and the higher our jen, the happier we’ll be. In his recent book Born to be Good, [...]

Sometimes the outtakes are the best part of a movie. As anyone who’s taught a Mathalicious lesson knows, we structure our lessons in acts (see Dan Meyer, This American Life, playwrights, etc.). The goal is to create a narrative that flows so naturally that it seems almost effortless, as though the conversation existed already and [...]

In one Radiolab episode they ponder whether there’s an infinite number of universes. In another whether the body “feels” pain earlier than it should, and in another whether numbers are true. When I tried to play the “Placebo” podcast this morning my computer crashed. Radiolab is the smartest program I know–Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich [...]

An article in this morning’s New York Times explains how after investing $33 million in technology, a school district in Arizona has seen almost no improvement in test scores. Duh. It’s no surprise that we as a society have a sort-of blind faith that technology is able to solve all of our problems. Yet while [...]

First broadcast on WAMU 88.5, August 22, 2011. Click here to listen. In the coming weeks millions of students around the country will head back to school. They’ll buy spiral notebooks and number two pencils. They’ll get locker combinations and class schedules. And they’ll sit in math class, open their textbooks and encounter something like this: [...]

First printed on Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post blog, The Answer Sheet on August 14, 2011. Click here for original. A 2006 New York Times article described a 4-year-old boy who presented with a persistent fever and brown spots on his skin.  Doctors concluded it was leukemia and ordered a painful round of chemotherapy.  It turned out [...]

In a recent blog post, Dan Meyer describes his discomfort with the expression “real-world,” writing I understand what it means. I know it’s code for something that basically everybody understands. But I’m not comfortable with the implication that if the mathematics won’t help you build a deck or make payroll or beat the odds at a card [...]