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"Getting to teach economics lessons is one of my favorite things about being a social studies teacher. In economics lessons high school students start to see how many of the math concepts, logic concepts, and political theory they've learned can apply to them in the "real world" after high school. Econ Ed Link is a great resource for lesson plans, videos, and interactive activities for teaching economics concepts. They recently published an updated list of their Math In the Real World lesson plan library. Math In the Real World lesson plans include activities to teach students how to analyze business profit and loss, how the stock market works, and how distribution of income can influence government policies. The Math In the Real World lesson plans also include activities that have a more personal appeal to students. Those lesson plans include building credit, building a savings, and the dangers of payday loan schemes. The payday loan lesson plan is one that has previously been featured here on Free Technology for Teachers."

"It's time we create learning environments that make mathematics accessible for all students "But I'm just not a math person." We've all heard this refrain-and possibly even echoed it ourselves. As a young student, I felt this way for many years. For some reason, math just never clicked for me. My 11th-grade math class with Mr. Peterson changed all that. Why was his class different? He worked hard to bring us examples of math in the real world, connecting concepts back to our lives and making them feel relevant and accessible to us. He gave us voice and choice in our learning, and it made all the difference for me. I can only imagine how much my confidence and enthusiasm for math could have been changed had I experienced a similar instructional approach in all the grades prior. I've come to understand that there is no such thing as a "math person," and that high-quality math instruction is key to helping learners shed that perception. We know from decades of research that success in mathematics is more linked to opportunities to learn in a meaningful way than to innate intelligence, and we know that effective educators can nurture mathematical abilities in all students."

"ne of the most common questions math teachers hear from their students is, "why does this matter?" They are constantly trying to convince students that math is useful and could help them in their everyday lives. But it can be a tough sell. Word problems alone often feel contrived and students see right through them. Thomas Petra has taught math at every level for more than 20 years and encountered dubious students at every grade level. That's why he developed Real World Math, a free website with lessons based on Google Earth aimed at grades 5 - 10. "I was trying to show them actual applications of the math ideas that they see in the textbook," Petra said."

"Growing up in L.A., Khalil Fuller was obsessed with basketball shoes. By age 13, he was running a sneaker company out of his closet, buying shoes low and selling them at a profit. In the process-as he calculated the profits that would eventually buy him a car-he also became obsessed with the real-world usefulness of math. By high school, it was clear that most of his friends didn't feel the same way about algebra or statistics. His two best friends, after falling far behind in math, eventually dropped out of school. Fuller started tutoring other kids and had an epiphany: If he could connect math to something that a ninth grader cared about, maybe they'd actually want to study. The idea eventually became NBA Math Hoops, a board game where kids play the part of basketball coaches, drafting players based on statistics and doing simple math to take each shot. Suddenly, math problems become interesting: Should the Warriors have Kevin Durant take a two-point shot within 15 feet of the basket, or Steph Curry pull up for a corner three?"

"n a rainy Saturday at Hackbright Academy classroom in San Francisco, a group of 35 adults sat at tables, desks, and on couches learning how to code. Marcy, a former artist and now programmer for Uber, taught the class. During a break, Marcy shared that she'd never taken a programming class prior to starting a job in art media. After completing courses at places like Hackbright and General Assembly, she realized how much she enjoyed coding and switched careers. Today she volunteers to teach coding on the weekends. Real world. Compare Marcy's story to Daria's, a high school junior. Daria applied to take her school's AP Computer Science class and was rejected. The reason? She lacked the math prerequisites. Even if she had the prerequisites, she lamented, the counselor told her that her grades probably wouldn't have been high enough to compete for one of the precious 30 seats in the single section that was offered. School world. Learning In The New Economy Of Information | MindShift Teaching in the New (Abundant) Economy of Information How We Can Connect School Life to Real Life Daria's and Marcy's stories speak to the differences between school world and real world. In Marcy's world learning is abundant and artists become coders. In Daria's world, learning is scarce and limited by classroom space and teacher availability."

""How was skiing?" I asked my 14-year old daughter as she hauled her boot bag into the car. "Well, the ratio of snow to ground was definitely low," she replied, adding that she had tried to figure the ratio of snow-to-ground during practice but had received only mystified looks. "Stop the math!" demanded a coach. "You are confusing us!" Why do smart people enjoy saying that they are bad at math? Few people would consider proudly announcing that they are bad at writing or reading. Our country's communal math hatred may seem rather innocuous, but a more critical factor is at stake: we are passing on from generation to generation the phobia for mathematics and with that are priming our children for mathematical anxiety. As a result, too many of us have lost the ability to examine a real-world problem, translate it into numbers, solve the problem and interpret the solution."

"Get the Math is a super website designed to provide teachers and students with multimedia mathematics challenges. I initially reviewed the site when it launched a couple of years ago. Since then the site has expanded. Get the Math put math challenges in the context of the  "real world" scenarios of fashion design, video game design, music production, restaurant management, professional basketball, and movie special effects production."

"One of the challenges we face as educators is providing students with opportunities to engage in meaningful learning experiences that show them how they can connect the knowledge and skills learned in school to the real world. This is particularly true in the area of traditional math instruction if most of the time spent is focused on solving a set of problems in a textbook."

"Perhaps one of the most common questions teachers hear from students who struggle with math is, "When will I ever need this in the real world?" Concepts educators are covering can often feel archaic and remote from the things students care about in their immediate lives. But when educators think creatively about helping students see the applications of math in the real world, it provides a unique point of entry and interest into a subject that many kids may dislike."

"Get the Math is about algebra in the real world. See how professionals use math in music, fashion, videogames, restaurants, basketball, and special effects. Then take on interactive challenges related to those careers. Watch this intro video before trying one of the challenges below. "

"One challenge when creating lessons is to connect the learning objective with things the student cares about. It is important as a teacher that we know what the students are into. (Students do not do email or Facebook so ditch the make a fake Facebook page assignment, mom's use Facebook.) Minecraft, Instagram, Vine, Meme's… how can we incorporate the tools that students love to do into our assignments? A math teacher friend told me she assigned her students to take a picture of math outside the classroom. Very few of the students did it. She updated the assignment to "Take a selfie with the math" and suddenly the students were really into the task of finding math out in the real world. Having a selfie stick in class indicates to students that you value what they value. How can students include a selfie with their work? "Students, feel free to use the selfie stick." Do not forget to use the selfie stick yourself, because you're cool like that."

"uilding a giant steel bale feeder is hard. Try it. Problem No. 1: Unless you live in ranch country, you probably don't even know what it's supposed to look like - regardless of whether you can build one. Problem No. 2: Arc welding is involved. Problem No. 3: Getting it right requires some serious math."

"What it is: mobimaths is a brand new math app for iOS and Android devices. I love the mission of mobimaths: to move away from textbooks and rote memorization and toward real world problems with an emphasis on communication and collaboration. It doesn't get better than that! " Lesson Plans: http://www.mobimaths.com/lessons.html

"Math matters for computer science because it teaches students how to use abstract language, work with algorithms, self-analyze their computational thinking, and accurately modeling real-world solutions."

"Like many kids of my generation growing up in India, I was an avid reader of Enid Blyton's novels. Many of her books were written as a series ("The Famous Five," "The Secret Seven" and "Five Find-Outers") and I recall wondering if the lives of characters overlapped in any way. Did a character from one series ever run into one from another, for example? I recall wondering the same thing in later years about P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle and Jeeves series. Today, in a world where communities real and imagined are digitally connected via platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, we can reframe that question in terms of those common nodes (or friends) in those characters' social networks. As it turns out, network theory as an analytic technique, or what I'd call computational literary analysis, is not just a bona fide research endeavor. It's also a great example of how computational thinking (CT) is truly a cross-disciplinary skill that can be weaved to enrich learning in any subject (not just math and science, as is sometimes the assumption). In an earlier article on computational thinking, I offered teasers of how CT could be integrated into language arts and social studies, in addition to math and science. Here's a detailed treatment of one of those examples, drawn from the work of Franco Moretti's group on "Computational Criticism," which is part of the broader Digital Humanities initiative at Stanford. (See this New York Times profile for more on the work of this group)."

Tons of short video clips about a variety of topics. Has a Teaching and Leanring section covering Algebra, Mathe, Problem solving, Scienc and Tech and Activities sorted by grade.