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(Abstract only online, full text requires subscription) "The pipeline toward careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) begins to leak in high school, when some students choose not to take advanced mathematics and science courses. We conducted a field experiment testing whether a theory-based intervention that was designed to help parents convey the importance of mathematics and science courses to their high school-aged children would lead them to take more mathematics and science courses in high school. The three-part intervention consisted of two brochures mailed to parents and a Web site, all highlighting the usefulness of STEM courses. This relatively simple intervention led students whose parents were in the experimental group to take, on average, nearly one semester more of science and mathematics in the last 2 years of high school, compared with the control group. Parents are an untapped resource for increasing STEM motivation in adolescents, and the results demonstrate that motivational theory can be applied to this important pipeline problem. "

LOG IN February 22, 2012 at 2pm Eastern US time: http://tinyurl.com/math20event During the event, John Mason will lead a conversation about multiplication as scaling, and answer questions about his books, projects and communities. All events in the Math Future weekly series: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/events The recording will be at: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/JohnMason Your time zone: http://bit.ly/wQYN1Y Event challenge! What good multiplication tasks about scaling do you know? Share links and thoughts! John writes about elastic multiplication: "It is often said that 'multiplication is repeated addition' when what is meant is that 'repeated addition is an instance of multiplication'. I have been developing some tasks which present 'scaling as multiplication' based around familiarity with elastic bands. Participants would benefit from having an elastic (rubber) band to hand which they have cut so as to make a strip; wider is better than thinner if you have a choice." About John Mason John Mason has been teaching mathematics ever since he was asked to tutor a fellow student when he was fifteen. In college he was at first unofficial tutor, then later an official tutor for mathematics students in the years behind him, while tutoring school students as well. After a BSc at Trinity College, Toronto in Mathematics, and an MSc at Massey College, Toronto, he went to Madison Wisconsin where he encountered Polya's film 'Let Us Teach Guessing', and completed a PhD in Combinatorial Geometry. The film released a style of teaching he had experienced at high school from his mathematics teacher Geoff Steel, and his teaching changed overnight. His first appointment was at the Open University, which involved among other things the design and implementation of the first mathematics summer school (5000 students over 11 weeks on three sites in parallel). He called upon his experience of being taught, to institute active-problem-solving sessions, w

"The Middle School Stream aims to motivate and engage middle school students (grades 5 through 8) in STEM learning, 21st Century Literacy Skills and Systems Thinking by challenging them to design original video games. The High School Stream aims to motivate and engage high school students (grades 9 through 12) in STEM learning, 21st Century Literacy Skills and Systems Thinking by challenging them to design original video games. The Collegiate Stream challenges emerging game developers at the graduate and undergraduate levels to design video games for children (grades pre-K through 8) that teach key STEM concepts and foster an interest in STEM subject areas. The Educator Stream challenges educators to design video games for children (grades pre-K through 12) that teach key STEM concepts and foster an interest in STEM subject areas."

My name is Patrick Honner. I teach mathematics at Brooklyn Technical High School, a large, public, specialized high school in Brooklyn, New York. As a NYC public school teacher I have taught everything from Introductory Algebra to Multivariable Calculus.  I mentor student research in mathematics, and I am actively involved in extracurricular mathematics programs both in my school and around New York City. Math research is an instructional focus of mine. Independent, investigative, mathematical research projects can be crafted by and for students at all levels of knowledge, in all areas of interest. A primary objective of MrHonner.com is to exhibit the math all around us in order to stimulate question-posing and hypothesizing, the first steps in structuring a good research project. I am a two-time recipient of Math For America's Master Teacher Fellowship, and I am active in MfA's professional community.

Abstract: "A mobile learning research project was conducted in Trinidad and Tobago to determine if mobile learning can assist high school students in learning mathematics. Several innovative techniques were used in this research to address the problem of high failure rates of mathematics in high schools in the Caribbean. A mobile learning application was developed based on a subset of the high school mathematics curriculum used in the English-speaking Caribbean. Game-based learning, personalization and multiple learning strategies were used in conjunction with mobile learning to assist students in improving their performance in mathematics. Three evaluation studies were conducted with the mobile learning application. During the studies, usage data was captured automatically by the system and this was used to determine the extent to which the students actually used the mobile application. At the end of each study, a questionnaire was used to capture student opinions of the mobile learning application. Questionnaire data is based solely on student responses and there is no guarantee of its accuracy and reliability. This paper focuses on the responses of the students to the questionnaire and seeks to determine if the usage data can increase the reliability of the questionnaire data. It summarizes the behaviour patterns of the students gleaned from the usage logs and compares this to the students' responses to the questionnaire. Generally it was found that the students' responses agreed with the usage data, though there were occasions when the responses diverged."

From the abstract: "The purpose of this study was to find out from current high school math teachers, of geometry specifically, what their views of technology are. The goal of the study was to ask these teachers which technologies they use and whether they believe technology has beneficial effects on student learning. Data was collected for the survey by asking teachers to take brief electronic surveys and conduct in-person interviews. All questions in both the survey and interviews were focused on the effects of technology that they see in their classrooms. The scope of the participants was restricted to Columbus, Ohio, and thus, generalizations for any classroom or any school building cannot be made. However, this study did find a consensus among the participants as to which technologies they felt were the most beneficial in their classrooms, as well as those that might not be needed at all in a classroom. The three technologies that these teachers claimed to be the most beneficial were SMART boards, TI-nspire calculators and Geometer's Sketchpad/GeoGebra. Again, this study cannot make solid conclusions, but it is safe to say that this study gives insight into teachers' viewpoints, which, in a sense, are more important than those of outside researchers. The teachers agreed on a few technologies that are the most beneficial and thus future studies should focus on really studying the effects of these technologies as well as focus on getting a wider range of teachers' opinions on this topic."

"Initial thoughts on "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making" The book study begins!" Book study post on the new NCTM Series "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making"

"The open repository of interactive high school lesson video modules sponsored by MIT's Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC) has unveiled an updated website. Every lesson, filmed in high school classrooms from Brooklyn to Beirut to Bangalore, is still a complete resource that includes video segments, a teacher's guide, downloadable hand-outs, and a list of additional online resources relevant to the topic. Since first appearing in these pages six months ago, the library of videos has grown to over 50 math and science lessons, all freely available to teachers as streaming video, Internet downloads, DVDs, and videotapes."

"Move the World, a workshop first tried out at Gymnasium Delbrück (a high school) that leveraged math and virtual worlds to increase high school juniors' interest in computer science."

A collaboration among Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance & Education Next, the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and Harvard Kennedy School . "To see how well the U.S. as a whole, each state, and certain urban districts do at producing high-achieving math students, the percentage of U.S. public and private school students in the high-school graduating Class of 2009 who were highly accomplished in mathematics in each of the 50 states and in 10 urban districts is compared to the percentages of similarly high achievers in 56 other countries." High-achieving students in the U.S. were outperformed by high achievers from other countries.

The goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge. Lots of free online courses

The goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge. Lots of free online courses some cross referenced to textbooks.

LOGIN: http://tinyurl.com/math20event Mind the Daylight Saving Time! Geoff Roulet and Jill Lazarus will discuss their use of wikis, GeoGebra and Jing with students, and invite participants for an extended DIY exploration. More details concerning the software required are below. All events in the Math Future weekly series: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/events The recording will be at: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/SupportingCollaborativeMath Your time zone: http://bit.ly/z69yzS About Blended Mathematical Collaboration using a Wiki, GeoGebra and Jing This discussion centers on the use of computer tools in a high school class. The goal was to develop a "math-talk learning community" to establish mathematics communication and collaboration as a classroom norm. In support of this we have combined the use of a wiki, GeoGebra, and Jing. We would like to invite educators who have experience with wikis, GeoGebra and screencasts, or who would like to learn more, to discuss our project and share their ideas. Event Hosts Geoff is the skipper of and Jill a crew member on Jeannie, a J35 racing yacht. When not sailing, they are mathematics educators. After graduate work at the University of Waterloo, Geoff Roulet began teaching mathematics, computer science, and chemistry at Roland Michener Secondary School in Timmins, northern Ontario. In the late 1970s, when personal computers for computer science were placed in the back of his classroom, Geoff began using these to support student learning in mathematics. Since then he has been involved in ICT use in teaching and learning at all grades and in all subjects, but with a particular focus on mathematics. Teaching was followed by a short spell of curriculum development and support work with the Ontario Ministry of Education and then in 1990 a move to the Faculty of Education, Queen's University at Kingston. Along the way Geoff completed M.Ed. and D.Ed. degrees at the Ontario Institute for Studies

This is a wonderful site for example math webquests at the high school level.

"Why Learn It (WLI) aims to address the issue of motivation around learning math by helping students explore the beauty and relevance of what they would otherwise dismiss as inconsequential in school. Targeting late middle-school and early high-school students, WLI takes a hybrid approach to cultivat- ing motivation. It leverages the engagement value of short (approximately three-minute long) videos depicting real people talking about how math and computational thinking are critical to their successes in a number of professional areas. Students then complete a series of interactive exercises that help students explore an application area discussed in the video in more detail. These exercises, however, are not simply drill problems aimed at making students experts in a particular content area. Instead, they are multi-step assignments that require the students to draw upon both detailed mathematical knowledge and a big picture view of how this knowledge can be used to draw useful, meaningful conclusions. The exercises are focused on bridging the worlds of number, images, and sounds in or- der to help students build intuition around a particular topic. Therefore, while some questions have objectively correct responses, others require students to gather knowledge they have built through answering previous questions within the packet to draw new inferences. Hints are provided along the 1 way to ensure students receive assistance when necessary. Finally, WLI is housed online and is oered for free, signifying minimal barriers to usage by educators and students."

The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways project (MSP2) is a component of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) that supports middle school educators and youth by offering contextualized, high-quality resources and promotes interactivity, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing among its users. Educators can access MSP2 to increase content knowledge in the areas of science, mathematics, and technology, and to build knowledge on developmentally appropriate pedagogy for youth aged 10 to 15. MSP2 also connects middle school youth to fun and engaging information on math, science, and technology, as well as health, safety, and career exploration. Web tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, and social networking services are being used in the continued development of MSP2 to transform passive, text-based information into a dynamic, collaborative experience that promotes the creation, modification, and sharing of resources, and facilitates professional development. MSP2 is a project of The Ohio State University, National Middle School Association, and Education Development Center, Inc., and is funded by the National Science Foundation.

"A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University's Robert Siegler has identified a major source of the gap -- U. S. students' inadequate knowledge of fractions and division. Although fractions and division are taught in elementary school, even many college students have poor knowledge of them. The research team found that fifth graders' understanding of fractions and division predicted high school students' knowledge of algebra and overall math achievement, even after statistically controlling for parents' education and income and for the children's own age, gender, I.Q., reading comprehension, working memory, and knowledge of whole number addition, subtraction and multiplication. Published in Psychological Science, the findings demonstrate an immediate need to improve teaching and learning of fractions and division."

Middle school, High school, and College level math visualizations - may be useful on IWB.

Math has always been easy for me but it wasn't until I started taking classes to get my teaching certificate that I came to truly love math. Both my mom and dad loved to play card and board games. They taught my sister and I many mathematical concepts while playing these games without even realizing it. Puzzles and patterns, statistics and probability were daily conversations. Then came school. Math was nothing but numbers written on paper. Easy to do but very boring and seemingly unrelated to life. Breezing through each worksheet, page of math problem and even finishing the 7th grade math book mid-year, math became a hated subject to be put aside as quickly as possible. I vowed that the day I graduated from high school would be the last day I ever took a math class. I succeeded in that goal all through college but when I wanted to get my Elementary Teaching Certificate the state of Vermont had other ideas. So I signed up for a summer class in teaching math.

HSSageMath.org is a website designed for High School and Middle School level students and educators. We hope to use this wiki and Sage notebook server to share helpful Sage tools and information with the world.

Microsoft Mathematics 4.0, for students in middle school, high school, and early college, shows how to solve equations while bolstering understanding of fundamental math concepts. It features built-in Ink Handwriting Support, which lets you hand-write math problems and equations in a worksheet area on a tablet or ultra-mobile PCs for immediate solving or later work. The software also includes a graphing calculator capable of plotting in 2D and 3D, a movie editor, a library of formulas and equations, a triangle solver, and more.