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"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."

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.

"I often sit on a Thursday evening about 2000hrs and watch the ukedchat hashtag. This week it was about physical education. Although this is not one of my strong subjects in teaching (or even in real life) I was interested in the first question which asked how physical education could be related to literacy and/or mathematics. Just like a GSCE multiple choice essay question I chose to answer how it could be related to mathematics. You can see the full tweet chat conversation here - but I thought I would expand my response in this week's waffle."

This is a wonderful maths puzzle site where players must use + - x or ÷ with a set of four numbers to equal 24. There are many modes to choose from, including an easier 'kids' version of the game, timed games and even a battle mode where you can challenge other people. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

"In previous posts, I have summed up my position on Khan Academy as follows: Khan Academy teaches only one part of mathematics-procedures-and that isn't the most important part. Writing about mathematics, developing a disposition for mathematical thinking, demonstrating a conceptual understanding of mathematical topics are all more important than procedures. That said, procedures are still important, and Khan Academy provides one venue where students can learn them. In the end, I think every young person should have an account there. Even if only one in a thousand or ten thousand benefit, that would be a terrific outcome. "

This site offers an interactive way to assess your class by connecting your students to your lessons and response to every question on a range of devices, including mobiles. Make a virtual room and set up assessment quizzes, share links instantly and even get students to draw a response to your questions in real time. The data is collated so you can see where your students need more input. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Planning+%26+Assessment

Create an interactive online lesson with this brilliant site. Upload and curate all the resources for a lesson in one place and access them with one click. The site works with Office files, PDFs, flash files, small videos, images and internet links and even connects to Google Drive and Dropbox. Then simply share the link with anyone who need to use view it. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Planning+%26+Assessment

Make maths worksheets with this tool from microsoft. Just write one example question and the program will generate more questions of the same type and even provide an answer sheet. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

LOGIN Wednesday February 15 at 3pm Eastern US time: http://tinyurl.com/math20event During the event, Dr. Keith Still of SaferCrowds.com will introduce his Crowd Sciences work and explain the relevance of mathematics in it: "If you don't do the maths, you could end up in court on a manslaughter charge!" All events in the Math Future weekly series: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/events The recording will be at http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/CrowdSciences Pose questions and comments for Keith before the event Math Future wiki: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/message/list/CrowdSciences LinkedIn group: http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=33207&type=member&item=94871153&qid=b29a6dbc-6474-425f-865a-b319bd33dcb9 Email group: http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture/browse_thread/thread/931328aab6d87b03 How to join Follow this link at the time of the event: http://tinyurl.com/math20event Wednesday, February 15 2012 we will meet online at noon Pacific, 3 pm Eastern time. WorldClock for your time zone. Click "OK" and "Accept" several times as your browser installs the software. When you see Session Log-In, enter your name and click the "Login" button If this is your first time, come a few minutes earlier to check out the technology. Crowd Modelling + Crowd Monitoring + Crowd Management = Safer Crowds Crowd Modelling is the scientific approach to the development of safe, robust, crowd management plans. This can be achieved without the need for expensive, complex, time consuming computer simulations. In simple terms Crowd Modelling is understanding how, where, when and why crowds arrive, move around and leave an events/venues. The majority of this can be accomplished using tried, tested and simple to apply methodologies. "Keith Still is what I term an intuitive mathematician. He is one of the most creative and original thinkers that I know. He adds drive and determination, as well as considerable intellectual power to any group of which h

Here is a list of all of the skills students learn in Algebra! The skills are organized into categories, and you can move your mouse over any skill name to see a sample question. To start practicing, just click on any link. IXL will track your score, and the questions will even increase in difficulty as you improve!

A nice online maths tool for working out percentages. Just input the numbers. You can even embed it into your site. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

"experiment performed by Loukas Balafoutas and Matthias Sutter, released February 2 by Science, involved three methods that provided an initial advantage to women in a math competition. The authors found that, in each case, women entered the competitions more readily, but the aggregate performance of the participants was unaffected, and sometimes even improved."

These puzzles are simple enough for anyone to try, but need some thinking to see how they work. They are based on logical thought rather than knowledge or memory or skill or arithmetic. They are also counter-intuitive (another way of saying that they're tricky!) Even if you can't work them out for yourself, once you know the trick, you can fool other people.

University of Delaware researchers find: "Even [when their children are] as young as 22 months, American parents draw boys' attention to numerical concepts far more often than girls'. Indeed, parents speak to boys about number concepts twice as often as they do girls. For cardinal-numbers speech, in which a number is attached to an obvious noun reference - "Here are five raisins" or "Look at those two beds" - the difference was even larger. Mothers were three times more likely to use such formulations while talking to boys."

A huge collection of maths videos on a wide range of topics. A super resource for older students, but even better to use to brush up on your own maths and teach the lesson yourself. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

This is an amazing online maths playground with a huge number of tools to help learn and demonstrate every area of maths. Create animations and even embed videos. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/maths

Why use Web 2.0 tools in science and math classes? The primary reason is they facilitate access to input and interaction with content through reading, writing, listening, and speaking. These tools offer enormous advantages for science and math teachers, in terms of helping their students learn using Web 2.0 tools. For example: * Most of these tools can be edited from any computer connected to the Internet. Teachers can add, edit and delete information even during class time. * Students learn how to use these tools for academic purposes and, at the same time, can transfer their use to their personal lives and future professional careers. * RSS feeds allow students to access all the desired research information on one page. * Students learn to be autonomous in their learning process.

Google Docs is an easy-to-use online word processor that enables you to create, store, share, and collaborate on documents with your science and math students. You can even import any existing document from Word and Simple Text. You can work from anywhere and with any computer platform to access your documents.

How many times have you prepared an updated or new dynamic math or science PowerPoint or Keynote presentation for class and it would not open in school? Also, how many times has it happened to your students when it's time to give a class presentation? Now you need to postpone their presentation to another day, disrupting even the best planning.

From the abstract (full text requires subscription): "Many organisms can predict future events from the statistics of past experience, but humans also excel at making predictions by pure reasoning: integrating multiple sources of information, guided by abstract knowledge, to form rational expectations about novel situations, never directly experienced. Here, we show that this reasoning is surprisingly rich, powerful, and coherent even in preverbal infants. When 12-month-old infants view complex displays of multiple moving objects, they form time-varying expectations about future events that are a systematic and rational function of several stimulus variables. Infants' looking times are consistent with a Bayesian ideal observer embodying abstract principles of object motion. The model explains infants' statistical expectations and classic qualitative findings about object cognition in younger babies, not originally viewed as probabilistic inferences."