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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

"Last week Tim Gowers, Cambridge University mathematician and open access advocate who led the recent boycott of Elsevier, announced an exciting new open access initiative for mathematicians on his blog. The project, called the Episciences Project, will make it super quick and easy to set up open access journals called "epijournals"."

Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under the GPL. It combines the power of many existing open-source packages into a common Python-based interface.

If you are interested in inquiry-based learning, problem-solving, family math, or Math Circles, join an online adventure this December! http://www.moebiusnoodles.com/openminds/ Bright, brave, open minds: A problem solving kaleidoscope is a two-week long open online course in problem solving for parents and teachers of 8-9 year old children.

The use of web based technology is growing by leaps and bounds every day. These online tools are the new set of keys for opening your students' minds. The vast resources on the Internet are making the use traditional methods of teaching and learning obsolete in countless ways.

Tim Gowers analyzes Elsevier Publishing's announcement to the mathematics community on reduced article charges and other concessions in light of recent university, funding body and government initiatives in support of more open scholarly publishing.

The main objective of the Intergeo Project is to make digital content for mathematics teaching in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable. Intergeo will... * offer content in a searchable and metadata-tagged portal. * enable users to use their software of choice by specifying a common file format based on open standards. * test available material in the classroom. All stakeholders, software teams, resource authors, teachers and learners will be involved, in order to promote quality enhancement cycles.

The main objective of the Intergeo Project is to make digital content for mathematics teaching in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable. Intergeo will... * offer content in a searchable and metadata-tagged portal. * enable users to use their software of choice by specifying a common file format based on open standards. * test available material in the classroom. All stakeholders, software teams, resource authors, teachers and learners will be involved, in order to promote quality enhancement cycles.

abstract: "In this paper I address the use of digital tools (GeoGebra) in open ended design activities, with primary school children. I present results from the research and development project "Creative Digital Mathematics", which aims to use the pupil's development of mathematical board games as a vehicle for teaching skills with GeoGebra, as well as an entrepreneurial attitude towards mathematics. Using the instrumental approach I discuss how open ended transdisciplinary design activities can support instrumental genesis, by considering the extent to which the pupils address mathematical knowledge in their work with GeoGebra and how they relate their work with GeoGebra and mathematics to fellow pupils and real life situations. The results show that pupils' consider development of board games as meaningful mathematical activity, and that they develop skills with GeoGebra, furthermore the pupils considers potential use of their board game by classmates in their design activities."

Live open online event in the Math Future series.

Discusses inferior textbook publishing practices and offers advice for evaluation of materials by parents

"There may be a reason you can't figure out some of those math problems in your son or daughter's math text and it might have nothing at all to do with you. That math homework you're trying to help your child muddle through might include problems with no possible solution." Lack of quality control in text publishing described and evaluation suggestions for parents offered.

in "A Letter to the Mathematics Community" Elsevier confirms its withdrawal of support for the Research Works Act, the number of open mathematics journals it publishes, clarifies policies on self-archiving of mathematics papers, and announces establishment of a "scientific council for mathematics."

Many maths activities - some closed, some more open, many useful ones.

Growing open educational resources platform featuring online texts in maths and physics (so far!)

This slide show demonstrates some techniques that would be suitable for an experimental geometry project. The basic shapes of square and circle are explored using open source Geogebra and Dr Geo geometry software. The examples includes exercises in geometric construction, novel solutions and recursive (spiral) constructions. This is mathematics that can be done without algebra. There is some algebra on slide 18, to calculate the radius and area of a semicircle inscribed in a square.

"MathJax is an open source JavaScript display engine for mathematics that works in all modern browsers. "

"In this article we introduce the free educational mathematics software GeoGebra. This open source tool extends concepts of dynamic geometry to the fields of algebra and calculus. You can use GeoGebra both as a teaching tool and to create interactive web pages for students from middle school up to college level. Specifically designed for educational purposes, GeoGebra can help you to foster experimental, problem-oriented and discovery learning of mathematics. We will illustrate the basic ideas of the software and some of its versatile possibilities by discussing several interactive examples."

Open Reference Interactive Textbook