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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."

An emeritus professor from Queens College questions algebra's role in quantitative literacy and workforce preparation

A response to Hacker's opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times, "Is Algebra Necessary," which argues for its usefulness, calls for better teaching, while acknowledges the difficulties of making that happen. Links to other blog responses to Hacker's piece.

A workshop scheduled in Berkeley, California, Feburary14-16, 2011. "The workshop will discuss what is important and unique to the publishing of mathematical research articles and how we can best ensure that publishing practices support peer reviewed research in the long term. Much of the current discussion is taking place between funders and publishers, including learned societies, but not directly with mathematicians. A second goal is to see if we can find a consensus of opinion on what is important about journal publishing to mathematicians, that is, where the balance lies between the desire for profits from publishing and the broader dissemination of research."

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 first aim of this discussion is to suggest a framework for designing serious games based on game features in commercial games, opinions of fourth graders and their teachers, literary studies, contemporary learning theories, as well as successful and unsuccessful similar endeavours. The second part of this paper describes a concrete example of a maths game based on the proposed framework that implicitly tests math and collaboration skills. The game is made of three components: the game itself, a social network, and a teacher reporting tool. Despite a growing interest in GBL, some teachers are reluctant to use serious games in school. To increase usage of serious games as resource, it is important to equip teachers with information and address their concerns. The paper concludes with the idea that serious games need to be designed well in order to provide the immersion and collaborative active learning that most learning theories recommend."

The Sage Notebook is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants DMS-0821725, DMS-1020378, DMS-0713225, DMS-0555776, DMS-0545904, DMS-0838212, DMS-0757627, DUE-1020378, DUE-1022574, DMS-1015114, etc. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

An oped by the executive director of the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications and a Brown University professor argue that different math skills are needed for different life applications and high school math curriculum should be adjusted accordingly.