What If Spreadsheet Math

Welcome to the first of our new Explorations. Joining the work of What if Math and Education Resources Consortium (ERC), Explorations provide students with a… Read more

Recently, in a history of physics magazine, I came across this picture and a short story on Harvard Project Physics, and I thought about the… Read more

Our education model is broken. Despite the economic promise of and documented need for a bachelor’s degree: graduation rates are stagnant, achievement gaps are widening,… Read more

Our good friend Larry Myatt, one of the great thinkers and leaders on the future of education, recently sent out a New Years greeting that… Read more

This picture made the front page of the New York Times this morning. It is not very often that a science experiment makes the headlines… Read more

In a magazine published for college trustees, a recent short article captured the latest statistics from the ACT and SAT tests. The downward trend was… Read more

If you are a Bostonian by address, birth, or just a connection, you can’t help but be full of pride this morning for your baseball… Read more

I have long loved Maxwell’s Equations as the epitome of beauty in physics and as the source of inspiration for my teaching. But though the… Read more

The Parker Solar Probe was launched yesterday to study the sun. Sixty years ago, Eugene Parker launched my scientific career. A young physics research scientist… Read more

When MOOCs were the rage in higher education, I asked my friend David Kaiser, a physicist and professor of the history of science at MIT,… Read more

What is the hardest question a teacher has to answer? As teachers, especially math teachers, we face this most painful question all too often, rarely… Read more

Envisioning technology that reinvents our schools not automates them should, I believe, be our goal and our dream for personalizing learning. Read more

Or how to build an atomic bomb. One of the best curriculum ideas I ever had was to use this book as the text for… Read more

This picture from a recent blog post sends shivers down my spine. It is our picture of a “modern” classroom with the desks lined up… Read more

Math is not only the last letter in STEM or STEAM, it is the only one that we do not picture as experimental. We don’t… Read more

Cape Cod in the winter is one of those marvelous places filled with interesting shops and people waiting in the quiet winter time for the… Read more

The key to the digital age is also the key to learning algebra. Despite what many of us may believe, our digital age did not… Read more

Teaching done right has always been a hard job, but it is now substantially harder. Talk to any teacher and they will tell you that… Read more

Math Blaster was the biggest hit educational product in the 1980’s, the first decade of the personal computer age. Flying saucer like objects would vaporize… Read more

One hundred years ago my father at age 9 entered America. He had traveled from his birthplace in a town in what is now Ukraine… Read more

On this 10th anniversary of the iPhone it is worth remembering that this invention, as world-changing as it was, will not be deemed the most… Read more

One of the four C’s, perhaps for many the most important 21st century skill, is considered in our schools, cheating. Students caught talking to each… Read more

I still feel it months later, the thrill and awe I knew from finding an answer to a question I have long been troubled by.… Read more

The Genius Behind Accounting Shortcut? It Wasn’t Einstein The Rule of 72 is a nifty shortcut for estimating investment returns; first published mention was in… Read more

As I was again reading the Common Core Standards, I was struck by their introduction of variables in grade 6. Jim, I could not help… Read more

Empathy is an odd idea to discuss in math or even in STEM/STEAM education. It is usually thought of as an issue in psychology or… Read more

Over the past year, we have been working to combine our spreadsheet math lessons (downloaded more than 20,000 times) into digital age problem solving Courses… Read more

This picture was first published in 1638! It is from Galileo’s great work Two New Sciences, that he smuggled out of his home imprisonment in… Read more

As part of the process of designing and developing new Labs, I visit math content sites all the time to help me think about the… Read more

“Today, it seems as if nearly everyone agrees that high school mathematics needs to change. For far too long high school mathematics has not worked… Read more

Each summer, as schools get ready for a new school year, the question returns, “Should we be teaching algebra to our children?” it seems to… Read more

The word seems so benign. Yet it has become the goto word in education. School superintendents, even the best and most advanced of them, use… Read more

Despite the many attempts to codify the creative process, it is as surprisingly individualistic as it is human. John Irving, author of iconic works like… Read more

I do not know who, when, or where this iconic mathematical representation was developed. It is, however, one of the most powerful and ubiquitous of… Read more

It was an appropriate title for the movie about Jaime Escalante and it is an appropriate title for the role that teachers continue to play.… Read more

As I watched a young woman the other day learning to ride her bike, zigzagging down the street, desperately trying to keep her balance, I… Read more

“How do you keep students engaged in math while they are having fun?” We think we have come up with the perfect solution for teachers… Read more

G.H. Hardy, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century wrote this: A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.… Read more

As mathematics takes an increasing role in work and life, creativity must become central to its learning, because: 1) creativity and creative problem solving are… Read more

This program started my career in digital learning. I bought my first computer, an Apple II in February 1978 on their first anniversary. I talked… Read more

My fortune cookie today read, “If you’re happy, you’re successful.” Usually for me that is true, but not today. For during that same lunch my… Read more

To make its workers more productive, the Western Electric Company, makers of phones and other parts for the Bell Telephone System, conducted one of the… Read more

When I was a kid, Sundays in the summer were car washing days. The stores were closed. The roads were generally quiet. And we took… Read more

Today, I attended an ancient ceremony. It is called “Hooding”. An elaborate and beautiful hood is given to students who have completed their scholarship and… Read more

What if I could give you a magic wand to wave over our educational system and make it fulfill our dreams for our children? What… Read more

There are really two kinds of mathematics we do every day. I like to call one headmath and the other handmath, one is the mental… Read more

Three years ago I read a wonderful book by Keith Devlin called The Man of Numbers. It told the story of Leonardo of Pisa who was… Read more

We are in a time of dramatic, some would say, revolutionary change in education, “challenging” as Sir Ken Robinson says, “what we take for granted.” His… Read more

Small changes, seemingly inconsequential acts, can have momentous repercussions. Dead birds set off the environmental movement. An assassin’s bullet protesting an exhausted empire started a… Read more