What If Spreadsheet Math

Mastering the quadratic formula has long been the culmination of the high school algebra courses, the capstone of “Algebra I and Algebra 2”. We endeavor… Read more

Perhaps the most profound and lasting effect of the Covid Virus pandemic on our economy will be in the change in the way people work.… Read more

Museums were one of the great inventions of the 19th century. People loved collecting, collecting all sorts, and often funded buildings to display those collections… 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

Walt Hunter was a quiet man, slight and balding with a Great Plains accent. You might mark him as a teacher, but likely not the… 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

I feel most fortunate when I have a year I get to work on a new great idea in it. This past year has thus… 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

It caught my eye, this headline/story posted on EdWeek recently. Seems there was a panel at a conference that was supposed to debate what they… 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

The words curious and curiosity do not appear in the Mathematics Common Core Standards document, yet they are arguably the most important words in mathematics… 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

This graph appeared on one of my favorite websites – Statista. Given the “breaking news” of the day, that the President wants to impose new… 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

The University of Chicago is not known for its athletics, so when I entered it as a first-year student I was very surprised that I… 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

Spanglish is one of those movies that grows on you. A coming to America story filled with themes that move us: a dedicated and resourceful… 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

I like to hang out in the Harvard Graduate School of Education library. It has a good vibe, is usually full of students focused on… 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

We call our problem solving process, functional thinking. When we apply functional thinking to problem solving in the digital age, we find that a few… 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

It was forty years ago this September that I started my career as a high school mathematics teacher, a career that spanned 36+ continuous years.… 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

These two words have caught the imagination of educators and parents. They were designed to be the frames for talking about the value of digital… 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

Over the Rainbow by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg is considered the greatest song of the century and the greatest song in a movie… 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

“Rather than ask why our students fail to measure up, this film asks us to reconsider the greater purpose of education. What if our education… 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

I just looked at a wonderful short video by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity at https://youtu.be/63NTB7oObtw in which he describes creativity as a process that… 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

If a mathematician were asked what these two numbers had in common, she might wonder if they were both primes. They are not. A gambler… 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

A little over 20 years ago the Harvard Calculus Consortium sought to remake the calculus curriculum. “We believe that the calculus curriculum needs to be… Read more