The Galloping Ghost arcade in Brookfield, Illinois Last Friday, a college buddy Jim and I made a pilgrimage to Brookfield to the Galloping Ghost Arcade. This is a little outside the sphere of what I usually write about, as this tech does not relate to mathematics or education, and it’s not even particularly new or “gadgety”, but I had such a great time that I’m going to indulge myself. I’m far from a hardcore gamer, but I’ve always been interested in games.
We are just a couple of weeks away from the 2015 Hour of Code. Last year, I did the Hour of Code with all of my students on my last day as a teacher after 13 years in the classroom, and they loved it. If you are a math, science, or computer teacher, or are a parent looking to give your child a start on a new set of skills, you owe it to yourself to check out the Hour of Code website.
Every year around this time, I enjoy putting together a series of recommendations of math gifts. As my kids are getting old enough to appreciate some of these gifts, I can now put together this list not only from the perspective of a teacher, but a parent. These math gifts vary in age appropriateness from young children to adults. They fall into the following categories: math games, math books, math novelty gifts, and electronic devices that can be used to encourage math learning.
Device: iPad/iPhone/iPod Age: High School Cost: [Free][1] Mathtoons Logarithms Lite is one of the most unusual yet catchy math education apps I’ve ever come across. It is a tutorial on how to go between the exponential and logarithmic forms of an equation. Users are instructed by cartoon characters that reminded me a bit of the Phineas and Ferb animation style. The animation is high quality, and so are the voice actors.
Device: iPad/iPhone Cost: $2.99 Ages: Elementary school through early middle school This post is the start of another “App Week,” so be sure to keep checking back for a couple of more reviews as the week goes along. Last week I posted a video on YouTube about the Math Blaster iPad apps, and I wanted to get a quick post up on them here on Tech Powered Math. I took a look at two of the Math Blaster apps, HyperBlast and Zapper.
UPDATE: The contest has ended. The random.org random number generator selected Marianna Ballard as the winner. Congratulations, Marianna! Thanks to everyone who entered. I am planning to make contests a more regular part of Tech Powered Math, so be sure to follow on Facebook or Twitter to stay up to date on my giveaways. I recently reviewed MathBlaster.com and was incredibly impressed by the scope and variety of the games as well as the professional polish and fun factor.
While I barely remember it today, the original Math Blaster, released in the late 1980’s was a popular game designed to teach kids math that showed up in the computers at my elementary school and countless others. The Math Blaster series has continued to be popular for over two decades. Today, Knowledge Adventure handles the franchise and offered me the opportunity to take a look at the latest incarnation of Math Blaster at MathBlaster.
UPDATE: A couple of days after this post originally went up, I was made aware of a new hack that deserved inclusion on this list, expanding it to a top 6. Probably every single student (and just about every teacher) who has picked up a graphing calculator has asked themselves how far the technology can be pushed. What are the limits of a graphing calculator? Without much encouragement from Texas Instruments (actually quite the opposite), a dedicated hacker community has developed over the last few decades to attempt to answer this question.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at a system called Reflex Math, designed to help kids learn arithmetic facts. The stated goal of Reflex Math is to gain “math fact fluency.” Reflex is designed to help students achieve fluency through an interactive system of games and puzzles. Egyptian Conniption Reflex is a cloud based system, meaning there’s nothing to download to your computer. As long as you have an up-to-date browser, Reflex runs right in that browser.
Here’s hoping all of you math teachers (and home school parents) out there have a very spooky Halloween with your classes. I know it’s one of the favorite holidays for many kids. I also wanted to alert you to a set of Halloween activity sheets that might help you out this Halloween season. Kids Halloween Activities is a set of printable math games and activities that is perfect for any elementary or middle school teacher or homeschooler.
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