Best time ever for a math teacher.http://t.co/foReCBK3http://t.co/qbWd0M0Thttp://t.co/ZzsGsYAhhttp://t.co/hBNvCHbwhttp://t.co/wHMJaVZ4
— Jeff de Varona (@devaron3) December 27, 2012
In 2012, several math teachers turned passion and pedagogy into code, creating seven single-serving websites for their community:
- Activeprompt (Riley Lark)
- Estimation 180 (Andrew Stadel)
- Global Math Department Presentations (Megan Hayes-Golding)
- Graphing Stories (Me & BuzzMath)
- Math Mistakes (Michael Pershan)
- Math Recap (Me)
- Visual Patterns (Fawn Nguyen)
- Welcome to the Mathtwitterblogosphere (Sam Shah)
- 2013 Mar 5. Daily Desmos (Dan Anderson, Mike Fenton, Justin Lanier)
- 2014 Jan 29. All the News That’s Fit to Math (Rebecca)
- 2014 Jan 29. MathArguments180 (MathCurmudgeon)
- 2014 Jan 29. MathArguments180 (MathCurmudgeon)
- 2014 Jan 30. Diagnostic Questions (Craig Barton)
I’m stretching the definition of “single serving” somewhat, but the difference between these sites and other education-related sites like Edmodo or Teachers Pay Teachers or BetterLesson is a) these have a narrow focus, b) they reflect a very particular vision for how students learn or how teachers become better teachers (eg. Math Mistakes believes it’s important that teachers examine student errors; Estimation 180 prioritizes number sense; Activeprompt makes it easy to ask one very particular question.), c) they pursue that vision relentlessly, d) they were created and maintained by teachers, not corporations.
One takeaway and two questions:
- It’s a treat getting to work in a place as creative and industrious as the math edublogosphere. For real.
- The majority of these sites were set up with cheap web hosting and free software like WordPress or Weebly. The barriers to taking an idea and turning it into a digital tool have never been lower. So what’s your idea and how will you turn it into a tool in 2013?
- What are other disciplines doing along these lines that I’ve missed?