Happy Pi Day!

Pi Day is just around the corner! It’s a fun and exciting way to engage your students with mathematics and the world around them—with technology. There are a number of great resources and ideas online for celebrating Pi Day, from the silly to the serious.  Many of these resources are excellent ways to help your students interact with math outside the boundaries of a typical math class. In addition to measuring, cutting up, and eating pie, check out some of these other fun activities:

• Start with a history lesson with “A Brief History of π."
• Check out the “Pi Searcher” tool for searching the first 200 million digits of Pi. Have students enter different strings of numbers (birthdays, phone numbers, etc.) to see what they come up with. Have students collaborate with peers and think aloud about what the results might mean. What are the odds that your phone number would show up in Pi? What about fewer digits? 
• Consider following “The Pi Searcher” on Google Plus to see all their Pi-related posts and updates. Tongue-in-cheek and fun discussions of Pi.
• Explore multiple representations of Pi. What does Pi look like if represented by colors and shapes? What would Pi sound like? Using visual representations and models can be a great way to help your students grasp information, plus these tools are fun to play with!
• Use simulations and virtual tools that explore some of the many fascinating discoveries related to Pi. One cool one to check out: Buffon’s Needle Simulation.
• More virtual manipulatives and lessons can be found on the NCTM Illuminations website. 
• View the Pi Day Webquest!

Are 3D Printers the “Next Big Thing” in Education?

You may have started to recently hear a lot about 3D printers; with prices dropping, more high schools and universities are purchasing 3D printers for use with their students. It may not be long before elementary and middle schools follow suit.

So what are 3D printers? 3D printing allows you to create solid three dimensional models from a digital design. By laying down successive layers of material, the printer “builds” a three-dimensional model based on your specifications. With basic models running in the range of $3000 to $5000, the 3D printer may soon be a common sight in classrooms. Think of the educational possibilities of having your students design and create their own mathematical models and virtual manipulatives!

You can view lesson plan ideas here to get a sense of what is possible with 3D printing. 3D printing companies are also springing up around the country, allowing you to send designs and make use of their 3D printing capabilities. Shapeways is one such example, and they have some great videos demonstrating the process, as well as really cool examples of products created by users – everything from jewelry to toy trains to lamps and more!
Check out this video for an interesting overview of 3D printing:

3 Free Apps that You Can Use in Your Classroom Today: Math

Each month, we’ll tell you about three FREE apps you can use in your classroom. This month, we’re focused on math !

Apps and animations can be a great way to teach math, because you provide students with a visual representation of a concept that they can see, hear, and in some cases, touch and manipulate.

The first two apps this month would be great for a unit on fractions in conjunction with our Focus on Fractions assessments.

• Pearl Diver HD (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) – Learn the number line while diving for pearls amidst shipwrecks and sunken ruins. Address NCTM standards including: understanding numbers, ways of representing numbers and number systems; understanding and representing commonly used fractions; understanding fractions as part of unit wholes and as locations on number lines; and comparing and ordering fractions.
• Virtual Manipulatives! (iPad) – Virtual fraction bars and tiles.

Our last app this month is a cool graphing tool, that makes use of touch interface to help kids better understand linear relationships. 

• Slope Slider(iPad and iPhone) – increase student understanding of linear relationships by allowing students to manipulate graphs and lines to reflect changes in equations.

Incorporate apps into your math lessons and share the results with your peers on PowerUp!