Archive for: July 2007

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Actress Danica McKellar is probably best known for playing the part of Winnie, “the girlfriend” on “The Wonder Years” in the eighties. It was a brilliant show, and now she has written what promises to be a brilliant book. With the subtitle, “How to Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail,” Ms. McKellar offers help and advice that most girls need. Most boys need it as well, but she is targeting her group well, because, well … duh.

Math shouldn’t have to be a gender issue, but unfortunately society has generally foisted the stupid myth on us that “girls can’t do math.” Modern society has foisted the dumber myth on us that “if you are smart, you can’t be cool.”

Let’s examine that second one for a minute. If you are smart, it’s probably true that there is window of time in your adolescent life during which most of your friends will pretend that it’s uncool to be smart.

Why do they do that? Because they are secure, mature, and successful at the things they are going to need and want in life?

Naaaaah. It’s because their hormones are playing ping-pong with their gonads.

That will last a few more years, and then they’ll end up as fratboy and sororitygirl drunks. Now there’s a goal to shoot for.

Respect your future. Respect your mind. This book seems to have some insights on how to do that without becoming a total boring geek. Imagine that!

I’ve created a new squidoo lens about it at: http://squidoo.com/mathdoesntsuck
Check it out.

I never got into Harry Potter much. Read the first book, saw a couple of movies. They seem pretty good, just not my thing.

I just don’t like that kind of magic. I’m not being silly here, either. The “wave your wand and say a spell” is so antithetical to the kind of magic that I believe is important. But it’s fun to read about, I know, and I think it’s great that kids are reading more because of it. I’m aware of at least one case where a cool kid has graduated from Rowling to Ursula K. LeGuin. That can’t be bad!

Have you ever read “The Crystal Cave” or “The Hollow Hills” by Mary Stewart? Now there’s a Merlin I could get into. I always wondered how a woman could write as a man and a magician, and know so much about the thoughts of both.

I hope snarky adult critics don’t waste their time and make fools of themselves analyzing and paralyzing what essentially should be a romp for children and teens. That kind of thing always makes me feel sorry for a generation, like when those over-reaching NPR music, film or book critics try to make everything so dramatic with their emoting voices … “The texture of Fiddy’s lyrics give his works a depth which one formerly only associated with the likes of Blake…”

That kind of thing would only give a bad taste to the kids of the generation that is really part of the Potter phenomenon.

The other side of the coin is how the present generation of “young people” (teens and above) have tried to do in Tolkien with fandom of special-effects movies and accessories. Damn, it was about language as much as plot. Now it’s about celebrities (many of whom don’t give an orc’s arse about Tolkein) and green-screens.

I cringe when I hear people talk about Tolkien in terms of “Too bad the books weren’t as good as the movies, duuuude.”

Seems like most Potter fans don’t have this problem, because they grew up with the books and the movies, and the books were basically written with movies in mind. Rowling doesn’t seem to be rolling in anything but lucre, while Tolkien spins in his grave (hear that humming sound?)

But the gist of this isn’t to complain about anyone ruining stuff for me, it’s just to plead with other adults to give it a rest and let the young fans have what is really theirs. Why do adults have to control everything?

I’m actually sorry I felt the need to comment on this.

Hotcha!

Professor Homunculus

Make your own Cardboard Abax

Educators just love buzz words. One of the most frequently used buzzwords in math ed. is “manipulatives.” Of course, the greatest manipulatives there are, are your hands and fingers. (Ever wonder why they call them “digits?”)

In the last post, I talked about basic addition. The links lead to MathMojo pages where you could learn a better way to count and do simple addition on your fingers than the way you learned (or didn’t learn) in school. 

The next step in manipulatives is the Abax. An abax is the forerunner of the abacus. It was the ancient counting  board, that, in the West at least, was used deep into the 15th century, when we were still using Roman numerals. (Ever try to add or multiply with Roman numerals?)

Using the abax today, we use base 10 and Arabic numerals, so it is much easier. It’s even easier than using an abacus, because the abacus uses a modified base 10 system, using groups of fives as well. 

The use of an abax is about the most visual and tactile way you can teach basic counting and arithmetic. I’d never actually seen or heard of  one being used in a classroom, so I investigated. Now it turns out that the abax pages are the most visited pages on the entire MathMojo site. People have been writing for over a year for me to start selling them and the instruction booklets for them again.

I had stopped making abaxes because my router was on the fritz. I finally realized that was a lame excuse not to make such a great learning tool available, so I have created an online tutorial (pdf file) that you can download for free to make your own abax out of cardboard. It only takes a few minutes to make. You can watch a short video of how to do it here:

how_to_make_a_cardboard_abax.mov

You can also:
download the free pdf. instructions for how to make an abax here.

I’ve also made the booklet “Counting and Adding on an Abax” available for sale again. It is only $9.95 as a downloadable e-booklet (it’s also available as a physical booklet for shipping by mail) and is about the best first investment you could make in a child’s math education.

Order your own copy of “Counting and Adding on an Abax” here.

I’m also getting ready to send out the newest issue of “The MathMojo Monthly” (”Comes out Quarterly, Mostly”) newsletter. It’s been so long since I’ve published one, that this one is packed with math and information. If you haven’t signed up for it yet, you might like to head out to Mathmojo.com, where you can sign up for
it now.

After having spent some time trying to find the best way to deliver some MathMojo, I have arrived, so far, at podcasting. But not that old “audio-only” stuff.  I’ve made an “enhanced podcast” about the very basics of addition, which you can access here.

 What is an “enhanced podcast?” It’s one with visuals, like a PowerPoint presentation. Not every browser can see it, though, although most can. You may need a fast connection to hear and view it - at least a bit faster than dial-up, although it will work with dial-up if you have a lot of patience. You don’t need iTunes or an iPod to listen to or watch it, although if you want to subscribe to it, iTunes is the way to go. iTunes is free, and if you don’t have it, you can find out all about it and get it at apple.com.

What is “subscribing” and why should you do it? When you go to the above site, to view the podcast, there will be a button on it, from which you can “subscribe.” That means that every time a new episode is published, it will automatically be sent to your computer the next time you open your iTunes program. That way, you will always be up-to-date with new podcasts from MathMojo, without having to do anything further. 

A word about the podcasts. They were made on a mac. I love my mac. I never was a geek, but this thing is user-friendly. It’s user-promiscuous! Using Garageband, iWeb and a dotMac account, it is pretty simple to do podcasts. I hope to get more heavily into this technology, because it is a great way to communicate with the world.

I’ll also be putting up some videos on this blog, and on the main Mathmojo.com site, and on YouTube in the near future, so stay tuned.   By the way, if you are at all interested in the kind of magic I do, you can check out a very old video I made (in about ‘91 or so, when I was living in Germany), below.