Presented by Jonathan Claydon and Michael Pershan

Shadow Con was a teacher-led mini conference hosted during the twilight hours of the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in Boston, MA. While the impact of many conference sessions ends when a participant leaves the room, Shadow Con aims for an enduring conference experience.

During this webinar, we will hear about the development, planning, and implementation of Shadow Con 2015. We will also hear from five of the Shadow Con presenters about their experience and look towards the future!

Sign Up Here.

The #mathphoto15 challenge is happening on Twitter this summer, hosted by an enthusiastic international cadre of #MTBoS members. The challenge runs June through most of August and is being broadcast in English, French and Spanish.

The premise is simple, the results are inspiring.  Photos that illustrate each week’s mathematical theme are posted to Twitter using the #mathphoto15 hashtag and can also be viewed in the associated Flickr photo stream.  We are heading into our third week of the challenge focusing on tessellations, wallpaper groups and frieze patterns (#tiles).  Our Week 4 challenge is the enigmatic prompt of “three,” suggested by the inimitable Christopher Danielson. We hope you (and your kids and/or your students) will ponder the weeks’ challenges throughout the summer, keep your cameras nearby, and add to our joyful and growing collection of inspiring mathematical images!

Why take photos of math ideas in the everyday world? Even if something seems “obvious” we can still deepen our understanding of a mathematical object or idea by comparing it against non-examples or almost-but-not-quite examples outside of more familiar mathematical contexts.

Consider our Week 1 theme of arrays. Is the image below, posted by @ms_hansel, an array? What properties are you focusing on when you give your answer?

Or how about this image from @julietaSpace? Is this an array?

Or what about this?

What are the essential properties needed to define an array? Can an array be circular? What is the difference between a rectangular and a circular array? Does the shape change the nature of the information we can find there?

In addition to viewing the photos we are also having interesting and useful conversations about the images. And, in a wonderful turn of events, moving examples (videos, gifs and other animations) are being added into them mix to help us further deepen our understanding and conceptualization of these foundational mathematical ideas.

We hope you will join in the fun and conversation this summer. The challenge has already been inspirational to many, and the Flickr photo stream has already been useful for educators who were still in school during the first half of June.  Check out the weekly challenges on the Summer Photo Challenge Website and then start playing! We can’t wait to see what you find!

Written By Malke Rosenfeld (@mathinyourfeet)

Sahar Khatri (@KhatriMath) adds some other tips on how to participate:

• Identify the week’s theme and tag by checking out this page. The challenge is currently running it’s third week with #tessellations. Here is a quick cheat sheet for the entire summer.
• Take a picture and share it on twitter using #mathphoto15

Many schools across the country are on their summer breaks, but I have a few more weeks left with my students so this is also a great engaging opportunity to get my students involved. Since the challenge continues through August, I am excited to see how many of my students continue during the summer. Don’t forget to share this with that friend…you know the one who always takes pictures of everything. Challenge them to find curves, lines, tessellations, symmetry, and so on.

Common Core Math has been a source of debate for educators, politicians and parents for several years now.  The newly elected superintendent has weighed in on what he has deemed “funny math methods”.  Disregarding the implementation of continuous quality professional development, Superintendent Woods has opted to encourage teachers to abandon the language of the standards for methods proven to not work for all students.

In his most recent post, @gfletchy incorporated research from NCTM and Constance Kamii’s 1998 article The Harmful Effects Of Algorithms In Grades 1-4 to support the effectiveness of the encouraging student created strategies.  He makes very sensible comments about teachers being professionals who shouldn’t have to depend on a textbook in order to teach their subject matter.  He also tackled Superintendent Woods’ correlation between homework and the standards.

Not to be outdone, @mikewiernicki further discusses the pros and cons of algorithms in his most recent post.  Coupled with examples, Wiernicki provides the clear negative effectives solely introducing the standard algorithm without having conceptual understanding.

Often, teachers are expected to implement initiatives without proper or effective professional development.  When this happens, scratching the right work for a lack of planning has the potential of being more detrimental than following through with the initial plan.  The voices of knowledgeable educators actually doing the right work are necessary for the betterment of ALL students.

Written by: Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

(Source: June 2015, NY State Regents Exam in Algebra I)

Written By David Wees (@davidwees)