YOUCUBED

Youcubed is a new website that is designed to help students and teachers with math problems.
This site is made for students, educators and anyone else is the k-12 education system. It is a non-profit organization which offers free or very inexpensive resources to teachers and great help for students who are struggling in math. This is a link to the video that fully explains what Youcubed is http://vimeo.com/76722104.


This is just one of a few videos on this site that really helps students learn math, this particular video gives people examples of what a student thinks math is http://vimeo.com/76724911. In the video there is a student who says that math is not just numbers, sometimes it is letters, I think that is a great message especially after our discussion in class last week on what math is. this site i believe would definitely be a resource I would use in my classroom because it would give me some great ideas as to how to teach math, and also give me some answers that i can give to parents as to why I am teaching math this way. Another reason why I would use this as a math resource is because there is a section on the website which is full of math games which can be used as a tool for teaching the students about math, and also for them to have fun while learning about math.

I wish that there was a website like this one when I was in school because I have always struggled in math and I think that a site like this would have really helped me and my parents while they tried to help me with my math.

 I feel that students today have it a lot easier to learn math with the help of websites like Youcubed and I really hope that when this site is up and running in a few months that many teachers and students will take advantage of this amazing opportunity and use this resource in their classrooms, I know I will.
Also I do like the little lame pun in the websites name.

Here is a link to the website http://youcubed.org/

What is Math.

So when we were asked the question what is math?. I thought that it was an easy question with a simple answer which would be math is just a subject that dealt with numbers.

I was wrong. After asking some people, and doing a little research i have found that math is just not about dealing with numbers, it is dealing with a lot more then just numbers. Math is ongoing, it is problem solving, it is ancient, it is a science, it is not gender specific, it is multicultural. Today during our class discussion i learned that in some math there is no right or wrong answer.

After our class discussion on what is math?, i found this short YouTube clip that i think can apply to our question, here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rte4Lslg9BM

Also i found that the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathmatics, a very useful page, even though it is long this web page i think can give you a good feel for what math is.

So i guess after doing some research and discussing the topic of what math is?, i guess there is no definite answer to that question.

Math Biography

Mathematics in my k-6 school was not a very aesthetic one. in my school we had a very basic look at math, my teachers just read from their books and had us to problems in our books or on the board. we did not have any fun or fancy math tools such as some of the manipulative's they have in the classroom today.
My best memory I have in my mathematics from k-6 was that there was a girl in my class who was really great in math and would always brag about getting great marks on her math assignments and tests but this one time i actually did better then her, and i was so proud that i did well and could show her up. my worst memory about math from k-6 was that i went to a school where the teachers would pass everyone just so they wouldn't have to deal with the students next year, and i remember struggling in math in grade 6 and the teacher did not care at all, and passed me anyway even though i believe i did not deserve the marks i was getting.

I was "not good" at math for most of my academic career

Do Schools Kill Creativity

One of the things that stood out to me in this video was at the very beginning when the speaker said that everyone has an interest in education, to me this says that the whole world is interested in education no matter what or who they are.
 Another thing that stood out to me and i found very surprising and interesting was when he said that if you are not prepared to be wrong then you will never come up with anything original. I thing that is such a profound statement because it is true, if we were always right then there will be nothing new or discovered because if we are always right there has to be a right answer which means that someone has already came up with an answer for you. Whereas if you are wrong and do a little research then you could have come up with a brand new discovery.

I think that you showed us this video in class because  it shows us that education is just not about right or wrong but that education is creative, so we shouldn't be so obsessed with right or wrong answers, but to see how creative our future students can be.

Welcome Blog

Hey folks welcome to my first ever blog. These blogs will have to do with our education 3940 course dealing with math in the primary and elementary grades.
 
   The purpose of these blogs is to inform the readers of what we are doing in this course and to help us learn a little bit more on how math works in the primary and elementary grades.