Point of Inflection

My life is changing in many major ways.  I just got engaged.  I just bought a house with my fiancé(e?).  I’m getting ready for the summer as a camp director, and preparing to start my own software company (seriously!).  Tomorrow I leave on a 7-day hiking trip in Missouri  with 8 students, and won’t be able to check on my house, my staff, or work on the science fiction class I’m teaching in 10 days, and I’m really not ready to go.

Despite the toll these changes are taking on my time, I’m happy to host the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival, edition #25.  More and more, the web is becoming a tool which people use to learn, teach, and learn by teaching (and teach by learning!).  Much of my own expertise as a teacher, as a programmer, and as a camp director has come from the internet, and my journey into the blogosphere this year has given me a chance to give back (and to grow from that process).  This blog carnival was one of the first hubs of interconnectivity I stumbled upon in my search for quality contributors to said blogosphere ¹.

I also want to take this opportunity to share all of the files I’ve generated this year.  I’m proud of them as a record of my progress, but you’ll be disappointed if you expect a continuous style or theme.  You’ll see my philosophy change from unit tests to SBG tests, you’ll notice when I got my CPM books, and when I ran out of steam for my notes templates and slide decks.  Please feel free to use, alter, and redistribute any of my work.  My ego says “and link back to me here” but I don’t think I actually even care about that.  I hope you can use them!  Sorry: they’re all in Office 2007 formats.

• Riley’s Algebra 2, 2009-2010
• Riley’s Calculus, 2009-2010

And now, with all of my sentimental blathering aside, the Carnival itself! The theme this month is sharing connections. I’ve arranged every blog submitted according to the number of subscribers that google reader tells me it has. Those without a lot of connections are listed first, so veteran bloggers can take a while to check them out and leave some comments. Those with many connections are listed later, so that newcomers to blogging can start with some popular blogs with already-active comment sections. If you’d like to submit your own article to next month’s carnival (hosted at math hombre), make sure you do so at blogcarnival.com before May 20!

• Jesse presents Making Homemade Musical Instruments – Measuring Frequencies of Sound posted at rockfreakinsolid.com.
• Whit Ford presents Problems fall into four categories posted at Learning and Teaching Math.
• Alen presents Free Math Worksheet Generator posted at Technology In Class.
• Kendra presents Pumpkin Patch: Fun Math Game posted at Pumpkin Patch.
• Denise presents The Cookie Factory Guide to Long Division posted at Let’s Play Math!.
• John Golden presents Coordinate Connect posted at Math Hombre.
• Ian Byrd presents 33 Places To Find Juicy Data posted at Byrdseed Gifted Lessons.
• Guillermo P. Bautista Jr. presents Tessellation: The Mathematics of Tiling « Mathematics and Multimedia posted at Mathematics and Multimedia.
• I, Riley Lark, present some details of programming with Geogebra right here on this very blog!
• Dan M presents three ring circus posted at mathrecreation.
• Sue VanHattum presents Murder Mystery: A Project for Logarithms posted at Math Mama Writes….
• Dan Greene presents Some fun(ish) worksheets posted at The Exponential Curve.
• Maria Miller presents Teaching long multiplication a.k.a multiplying in columns) posted at Homeschool Math Blog.
• Jason Dyer presents Comments on the Common Core mathematics 1st draft (6-8) posted at The Number Warrior.
• John Cook presents Estimating the chances of something that hasn’t happened yet — The Endeavour posted at The Endeavour.

Thanks for keeping this community strong by writing, reading, and commenting on all of the great math ed blogs out there.  It’s really something – and what a great way to set an example of life-long learning for our students!

Riley