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Posts from the ‘number’ Category

Aug 30

Flickr – A Free Problem Pictures

At University I was introduced to a really interesting CD called Problem Pictures. It had some fascinating images that all had some mathematical significance. I printed out about fifty and they made the walls of my classroom bright and appealing. It also had questions related to each photo, but I found that I rarely used them, preferring to create my own questions and ideas.

Enter Flickr, a great online photo sharing tool. Though you will not get questions related to each photo, the database is huge. Typing into the Flickr search engine ‘geometry’ turns up 10,810 photos at the time of writing. Most of them are really relevant; some of them are utterly spectacular. Here is a random sample:

Top Hit in Flickr Geometry Search at time of post

 


I have found that putting an image full screen on an interactive whiteboard when students come into the room is a great way of capturing the students’ attention straight away.

Aug 29

Countdown

Countdown Flash Executable

There may be more clever Countdown applications out there, but I like mine with all its wobbly buttons. The anagrams and conundrums are included in the game because they are included on TV. In my opinion, a little bit of letter work is good logical reasoning and therefore constitues just as much a maths class warmup as the number problems. It also hooks non-mathematical students into the game, especially if you keep scores in some way!

I appreciate the concerns you may have in downloading and running an executable file (or if you don’t have those concerns, you should!) You download the file at your own risk of course, but it is simply a .swf file wrapped in a Flash Projector. I do it this way because some schools don’t have the latest Flash player installed on their systems. I am as certain as I can be that it is virus free.

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