“But how?” you ask. “It’s not March 3rd yet!”

It’s March 3rd somewhere in the world, though, and the competition exists across the world GMT, so students ages 5 through 18 can play each other until it is no longer March 3rd anywhere.

As of this blog post there are 41,580 participants online and over 128,948,000 correct answers! It looks like World Maths Day’s goal of breaking last year’s record of 452,681,681 correct answers is well under way.

So far Avalon Elementary’s 3rd grade class is leading the age 5-8 classroom category with 119,934 correct answers and Cypress Creek High School is rocking the age 14-18 classroom category. Even cooler, though, is the fact that students from all over the world are uniting in the name of math.

We can’t wait to see the final results of World Maths Day.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase – Martin Luther King, Jr.

African American Mathematicians

Elbert Frank Cox

Elbert Cox: First African American Ph.D. in Mathematics

Born in Evansville, Indiana, Elbert F. Cox demonstrated advanced ability in mathematics and physics at an early age. The close-knit Cox family fostered his interest in math – his father was a principal and from an early age, Cox was encouraged to develop his talents and get an education.

Elbert Cox earned his A.B. at Indiana University in 1917 and, after serving in France during World War 1, he returned to pursue a career as a high school math teacher. In 1921, he applied for admission to Cornell University, which at the time was one of only seven American Universities with a mathematics Ph.D program.

At Cornell, Cox’s thesis adviser, William Lloyd Garrison Williams, realized Cox could be recognized not only as the first black person in the United States  to receive a mathematics Ph.D — but the first in the world.  Williams persuaded Cox to send his thesis on to universities in other countries. Cox did. And after several universities in England and Germany turned him down, Japan’s Imperial University of San Dei accepted the dissertation, making him the first black person in the world to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1925.

Dudley Weldon Woodard

Dudley Woodward

Dudley Weldon Woodard was born on October 3, 1881 in Galveston, Texas. He was a curious young student and his family supported his thirst for knowledge. Woodard obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1903 from Wilberforce College in Ohio and then went on to get an M.S. degree in mathematics at the University of Chicago in 1907. In 1928, he received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania, making him the second African American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics.

Woodard was very well-liked among his colleagues and students and highly respected in the mathematical sciences community. Leo Zippin, a recognized expert in Woodard’s field, described him as “one of the noblest men I’ve ever known.”

Dr. Woodard lived his life they way he wanted to despite oppression – he ignored segregation signs, went into any men’s restroom of his choice, and moved into an all-white community.

William Waldron Shieffelin Claytor

William Claytor

Claytor was born on January 4 in Norfolk, Virginia. He earned his A.B. and M.A. from Howard University and earned a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania in 1933. From the beginning of his academic career, Claytor was a brilliant student – while at Penn, he earned a Harrison Scholarship in Mathematics in his second year and later received a Harrison Fellowship in Mathematics, the most prestigious award offered at Penn in the 1930’s.

He was the third African American to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics and, after publishing his dissertation, the predominately African American West Virginia State College was the only school that offered him a faculty position. He went on to make presentations at the meetings of the American Mathematical Society, but was never allowed to stay in the same hotel where the presentations took place.

Claytor continued to lead in his field of topology, the area of mathematics concerned with spatial properties, until he retired. Throughout his career, discrimination remained an obstacle.

Looking back reminds us how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. Let’s hear it for these mathematicians who pursued their passions despite segregation.  One last fact: the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics was Euphemia Lofton Haynes in 1943!

Some information from: http://www.aaregistry.com

Get our new kids activity calendar here.

This month, the theme is ‘I Heart Math’, so we provided a few tips to help your kids to love math.

Help your child learn to love math

• Make math fun and fascinating part of everyday life. With a little thought, you can find the math in everything from shopping and cooking, to setting the table, to sorting pairs of socks! Focus on fun math facts and trivia and teach them the stories behind notable mathematicians. This month, take your kids to a math and science museum in your area.
• Even if you struggled with math as a student, don’t let any negative feelings you might have influence your children. If you love math, or at least appreciate how important it is, be sure to communicate that, and your kids will too. Create a positive learning environment and help your child practice math on a regular basis.
• Understand what math concepts your child should be learning at every age. You can learn all about them in the DreamBox Math Growth Chart, which describes math skills that kids should have and includes tips for games and activities that will aid in their development.
• Use math manipulatives!  Manipulatives are designed so that a student can learn a mathematical concept by manipulating it. DreamBox offers virtual manipulatives for kindergartners, first graders and second graders that teachers, homeschoolers, and parents can use free in the classroom or at home.
• Read math storybooks to your child! Check out our picks of the best math storybooks for a few wonderful suggestions.

We hope you enjoy our free Math Activity Calendar. Have a fantastic February!

Recently, because we are always interested in parents’ opinions and experiences, we asked parents of DreamBox users how they feel about a number of issues related to their children’s education. We conducted a survey asking about learning activities at home, how math and literacy are taught in school, interactions with their kids’ teachers, and the role of technology in education. We thought you might be interested in what these engaged parents said!

528 parents participated, with children ranging from 4 – 8 years old (almost exactly split between boys and girls), and many parents took the time to add their comments and provide insight. Here are some highlights that we found interesting from the survey responses.

While math and literacy are equally important, they don’t get equal time
Parents are spending significantly more time with their children on literacy activities than on math, even though most parents believe literacy and math are equally important for their children’s futures.

72% of parents also report that literacy teaching is individualized to each student, while only 50% report that math teaching is individualized.

Many parents believe the “gender gap” in math education is disappearing
63% of the respondents believe there is no gender gap in math education. However, this question elicited a particularly high number of comments. Many believe the gap has existed but give their schools credit for addressing the gap. Some parents commented that there was less of a gender gap in early elementary grades, but that it may increase in higher grades.

Parents would appreciate getting more teacher communications
A majority of parents get teacher communications monthly or only with term report cards, but 56% would prefer more teacher communications. Only 1% would prefer to get fewer teacher communications. A majority would prefer to receive emails about their child’s specific progress, the curriculum, and class activities. And 46% would like to access this information through a website.

Parents try to communicate positive attitudes toward math

46% of parents feel (or felt as students) apprehensive about math. And a majority (65%) believe their own feelings influence their child. This was another hot-button question, getting a lot of comments from parents! Many stressed their efforts to turn around their own negative feelings and ensure they’re positively influencing their child.

Most parents believe technology improves education
A very strong majority, 94% of respondents, believe that computers and technology can enhance the subject matter being taught in school; while 66% believe that technology access will enhance their child’s ability to learn, and help him or her be successful.

We would like to thank all of the parents who participated in the DreamBox survey. If you’d like to download the full DreamBox parent survey summary, click here.

If you were unlucky enough to miss Mickelle Weary’s session at FETC, you missed  a lively discussion about the value of using manipulatives in the classroom.

Mickelle is one of DreamBox Learning’s nationally board certified teachers. She was invited to speak at FETC because, together with the other teachers at DreamBox, she’s been instrumental in developing the virtual manipulatives that are at the core of our lessons in DreamBox Learning K-2 Math.

Like a good teacher, Mickelle used the time while people were coming into the session to model the use of manipulatives for getting a class settled. She used a full range of the DreamBox virtual manipulatives (our “Teacher Tools”) to present problems, rewarding correct answers with treats. The audience participation was a great way to get started—her “class” was fully engaged before she even began her talk!

Then, using the DreamBox online manipulatives, Mickelle demonstrated their power as teaching aids—how they enable a richer and more concrete understanding of math concepts. They allow students to show their work; and research shows that they’re useful in supporting students with language or learning difficulties.

Mickelle emphasized the key criteria when evaluating virtual manipulatives for use in the classroom, suggesting teachers ask:

• Do they both teach and allow for practice?
• Do they provide scaffolding and hints?
• Do they give you control and flexibility in how they’re used
• Do they allow assessment of  student strategies?
• Do they give you the ability to report on their use?
• Are they fun and intuitive to use?

Mickelle’s really made it a lively discussion, with questions centered around using the manipulatives. One teacher had a great suggestion for improving our open number line manipulative—she thought we should add a field that would allow a teacher to enter the problem, so students could refer to it while the class worked through the solution. (We really welcome suggestions like this one for how we can make improvements!)

Any teacher can use the free Teacher Tools

After Mickelle’s presentation we had a steady stream of session attendees coming by our booth to sign up for the DreamBox Teacher Tools, which we offer any teacher to use free in their classroom. You can get them too, by clicking here!

Download Mickelle’s presentation as a PDF

If you’d like to download a PDF of Mickelle’s presentation, click here. You’ll find the key points of her talk here, as well as the list of resources she shared for more information on virtual manipulatives.

Math Activities to Kick Off the New Year

This year marks the debut of a brand new decade. Your kids counted down the hours and minutes until the clock struck midnight and 2010 officially started – even if they were probably long asleep when it happened. What year will the next decade start and how old will everyone in the family be? How many years will it be before midnight is not after bedtime?

January is Freezing Math Month

Just because we said “adios” to December doesn’t mean winter is over yet. Freezing temperatures, falling snow, and fantastic wintry math games are on their way! Measure the inches of new snow with your kids and calculate how fast it melts. Learn why frost forms on the windows in the winter and draw designs in it with your pinkie or a pencil eraser. January 13 is National Cocoa Day, so stay warm inside with steaming mugs of hot chocolate. See how many marshmallows fit without spilling.

Have a happy New Year with our free January calendar and keep cozy with a month bundled full of fun math activities.

At DreamBox we’re getting ready for FETC, one of the largest, most successful conferences in the United States devoted to educational technology. Four DreamBoxers are looking forward to handing out squishy brains, tattoos, and lots of candy to those that join us in our booth and play our Quick Image games. Only one of us is a trade show veteran, so this will be a fun, exciting learning experience for the rest of us.

Will you be there? If so, please stop by our booth — you’ll find us in booth 1305. Or better yet, come learn how best to get access to, and how to use, our free virtual manipulatives: the DreamBox Teacher Tools. I promise interactive games and candy there as well. And of course you’ll walk away smarter than when you arrived!

And, I’ll be presenting a session on “Using Virtual Manipulatives to Support the Development of Number Sense.” Please join me on  Thursday, Jan. 14 from 3:10-4:05 in room W304D, and I’ll have a special package of DreamBox goodies ready just for you. Please leave a comment and let me know if you’ll be able to come to the session!

Deck the walls or your refrigerator with our new kids’ activities calendar and fight those winter blahs with goofy holidays and math learning opportunities all month long.

Fun holiday math and resources

Track Santa’s big trip with Norad! Did you know that NORAD will let you track Santa Claus leaving the North Pole to deliver his presents to children around the world?

Teach your kids how to budget for holiday gifts using the money savvy pig.

Ornaments come in all shapes and sizes. Make your own decorations with your kids or check out these dazzling holiday ornaments. DreamBox Tip: Ornaments, especially handmade ones make wonderful gifts for teachers.

Ever wonder what causes those mini-lights to twinkle? Explain to your kids how holiday lights work as you decorate.

We’re excited to kick off this magical month with our new calendar. Come back for holiday math learning tips and jokes all season long!

Turkey jokes

Asked to write a composition entitled, “What I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving,” little Timothy wrote, “I am thankful that I’m not a turkey.”

Q: Why did the turkey cross the road?
A: It was the chicken’s day off.

Q: Why was the turkey sent to the Principal’s office?
A: He used fowl language!

Turkey math activities

There’s never a holiday from learning! If you’re a math teacher or parent, cook up some educational Thanksgiving activities and math games. Let your kids help you with recipes. Teach them how to measure and have them count out silverware for the guests. If they’re older, ask them to calculate how many pounds of turkey you will need for Thanksgiving dinner. Or have them list their favorite foods: turkey, pumpkin pie, stuffing, and come up with a budget for groceries. Then, give them pretend money and see if they could shop and stay within budget.

Download our free November calendar and fill the month with a cornucopia of cool kids activities.

The first step is to focus on parents’ attitudes toward math, because a parent who brings negativity to the subject will color a child’s perception. I know from first-hand experience what it’s like to leave school with the feeling that I wasn’t good at math. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that math could be interesting for its own sake, not to mention a useful tool in life!

So we encourage parents to ask themselves: What is my attitude toward mathematics? Do I find it interesting? Do I encourage early math learning in the same way that I support early reading? A parent would never say, “I’m not good at reading” because it sends such a negative message. Your feelings—positive or negative—can influence your child’s.

What can parents do to encourage a positive attitude towards math?
Parents can model how a learner behaves. A learner asks questions, is able to revise his thinking, and recognizes that some problems may have more than one answer and may be solved in more than one way.

You can also look for math opportunities in everyday family activities that can make math interesting and challenging for kids. For example, asking “How tall is that building?” presents an interesting problem because it is too tall to measure. But there are ways of reasoning about the height of the building that can be explored. In this situation, helping your child think about what she already knows and how she might use this, develops resourcefulness. Don’t hesitate to share your own ways of thinking about the problem: “You know, I’m six feet tall. How does that information help us think about the height of the building?” You may not get an answer immediately, but you’ve found a way to provoke reasoning!

You can turn this conversation into a game, combining recall of basic facts (What’s 2×6 feet?) with the reasoning ability (How tall is 1 story? And how many stories are there in the building?) to consider different ways to solve the problem. As your child explores problem solving with you, knowing that you’re listening to him, that his ideas are important, and that you’re willing to explore his ideas, you will help him gain confidence and learn to enjoy math.

Flag math and crafts:

Combine math with history by helping the children make a hand print version of the flag.

2001 flag from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School

Materials you’ll need:

1. One poster board per child
2. Red, white and blue tempera paint
3. Sponges or eager children’s hands

Start by painting a blue square at the upper-left corner of the poster board (the square is a little less than ¼ of the poster board, so you may have to do this yourself). Have the children make seven red rows with their hands (you can also make the red hand prints on a separate piece of paper and cut it into strips). Then paste fifty white stars (or dots) in the blue square.

Talk about the following topics:

1. Why there are 50 stars on the flag?
2. How many red and white stripes are there?
3. What does that number represent?

Enjoy these other helpful math activities at Forth of July Activities and USA Math Pages.

Fun math when watching fireworks:

I have always found that fireworks are an attention grabber with many children, and present a wonderful opportunity to explore the mathematics of measurement and timing, as well as touching on some chemistry.  As a great resource to answer your questions,  Nova has a wonderful outline on The Anatomy of a Firework. This is a brilliant way to show that fireworks are closely linked to science and math.

Since we all know that fireworks can be extremely dangerous, we should always leave fireworks to the professionals. Have a happy, safe and math-filled Fourth of July this year!

DreamBox Learning Presents 10 Celebrity Math and Science Geeks

1. Danica McKellar

(The Wonder Years)

Kevin Arnold was infatuated with Winnie the entire run of the hit show, The Wonder Years. If her character was anything like the actress, he should have wooed her with math wizardry. Danica McKellar is not only a former child star, she’s a New York Time best selling author and renowned math teacher. She wrote Math Doesn’t Suck and Kiss My Math, books that encourage middle-school girls to learn math. Winnie might have been whiny, but we love what Danica McKellar is doing for math.

2. Mayim Bialik

(Blossom)

Every young woman remembers the character Blossom’s iconic hat, best friend Six, and cool leather-jacket clad boyfriend. But few realize Mayim Bialik, the star of the 80’s sitcom would go on to get a Ph.D. in neuroscience at UCLA. Her dissertation was an investigation of Prader-Willi syndrome. Talk about an overachiever!

3. Lisa Kudrow

(Friends)

She played a spacey musician on the hit show “Friends”, but Lisa Kudrow is incredibly smart. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in biology. And she briefly dated Harvard graduate and fellow celebrity geek Conan O’Brien.

4. Huey Lewis

(Musician)

Before Huey Lewis was with “The News,” he got a perfect score of 800 on the math portion of the SAT and studied engineering at Cornell. However, he dropped out after his junior year to continue studying music.

5. Montel Williams

(Talk show host)

Don’t mess with Montel! The award-winning talk show host and former Marine studied Mandarin and graduated with a degree in general engineering with a minor in international security affairs. After graduation, he was selected as a special duty officer specializing in cryptology. Who knew?

6. Terrence Howard

(Hustle & Flow, Iron Man)

No one would suspect that beneath his tough exterior, Terrence Howard is a science geek. He has a chemical engineering degree from Pratt University and desires a doctorate in physics. When asked, Howard effortlessly explains wave-particle theory and the law of entanglement. Howard definitely doesn’t fit the pocket-protector-wearing math geek stereotype.

7. Dr. Dan Grimaldi

(The Sopranos)

He played mobster twins Philly and Patsy Parisi in “the Sopranos”, but his one true love is math. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, a master’s degree in operations research from New York University, and a Ph.D. in data processing. He teaches in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York. With his mobster mystique, we’re sure he has no problem getting students to turn in their homework.

8. Art Garfunkel

(Musician)

Can Garfunkel add anything else to his long list of interests? He’s a Grammy award winning musician, as well as a poet, and actor, but he’s also a math geek! He holds a master’s degree in mathematics from Columbia and his brother, Jerome Garfunkel was the former member of the America and International Committees that wrote the specification for the COBOL programming language.

9. Cindy Crawford

(Actress and supermodel)

The super model is also super smart! Cindy Crawford was her high school Valedictorian. She received a full-ride scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University. After one quarter, she dropped out to model full time, but she could have had a fabulous, albeit less glamorous, science career.

10. Tom Hanks

(Oscar award winning actor)

He’s an academy award winning actor, but all he really wanted to be was an astronaut. Hanks is on the Board of Governors of the National Space Society. He wanted to join the astronaut program but we’re pretty sure he was meant to be an actor. And hey, he got to play an astronaut in Apollo 13.

Now, whenever your kids complain about their math homework, tell them that even cool celebrities study math and science!

Lisa Kudrow image courtesy of thebuibrothers.com

I can remember making “trains” with upright dominoes as a child.  It took a long time to set them up just right, but then it was so much fun to watch them falling into each other so quickly! It was kind of like watching a tiny roller coaster in motion. Little did I know, though, that playing around like that was actually helping me to develop important spatial skills! It’s important to remember that children learn a lot through play, including how to be creative.

Children love “hands-on” learning, and manipulating objects like these dominoes is not only great for improving fine motor skills, but it can also make it easier for them to understand important math concepts.

Children between the ages of 4 and 6 are just beginning to understand addition. The dots on the dominoes make them the perfect tool for beginners. While 4 year olds will enjoy simply counting up the dots and matching up the ones with the same number of them, 5 year olds can begin to make simple equations with the dominoes.

For example, you can ask your child how many ways he can add to five. Let him have fun showing you which dominoes add up to 5.  If your child already understands what a “+” and “=” sign is, you can also ask her to write the equations that add up to 5:

4 + 1 = 5        2 + 3 = 5        5 + 0 = 5

Then, have your child turn them around to get:

1 + 4 = 5        3 + 2 = 5        0 + 5 = 5

A great book to go along with this activity is called Domino Addition, by Lynette Long, Ph.D. The same process can later be used to reinforce the operations of subtraction and multiplication as well.

People from around the world have been playing all kinds of games with dominoes for many centuries. If you’d like to learn how to play them, and learn a little bit about culture and geography along the way, a great picture book is called Dominoes Around the World, by Mary D. Lankford.

Children of all ages can learn important math and social skills through games played not only with dominoes, but with dice and cards as well. Board games and card games, such as Uno, make number recognition and other math concepts fun to learn, and children can also learn so much about the importance of cooperation and taking turns by playing math games regularly.

How has your child learned math through play?

The genesis of how DreamBox does assessment, and one of the reasons I am with the company, occurred over 30 years ago when one of my relatives was diagnosed with a learning disability.

This surprised us and shocked his teachers, who considered him to be in the upper middle to top third of the class for math. His test scores consistently supported this. In many areas he was significantly ahead of his peers. Yet a detailed examination with an expert showed that for him division just didn’t compute. Put another way, his brain simply wasn’t “wired for division”.

What does this mean? Well, you could ask him something like “If there are four children and each one has three oranges, how many oranges are there in total?” and you’d get the correct answer every time. If you instead asked “If I have twelve oranges and am going to give an equal number to each of four children, how many does each child get?” you might just as easily get an answer like “seven?” or “six” as “three”.

How had all the very good teachers at a very good school missed this through most of primary school? As it turns out, for a lot of years you can do pretty well at math tests if you get close to 100% of all the questions correct that don’t involve division. Or if the teacher only removes a few points for the “one little mistake” you made in the division part of a problem. Or if you have developed strategies to compensate that often approximate the correct answer, without understanding what you were doing.

The simple fact was that no-one over the years tracked the specific type of problems that caused difficulties for this student. And – this being a traditional “English” school – most teachers were more interested with how many answers were correct than how those answers were obtained.

DreamBox Learning Personalizes Online Math Education

So when we started working on what became DreamBox math I wanted to develop a system that would analyze each action the student took as they made it and respond accordingly, adapting automatically to provide the structured support each student needs as they need it. I also wanted a system that could provide specific feedback to parents and teachers identifying not only areas of strength but also weakness. It didn’t take long to realize that a system that adapts like this would work for all ages and skill levels.

DreamBox Learning K-2 Math is our first small step towards this goal and by all accounts is helping children across the spectrum learn math. Though specifically designed for home use, this version is already in use in over 800 schools and is proving particularly valuable for teachers of remedial math.

No child should struggle with math because a learning problem goes undiagnosed and unaddressed. However, recent studies (such as that by the Education Trust that detail how some teachers “are just one chapter ahead of their students”) show that in some communities this is unfortunately not only possible, but likely.

So I am personally looking forward to working on a more school-oriented version of DreamBox, and to the day when DreamBox math is a valuable tool in every teacher’s toolbox for ensuring each of their students is successful at math, no matter what difficulties they may face.

Oh, and how did things turn out for my relative? Things were tough for him for a while. Eventually he became a spreadsheet guru and has created inventory and financial management systems for corporations in the U.S. and overseas.

Turn down the heat and warm up for Math Awareness Month with a few thought-provoking activities your family can do together. Today’s topic: Reducing Carbon Dioxide.

Change a light. Replace one light bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb and you’ll save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide (Co2) per year. Math Practice: Count all the light bulbs in your home. Discuss how much energy you’ll save if you replaced each bulb with a compact fluorescent.

Recycle. If you recycle half your household waste, you can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. Math Practice: Separate all the aluminum cans, newspapers, and milk cartons in your home. Count how many items make up each pile and tally in a chart. Make pencil holders out of aluminum cans. Subtract the cans you’re reusing from the cans in the pile. Now how many cans will go into the recycle bin?

Every step you take. For every mile you travel by car, you let one pound of Co2 into the air. Math Practice: Take a family bike ride and count the blocks as you go along. How many blocks make up a mile in your town? Could you take more trips by bike or on foot? List the animals you see on your journey and collect fallen leaves.

Math Learning As A Way of Teaching Your Child About the Environment

It’s amazing how much a simple action, like changing a light bulb impacts our environment. While we talk with kids about climate change and conservation, math provides real values behind our decisions. When a child asks, “Mommy, why can’t we take the car?,” instead of using the old Mommy mantra “Because I said so,” say, “If we drive one mile, we’ll let one pound of carbon dioxide into the air. Let’s walk instead.”

Teach your kids about Math and the Climate with more fun Earth Day activities. Comment below and let us know if you’re participating in Math Awareness Month!