One of the hardest thing with using the iPad in the classroom is finding the time to go through all of the apps in the iTunes Store listed under the education banner. Here is a list some of the apps  under each of the Key Learning Areas.

In partnership with the nation’s leading educators, ACT’s research and development teams designed QualityCore® to raise the quality and intensity of high school core courses.

Instead of a specialized, limited curriculum, QualityCore offers five flexible components to improve and align your current high school curriculum and instructional materials.

Over 240 students came out for the 5th Concept Schools Math Olympics. It was a great success thanks to all the teachers and students who worked so hard. We felt very sorry for our Springfield Horizon, Toledo Downtown and Toledo High School Math Olympics students who could not participate this event since their charter bus broke down at the last minute before their departure.

We hope everyone enjoyed the campus venue, food, Game 24 and the competition. Great job to all! We also appreciate all the teachers who assisted with the event especially administering the test and coordinating the cafeteria.

We encourage all of you to send us your honest feedback-either by sending e mail or posting your comments under Forum section(under Community Tab) in Atlas – things you like, don’t like, wish you could change,etc., so we can improve the event and deliver the best experience you all deserve for next year.

http://conceptschools.rubiconatlas.org/Atlas/Communities/View/Forums

Thank you all the coaches, teachers, and parents, chaperons for being a part of this annual event and of course students for participatin  

Below is the distribution of awards for the 5th Concept Schools Math Olympics held last Saturday at Loyola University, Chicago.

The ACT is a testing organization that is best known for its widely-used college entrance assessment that bears the same name.

The ACT’s standards are clear and concise end-of-high-school standards. While there are occasional gaps in content, the standards include most of the essential math students must learn. Each item is straightforward, clear, and well written.

The high quality of the standards is partially explained by the way they were developed: Items were collected from many states’ standards and then presented to college mathematics professors to have them rate their importance.

The content breakdown of the test is pre-algebra (23 percent), elementary algebra (17 percent), intermediate algebra (15 percent), coordinate geometry (15 percent), plane geometry (23 percent), and trigonometry (7 percent).

The standards are organized into eight mathematical strands. Each strand is stratified by six levels of skills and knowledge. This turns out to be an excellent way to solve the difficult problem of setting priorities and helps present the 125 individual standards in an easy-to-comprehend format.

End-of-high-school standards should thoroughly cover the arithmetic of rational numbers, including decimals, and should also cover rates, ratios, proportions, and percentages, as well as problem solving that utilizes this content. The ACT standards cover these important topics well under the “basic operations and applications” strand, which includes the following:

Solve routine one-step arithmetic problems (using whole numbers, fractions, and decimals).

Solve routine two-step or three-step arithmetic problems involving concepts such as rate and proportion, tax added, percentage off, and computing with a given average.

Solve word problems containing several rates, proportions, or percentages.

The measurement strand covers the necessary content about lengths, perimeters, and areas.

The “properties of plane figures” strand addresses geometry, covering angles, parallel lines, and properties of triangles. Coordinates and the Pythagorean theorem are also included.

The standards contain absolute value, slope, solving linear equations, and the arithmetic of polynomials, including factoring. Logarithms, basic trigonometry, and quadratic equations are there, too, as are basic probability and statistics.

Missing from the standards, however, is any mention of the following: geometric constructions, definitions and proofs, reciprocals, any of the forms of linear and quadratic functions, equations, and rational expressions and exponential functions. Furthermore, a complete analysis of quadratic equations and functions (and their graphs) is not explicitly addressed. Combinations and permutations are absent unless they fall under “apply counting techniques.”

Yet although some content is missing, this lapse is mostly due to lack of detail, rather than lack of substance. For example, the standards do specify that students should master “counting techniques” and the most common “counting techniques” are combinations and permutations. Therefore, the standards certainly imply that students should learn this critical content. Similarly, most standards associated with linear and quadratic equations and functions are focused on solving equations, graphing functions, and working on problems that require them. They do not go into detail about the forms these equations can take and the necessity to be able to move between forms algebraically. The closest they come for quadratics, for example, is this direction:

Recognize special characteristics of parabolas and circles (e.g., the vertex of a parabola and the center of radius of a circle).

This is too non-specific to be of much help. In particular, it does not give the necessary guidance for finding the maximum or minimum of a quadratic function.

That said, while these missing details are important, they are not as important as the core content that is present—both explicitly and implicitly. It would be difficult to say that 20 percent of the mathematics was missing, and so the Content and Rigor score must earn a six out of seven.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivitySearch.aspx

A free resource from Wolfram Research built with Mathematica Technology.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/search.php?terms=math+videos&media=video

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