Week 6

So it's 3pm on Tuesday and I'm finally eating breakfast. I've been on campus for 4 hours. On the upside, the semester is flying by. I'm getting really excited for the NCTM Conference in MN. It's in November and I'm so ready to gather materials and ideas from the teachers at this conference! I've been investigating some really exciting math problems dealing with license plates.

Question: If a license plate has exactly 2 letters and 3 numbers and letters and digits can be repeated (ie XX222), how many combinations are possible?!

Stay tuned!

Observation

I'm running on just a few hours of sleep yet again. I was able to observe at Gwinn Middle School yesterday morning. It was so exciting to see how the teacher set up her classroom and ran the hour. She had a quiet reading area filled with Science books where a special needs child spent a majority of the hour. For another class, we all went outside to identify trees. The kids got to see science up close and personal. The teacher had so much extra knowledge that she was able to answer questions on the fly. The kids were engaged and I really think they learned something. Not being familiar with identity keys myself, I asked the kids to explain it to me and to help me identify the trees. What's a petiole? What's the difference between a complex leaf and a simple leaf? The students at Gwinn Middle School can tell you!

Mathematics

In searching for a meaningful problem to present to my Math Methods class this upcoming Monday, I became extremely frustrated. After an hour and a half on the Internet searching for things like "Math Brain Teasers", "Challenging Math Problems", "Math for High School Students", and the like, I found nothing I could use. I finally stumbled upon the concept of upright numbers. For example, 123 is an upright number because 1+2 = 3. The first two digits must equal the third. Through an hour or so of investigation all the positive 3-digit integers that are upright numbers, I was able to locate some patterns that I was unable to find posted on the Internet. I feel like I actually may have contributed something to mathematics today - what a feeling!

Dark Parking Lots

Oh the life of a college student...
I am sitting on NMU's campus in my car on a Saturday night for the sole purpose of Internet usage. How sad. So many of my classes have online requirements that I have to have an Internet connection to complete assignments. If only Internet access was included in tuition...