We discuss making rich resources for the mathematics classroom as well as the state of mathematics education in the UK and the US.

He has presented and conducted professional development at across the United States and Canada.  His work has been published by Education Week (2012 | 2015) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA).  He has consulted for major publishers including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Pearson.  Robert is a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM), California Mathematics Council (CMC), Orange County Math Council (OCMC), and Greater Los Angeles Mathematics Council (GLAMC).  He also co-founded the Southern California Math Teacher Specialist Network, a group that includes over 170 math teacher specialists from more than 5 counties.

In 2011, Robert was awarded the Downey Unified School District (DUSD) Superintendent’s Vision Award in the area of Student Achievement and in 2007 he won Raytheon MathMovesU Math Hero Award. He is currently working as Teacher Specialist in Mathematics in DUSD.

‘At Desmos, we imagine a world of universal math literacy, where no student thinks that math is too hard or too dull to pursue. We believe the key is learning by doing. When learning becomes a journey of exploration and discovery, anyone can understand – and enjoy! – math.

To achieve this vision, we’ve started by building the next generation of the graphing calculator. Using our powerful and blazingly-fast math engine, the calculator can instantly plot any equation, from lines and parabolas up through derivatives and Fourier series. Data tables open up a world of curve-fitting and modeling. Sliders make it a breeze to demonstrate function transformations. As browser-based html5 technology, the graphing calculator works on any computer or tablet without requiring any downloads. It’s intuitive, beautiful math. And best of all: it’s completely free.

Desmos is used by students, teachers, researchers, and general math enthusiasts from every state, and 169 countries.’

Eli Luberoff began his programming life on his TI-83 graphing calculator in elementary school, culminating with a working version of Monopoly which was destroyed when he removed the backup battery by accident. He began working on the software that would become Desmos.com during a year-long hiatus from Yale University in 2007, returning to graduate summa cum laude with degrees in Math and Physics in 2009. Eli was also selected by Bloomberg Businessweek as one of the top 25 entrepreneurs under 25 in 2011.

We ask Steve his thoughts on the current state of education in the US, what we can do to get better and what we can learn from various systems across the globe.

Justin is also well known by the math ed. twittersphere and he is regularly to be found discussing how to get better at teaching math on social media. He also hosts a popular middle school math chat once a week and tweets with his math students.

We ask Justin about his experience in the blogger/twittersphere and if what he is doing is something we should replicate, or just how to make the most out of the online community.

After working in research in combinatorics and group theory, James joined the Millennium Mathematics Project from the University of Cambridge. On their behalf James ran The Enigma Project, with the aim to bring mathematics to life through the fascinating history and mathematics of codes and code breaking. Spys! Secrets! And secret messages!

We ask James about his love of all things mathematical and communicating this love to school students and the general public.

Here is a short interview with Dan Meyer following his opening session at the 2014 NCTM Regional Conference in Indianapolis

He has led design teams on a sequence of internationally funded research and development projects including work for UK examination boards and the US NSF-funded Balanced Assessment project and the Mathematics Assessment Resource Service (MARS). He has designed courses and resources for the professional development of teachers, evaluating their impact on student learning and on the beliefs and practices of experienced teachers. These materials have been sent by the UK Government and the Bowland Trust to all schools and other relevant educational institutions. In 2008 he was awarded the ISDDE Prize for educational design for The Language of Functions and Graphs.

We ask Prof. McCallum about his work with Illustrative Mathematics as well as his reaction to the national controversy surrounding the Common Core Standards. What was the original intention? How can math teachers make the most of the standards in the classroom?

Discussions on sessions attended included:

• Overall impressions of the conference
• The Middle School Games Session
• Developments with Desmos, with Eli Luberoff

Discussions on sessions attended included:

• Trends in the Math TwitterBloggerSphere
• Rewriting your curriculum to make the most of the Common Core Standards

Discussions on sessions attended included:

• Using games to aid learning
• Keynote: Steve Leinwand on the WHY, not the HOW
• Formative assessment strategies
• 180 Blogging
• Creating foldables

This episode we talk to Daniel about all of the above as well as the implementation of common core across the US.

NRICH is an organization dedicated to the use of rich mathematics in the classroom. In 15 years, they have built up a strong global following and now get over 500,000 hits on the website nrich.maths.org every month.

Lynne has been director at NRICH for the last 4 years and is president of the UK’s Mathematical Association. She talks to us about the best way to use NRICH activities in the classroom as well as recent developments in mathematics education.

To help us answer these questions we are joined by pioneering educator Dan Meyer who is known by many as a leader in progressive thinking in the world of Math Ed. Now in a doctoral fellowship at Stanford University, Dan is known for asking potent questions about what works and doesn’t work in the mathematics classroom. He creates engaging lesson resources that give students the why before the how.

Welcome to the launch episode of the MathEd Out Podcast, a show for those wanting to hear about the best ideas and resources in the world of Math Education.

This week we are joined by influential blogger Julie Reulbach from ispeakmath.org who will be sharing about why she started to blog and how much it has benefitted her in the classroom. We will also have tips for those who want to start their own.