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News July 2010
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790 tasks placed in schools during June.
324,304 placed since the project began in July 1992.
We offer an email news service from each of the three key projects linked to this site. If you would like to receive updates from the Task Centre Project, Maths300 or Calculating Changes send an email to doug@blackdouglas.com.au:
- In the subject line write Subscribe Maths.
- In the body of message state which projects you want to subscribe to, or simply write Subscribe All.
- Add your name and preferred email address.
Please feel free to distribute this information.
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| In this month's News you will find:
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Browsing Hint: Use the View/Zoom options of your browser to 'move' the page closer or further away. Ctrl +, Ctrl - and Ctrl 0.
- A Child Shall Lead Them
The email says it all:
G'day Doug,
I was very impressed by the Eric the Sheep stuff added to the cameo from St. Edmund's. That diagram showing the red/black bar with Eric making his way to the front as the yellow square is terrific. My eyes immediately sprang to the slopes created by the yellow square and the edge of the red section showing the shorn sheep. That obviously provides a new way of finding the solution - looking at the intersection of those two slopes. A very geometric solution where the slopes depend on how many sheep Eric can jump at once and how many shearers are working at once, with the intersection obviously depending also on the size of the queue to start with. That adds another excellent layer to this problem. Wonderful stuff.
Many thanks to St Edmund's. Look forward to using Eric the Sheep again.
Cheers,
Damian Howison, MacKillop College, Swan Hill
And if you really want to find out what Damian is so excited about take the link below to the cameo for Eric The Sheep and explore its St. Edmund's contribution.
- Refresh your Task Centre
Ina Koetsier our Distribution Manager runs an amazing service where she will refresh or replace all your tasks in a day. This is work that teachers shouldn't do because their time is better spent planning to use tasks rather than sorting, collecting and replacing bits. Besides, no one knows the bits of the 240 tasks better than Ina.
Maramba Primary is the most recent school to take advantage of this service and they now have 131 shiny, good as new, ready-to-learn-from tasks. The cost is only:
- $137.50 for the day plus parts
- travel and accommodation where appropriate
And that's the trouble.
The cost of getting Ina to you if your school is more than a couple of hundred kilometres from Melbourne is considerably more than Ina charges for her time. So...
- Consider giving Ina a call and arranging to pack your kit and send it to our office to be revived.
- You can ring Ina on 03 9726 8316 or email inak@blackdouglas.com.au to make arrangements.
- Ian Rowland, Red Cliffs College (near Mildura) did this earlier in the year and he writes:
I cannot express my thanks for your help to restore our Problem Solving Task Centre. We are progressing. Not sure why everyone does not have these resources.
High praise and well deserved.
- Site Development
During the past month the work of developing Mathematics Centre has continued. For instance, you might have noticed the little change in title at the head of this page to Mathematics Centre News and the new Navigation Band on all the main pages. These changes are to make your visits easier to navigate. Mathematics Centre is our world of alternatives to text-based learning and the Navigation Band allows you to go to any of the gateway links from the top of all main pages on the site.
Also Ian Lowe, Professional Officer, Mathematical Association of Victoria, tells us that from his experience many teachers just google Black Douglas to find our work. So, the main Black Douglas home page has been updated too and if you use that method you will only be one click away from Mathematics Centre and all it offers.
In addition, we have continued our background work on refreshing and restructuring all the subsequent pages. Quite a bit to do because there are some 500 pages involved. This month:
- Site Map has been upgrade to be a detailed Table of Contents for Mathematics Centre.
- Big Picture, the summary of our philosphy, background, services and resources, has been refreshed.
- Professional Development, especially the previous PD Partnerships link has been refreshed.
- Black Douglas Web Papers have been moved to Mathematics Centre and a new paper, my keynote address to the Secondary Convention in Western Australia, 2009, has been added. It is titled How Can Solving the World's Hardest Problem Inform Mathematics Teaching? and includes text, slides, photos and web video.
You can access all these through the Navigation Band above. In the next month we intend to do what several have requested and move all our Resources to the one place. Many people have told us they are stunned by just how much support there is in Mathematics Centre once they start looking. We hope these revisions will make the browsing experience more intuitive and satisfying.
- Tasks of the Month
Two new cameos this month.
- McMahon's Triangles 2 These 24 colourful pieces are made by using 4 colours, in all possible ways, to fill the spaces of an equilateral triangle that has been divided into three equal parts. The challenges involve making the equilateral triangles into hexagons with special restrictions. The logic and space challenges involved get harder and harder as the card is explored.
- How Many Squares? A square is a square regardless of its size and this task is based on counting all the squares of any size that are formed when unit squares are placed to form new squares. Heaps of number pattern work leading to some sophisticated algebra.
 
Click a photo to access its cameo, or access all current cameos through the Link List below.
- Did you miss June?
If so you missed information about:
- Additions to Task Cameos for Tasks 37, Fraction Magic Square, and 45, Eric The Sheep
- Revision of the Recording & Publishing section of the site
- Iceberg Information about two Tasks of the Month (Tasks 105, 211)
- ...and more...
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Did You Know?
- You can find tasks coded by Year Level and Curriculum Strand in the Task Centre Catalogue (PDF file).
- The Activities link of Calculating Changes offers Content Finder & Year Level Finder tools.
- Our Site Map acts as a Table of Contents to help you find what you need in Mathematics Centre.
- You can search for lessons by Year Level, Curriculum Strand, Lesson Features & Keyword at Maths300.
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Keep smiling,
Doug.
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