Function Carnival is an interesting website that gives your students a unique set of challenges. I came across this site the other day and after messing around with it, I'm still not sure what, if any, the educational value of it is, besides a thinking challenge, but it might be something you would like to provide with your students if they are looking for a math/science challenge. With Function Carnival, you watch an animation, then try to graph that animation to make it look exactly like the original animation. There are three different challenges: a man getting shot out of a cannon with a parachute, a bumper cars and a ferris wheel. If nothing else, it is a fun challenge to check out. My personal favorite, of the three challenges, is trying to get the bumper car through the other cars without getting in an accident. It's a unique challenge because of all the other cars in your way. It would be a lot easier if those other cars were not there. Too bad the challenge isn't to drive the car through a huge car lot with all the cars mysteriously missing. Yeah, that would be much easier, but "easy" is not the style of Function Carnival.
We are all Math Teachers, right? Well, if that's true, we better have some tools to help us non-math teachers. Opus Math gives you a quick, easy way to generate Common Core State Standard math problems. Simply search the Opus data base by standard, topic, type of math, etc. and then choose from a long list of questions. Once you have selected a bunch of questions, you can then generate a print-out for the students. You can also generate an answer key so you don't have to actually do the math problems yourself. You can also generate a google doc, which makes sharing online easy. Opus makes it easy for everyone to help with Math and the Common Core. Simply sign up for a free account and start hammering those math problems!
Application for Education: For me, I am going to do two things with Opus: First, I am going to use it for my Homeroom once or twice a week. Second: I am going to print off a bunch of them and have them ready for my study hall kids who get done with their work. With my stack of Opus sheets ready to go, math practice is always available. I am also going to provide links on my website to common core math practice since you can build them in google docs as well.
