Newsletters | Newsletter Archive BLOSSOMS What's New? October 2010
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October 2010

What's New?
A BLOSSOMS monthly newsletter

 
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The BLOSSOMS Teaching Duet—What Is It?
Each BLOSSOMS video lesson is designed for viewing in brief segments, allowing the in-class teacher between segments to engage the class in active, goal-oriented activities. Students watch a segment of a video, each about 3 or 4 minutes, and then the video teacher hands over the lesson to the in-class teacher, who guides students through an active learning activity building from the video segment. This “teaching duet” continues until the lesson is over.
New video

Watch the latest video
Guess the Last Ball: An Exercise in Mathematical Modeling” By Fakhar Lohdi, Professor, National University of Computer and Emerging Technologies (NUCES) Lahore, Pakistan

Check-out the BLOSSOMS simulations
simulationSeveral BLOSSOMS modules lend themselves to animated simulations. A simulation is a computer-based mathematical model of the process being studied. The three simulations we have so far depict spread of pandemic flu in "Flu Math Games," passengers arriving at curbside waiting for a bus in "Is Bigger Better? A Look at a Selection Bias that Is All Around Us," and breaking a yardstick to see if a triangle can be made with the three stick pieces in "The Broken Stick Experiment." Teacher or students in the class can use these simulations during the lesson, or they could be used later as a homework assignment or as part of a student project.
Please send us your comments. Do you want more animated simulations? Do you find them useful for teaching and learning? Thanks! We look forward to hearing from you. (BLOSSOMS animated simulations have been created by eLearning Arabia.)

Can you suggest a BLOSSOMS topic?
Is there a topic you cover in mathematics, science or engineering that you find difficult to teach to your students? Do you think creation of a BLOSSOMS video lesson around that topic would be valuable to you in your teaching? Tell us out about it at: blossoms@mit.edu.

Upcoming videos

boomerang"The Physics of Boomerangs"

"Elections, Math, and the Best and Worst Ways to Choose a Leader"

Educational Standards and BLOSSOMS
By early 2011, it will be easy for teachers to search the BLOSSOMS video repository for lessons that cover particular state and national educational standards for math, physics, biology, chemistry and engineering subjects.
Meet a BLOSSOMS
video teacher
RokopMegan Rokop is Director of the Educational Outreach Program at the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard, a biomedical research institute located on the MIT campus. Megan earned her Ph.D. in biology at MIT, and has taught biology both to high school students in the Boston area, and to undergraduate students at MIT. Read about the Broad Outreach Program here and watch her video lesson, "Classifying Animals by Appearance versus DNA Sequence."
 

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