Math

Writing about math is not easy. But that’s what I did as a freelance writer for Mometrix, the test prep company. I wrote math scripts that tried to make math accessible. I did this by breaking down math concepts to their bare essentials.

First I’d establish a common language by defining the necessary vocabulary. Then I’d solve problems and try to play my internal process in slow motion. What did I see and what knowledge did it trigger? This kind of metacognition is surprisingly difficult to do since it all happens so quickly inside the mind.

Next I’d look for “problem spots” where errors are most likely to occur. This is where all my time in the classroom paid off – most errors are due to misunderstanding one or two simple rules, like how negative number operations work.

Battle Times is a head-to-head multiplication contest that tested how fast your brain and fingers could work. Both players work to solve the same multiplication problem, but only one of you can grab the point for getting it right first. It was 60 seconds of multiplication melee!
Battle Times used a two players using the same screen paradigm. The iPad version used a portrait orientation of the screen, which the iPhone version turned this on its side to make it more manageable on the small screens of the day (3.5" diagonal).  Battle Times was my most downloaded free game, as it was very popular in China.

NumberDuel is a math game where the player simply touches the card with the greater value to gather points until they reach a score of 21. Easy, right? Well, it’s also a race against the clock. Oh, and if you get one wrong you lose 3 points! So be careful, but fast!

Still think it’s easy? Try it again but with negative numbers. Or sums. Or sums and differences. Or products. Or fractions. Or decimals. It’s all designed to make smoke come out of your ears, and improve your number sense.

Back in 2009, every potential math teacher was given a copy of the Rhode Island GSE math standards at some point. We all acted like it was a useful document and spent some time looking it over, knowing we might get asked about it during an interview. In fact, at my very first interview for a math position I was asked about the standards. I couldn't say what I thought was the truth, that the standards weren’t very helpful at all. Instead, I drew a blank and fumbled into my bag for the printed copy I carried with me. I then searched the document for something interesting to comment on, without much luck. Not my best interview moment.

After I finished my first year in the classroom I came up with an idea to make the standards useful to new teachers – combine them with sample problems from the released practice tests (NECAP) the state used to measure progress.