How to Build Your Math Blog’s Audience

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

New Year, New Blog!

The first way to make your math blog grow is to write posts. Here’s an #MTBoS blog challenge that seems doable: Only one post a week, so maybe even I can keep up.

With the start of a new year, there is no better time to start a new blog! For those of you who have blogs, it is also the perfect time to get inspired to write again! Please join us to participate in this years blogging initiative…

Click Here for Details

Join the Math Education Blog Carnival

Once you’ve got your post blogged, please share it with us!

The Math Teachers at Play (MTaP) blog carnival is a monthly collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preschool through pre-college mathematics. We welcome entries from parents, students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just plain folks…

Click Here to Learn More

CREDITS: Spiral fractal photo (above) by Kent Schimke via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).]/span>

New Internet Math Reference Pages

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

The Internet boasts a wide-ranging assortment of math websites, and for years I maintained (or mostly neglected) a huge page of reference links. This spring I’ve been working on the paperback edition of my book‌—‌with its appendix of favorite books and internet sites‌—‌and I decided to revise my blog links to match.

Blogging while we watch the tide come in. :)
Blogging while we watch the tide come in.

So this week, I’m in Jeju, South Korea, visiting my daughter who teaches English there. In between seeing touristy sites and gorging ourselves on amazingly delicious food, she took me to a beautiful coffee shop that overlooks the beach in Aewol.

Great place to work on my blog!

The long monster list morphed into eight topical pages. I hope you find something useful.

Playing tourist with two of my daughters at Halla Arboretum.
Playing tourist with two of my daughters at Halla Arboretum.

I will try to keep these pages up to date, but the Internet is volatile. If you find a broken link, you can search for the website by name or enter the defunct URL into the Internet Wayback Machine at Archive.org.

Changing of the guard at Old City Hall, Jeju-si.
Changing of the guard at Old City Hall, Jeju-si.

And if you know of a fantastic website I’ve missed, please send me an email (LetsPlayMath@gmail.com, or use the comment form on my “About” page). I appreciate your help.

Feature photo above by Fractal Ken via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). Korea photos ©2015 Denise Gaskins, all rights reserved. For more math resource suggestions, check out my Math with Living Books pages. They’re not finished yet, but I’ll be working on them next.

Book Updates

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

letsplaymathcover-mini

My ebook Let’s Play Math has a new cover. Do you like it?

After wrestling with the files for a couple of months, I finally figured out how to add the toc.ncx navigation (the ebook magic that lets you skip ahead to the next chapter). While I was messing around, I added a few more references, expanded a couple of sections, and fixed all the typos that we’ve found so far.

I sent Amazon an email asking them to give everyone who already bought a copy the option to get the latest version. Unfortunately that’s not automatic, but if the powers that be decide that these changes were “major,” you should get an email telling you how to update.

Continue reading Book Updates

Blog Parties for Teachers

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Blog carnivals can be a wonderful source of inspiration and information. The Blog Parties for Teachers widget in my sidebar offers an wide assortment of recent carnivals on math and homeschooling.

The widget disappeared over the summer, as some carnivals (like the Homeschooled Kids Blog Carnival) went on hiatus — and as I just got too busy to maintain the list by hand. But now, with the new school year, I’ve found several new carnivals to explore, so I’ll try my best to keep the list up-to-date.

Enjoy!

P.S.: If you host an blog carnival for teachers or homeschoolers, please email me a link.

Would Your Student Like to Start a Blog?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

“Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own.”

— William Zinsser
Writing to Learn

Since the last recession, our homeschool co-op has been too small to support a blogging class, and I have seriously neglected my Blogging 2 Learn blog. So last week, I decided to refresh everything by starting up a new Blogging 101 Series. If your student has been longing to start a blog, you may want to check it out.

“Let’s Play Math!” Blog on Facebook

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

I’m always a bit behind the times, and I don’t think I’ll ever get around to trying Twitter, but I have finally made a Facebook page. Not much there so far — a new video of one girl’s invented method for 2-digit multiplication, and a list of my games posts — but more will come over the next few weeks. Blog updates will post automatically (in theory), along with non-blog updates like that video. Above all, I’d love to answer questions from readers.

If you’re interested, please drop in for a visit.

Can You Find These AWOL Math Websites?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
by √oхέƒx™ via flickr

In the course of my bloggy spring cleaning, I’ve made some terrible discoveries. Some of my favorite resources have disappeared off the internet. Or perhaps they’ve moved, and I just haven’t found their new homes.

Do you know where these websites went?

A Very Short History of Mathematics

This irreverant romp through the history of mathematics by W. W. O. Schlesinger and A. R. Curtis was read to the Adams Society (St. John’s College Mathematical Society) at their 25th anniversary dinner, Michaelmas Term, 1948.

Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine found a copy, but I’d love to replace this link with the article’s new location:

[Warning: Do not attempt to read this article while drinking coffee or other spittable beverage!]

Update: James Clare found the article’s new home here. Thank you!

Continue reading Can You Find These AWOL Math Websites?

Bloggy Spring Cleaning Continues

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Still on course with my state-sponsored blog overhaul, and Google Reader insists on displaying every old post as new. What a nuisance! The email feed seems unaffected. (And not everyone is having the problem with Reader, either — see Comments below.)

Amazon won the reader poll (and it’s my favorite, too), so I’m converting all my old affiliate book links to just-plain Amazon links. At the same time, I’m checking for dead links and other dust bunnies among the old posts. I’ve worked my way up to June 2007 — four more years to go — and then I’ll start on my blogroll (a monster task!) and other pages.

Like normal housecleaning, it never ends …

Does Anyone Know Where the La Habra Math Timeline Went?

The worst news so far is that the La Habra Math History Timeline has disappeared. What a shame! Does anyone out there know where it might have gone? I would love to link to its new site.

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, here’s a glimpse at the old site. Math discoveries, publications, and other tidbits — from paleolithic number bones to the present:

I changed the links on my Math Resources page to the wayback pages, too. My apologies to those who got sent to a junk site by the old, defunct links.

Poll: Where Do You Buy Books?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Thanks to our insolvent state government, I need to go back and change all my book links. I never made much from the Amazon affiliate program, but it usually managed to cover Kitten’s school books. Oh, well, at least they haven’t closed the public libraries … yet …

Since I’m changing the old links anyway, I thought I’d give you all a chance to voice your opinions. Shall I continue to reference Amazon.com, or would you rather my book links took you to Barnes & Noble?

P.S.: For my rss subscribers, I apologize for the flood of old posts. Every time I make a change, it seems the feed releases the post anew. I’m afraid this will continue for a few weeks, since I’m using the affiliate mess as an excuse to do other long-neglected blog clean-up tasks as well. With 596 published posts, that will take awhile. I hate housecleaning!