It’s begun! The Global Math Department meets every Tuesday at 9pm ET. Modeled on the Global Physics Department, we are a passionate group of math teachers who engage in weekly professional development that’s live, online, and FREE.

Who Should Join

Right now, our primary membership includes math teachers for students aged 12 to 18. What I might call junior high and high school. I’d like to see college professors and elementary teachers find a home with us, too.

How it Works

Global Math Department is a community-driven effort. We are the presenters, the attendees, and the decision-makers. Here’s some advice on how to join in the fun:

  • Join the community because you’ll get invitations as we create new meeting topics and we can track the number of members.
  • Attend the meetings you want and skip the ones you don’t want. You can expect the main presentation to last about 45 minutes.
  • Visit the meeting archive to listen to a session you missed. (I was shy for the first meeting and didn’t record Interactive Notebooks. Starting with August 14, we will record and archive ’em.)
  • Stick around after the meeting to plan future topics and participate in open discussion time.
  • Follow the #globalmath hashtag on Twitter for updates and conversation.

What We Talk About

Topics are all over the place on purpose — we want to include as many teachers as possible under our umbrella. Sometimes they’re very practical (interactive notebooks and foldables, for example), sometimes very philosophical (standards-based grading in Algebra II), and sometimes they help us see other ways to get students doing math (solving problems the Exeter way).

The first few meetings will include one 45-minute presentation by a single presenter. In the future, I’d like to string together several 5-10 minute long “My Favorite” presentations.

No topic is too big or small for us!

Why We Do This

After all the excitement that was Twitter Math Camp, we wanted a way to continue sharing with each other. I like to think that the Global Math Department is the year-round version.

Expansion

Where do we go from here?*

Well, I think we should consider having open office hours so folks can pop in and out with live discussions. After a long Twitter exchange on Sunday, I have concluded that’s not a great place to hash out big ideas (anything requiring more than about 5 tweet-exchanges). A chat room would be a wonderful place to brainstorm or work through ideas.

All our administrators are pushing for it and we even acknowledge it’s really cool, so I’d like to see Global Math be a place to develop interdisciplinary studies/projects.

* Music break