Math @ Work

Math @ Work

Math @ Work is a multimedia program for 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade students that links mathematics with careers. It includes five video field trips and a teacher’s guide. The video field trips show students how designers, engineers, meteorologists, and newspaper editors and reporters use mathematics in their daily work and products they create. The teacher’s guide includes hands-on activities that engage students in the kind of problem solving and teamwork that is required in today’s business and industry.

Awards and Recognition
Math @ Work (formerly Ohio Math Works) has received the following:

2001 CEN Education Award in the K–12 Non-Traditional Multimedia for the entire project. This award honors outstanding achievement in K–12 Instructional projects.
2001 Web Bytes—April, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Bulletin.
2000 PBS Eddie Award—Best Web Original Classroom Resources. The Eddies honor exceptional K–12 online classroom content, as judged by an independent panel of teachers, educational researchers and professional association members.

Math @ Work Objectives
Math @ Work was designed with five objectives:

to improve mathematics literacy
to improve student attitudes toward mathematics
to increase awareness of careers that use mathematics
to integrate educational technologies into the classroom
to improve teacher attitudes toward technology

Web Activities
If you visit the Math @ Work Web site, you will find many activities that can be used to supplement each video tour.

Video Field Trips
Math @ Work includes five, 20-minute video field trips that explore the daily math challenges in the following industries: theme parks, snacks, fashion, weather, and newspapers.

€ Theme Parks: Coaster, Queues, and Carts—This video gives students an overview of how professionals design and build fun into a theme park and demonstrates the importance of estimation, measurement, area, ratio and proportion, and spatial visualization skills in theme park designs.

€ Snacks: Baking by the Numbers—This video gives students an overview of Keebler¹s snack manufacturing process and demonstrates how math affects nearly every aspect of snack-food production at the company.

€ Fashion: Fabrics and Formulas—This video gives students an overview of the New York fashion industry as seen through the eyes of fashion and textile designer Jhane Barnes, who routinely explores math concepts to get inspirations for new designs. The video demonstrates how math processes—such as measurements, proportions, fractal geometry, and decimal-to-binary conversions—are used throughout fashion and textile design and fabric weaving.

€ Weather: A Whirlwind of Numbers—This video gives students an overview of weather forecasting; demonstrates how math is used to describe the workings of the atmosphere; and identifies various tools, such as weather balloons and contour maps, used by meteorologists. Students also learn how mathematical calculations are used to make predictions as well as track and evaluate severe weather such as snowstorms and tornadoes.

€ Newspapers/Sports: Digital Deadlines—This video gives students an overview of how editors, reporters, copyeditors, and advertising managers use math during all aspects of newspaper production—from computations of batting averages to layouts of newspaper pages to calculations of advertising revenues.

Teacher’s Guide
The content of each video field trip should be reinforced by classroom discussion and activities. This teacher’s guide provides a lesson to accompany each video field trip. Each lesson consists of the following parts:

Purpose—A statement summarizing the purpose of the program.
Lesson Overview—A synopsis of what happens in the program and a list of mathematical concepts to be explored, materials needed, estimated time needed, and teacher tasks.
Questions—A list of questions focusing on the main elements of the program’s content, provided for teacher reference and convenience in generating class discussion.
Student Activity—Step-by-step instructions for conducting a hands-on activity that engages students in the kind of problem solving and teamwork required in today¹s business and industry.
Homework—A project that challenges students to use their mathematical skills to solve problems industry professionals may encounter.
Optional Activities—Other activities teachers can do to supplement the video field trip.
Resources—A list of books and Web sites that can be used to supplement the lesson.

For purchasing information, visit AIT’s Online Catalog.