Numbers mount for first-grade math whizzes

http://durangoherald.com/article/20150530/NEWS01/150539967/Numbers-mount-for-first-grade-math-whizzes-
I hope these first graders make their goal of reaching 150,000 problems completed on IXL. It's good to have and reach goals. But then I hope they consider a different goal, something richer than the fill-in-the-blank e-worksheet that IXL tends to be.

Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
This essay by Isaac Asimov illustrates how rather than just being wrong, theories get better over time as our evidence and experiences lead us to improve upon existing ideas. Parts of this remind me of Andy diSessa's "Knowledge in Pieces" theory of learning and how when someone's construction of knowledge doesn't match your own, it's helpful to think about the experiences they have had to logically get to where they are.

Lorrie Shepard to retire as CU-Boulder School of Education dean

http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2015/06/04/lorrie-shepard-retire-cu-boulder-school-education-dean
This hasn't been a secret, but it was nice to see CU-Boulder announce Lorrie Shepard's upcoming retirement as dean of the School of Education. She's served CU for 41 years, first as a graduate student, then as a professor, and later as our dean. She'll continue in the School of Education as a Distinguished Professor, and I'm sure I'm not the only one grateful to know her energy and wisdom is staying in the building.

Augusta Schurrer (1925-2015)

http://wcfcourier.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/augusta-schurrer/article_bda442d7-018b-5676-b236-f3c9caca3d95.html
I came across this by chance, but my Calculus II professor, Augusta Schurrer, this past January 1 at the age of 89. I was her student in her 47th -- and last -- year at the University of Northern Iowa, where she joined the faculty in 1950. Some has been written about her life in a book called "Women Succeeding in the Sciences," which explains how she entered Hunter College in 1941 at the age of 15 and then went to Wisconsin-Madison for a PhD in 1945. During World War II college mathematics departments were more open to taking female students, and Schurrer figured that had she arrived in Madison a few years later she wouldn't have gotten the assistantships and financial support she received.

Math Wars North

http://musingmathematically.blogspot.ca/2015/06/math-wars-north.html
Nat Banting summarizes a recent flare-up in the math wars, which are going as strong in parts of Canada in recent years as anywhere in the United States. If there's one thing we've learned on Google+, one must be careful when framing this as mathematicians versus math teachers, because not all mathematicians think alike on this topic.