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Math With Merriment and Meaning

"My dream was that children would be surfing and come across this mathematics site that they thought was really neat," recalled Cynthia Lanius. "I've tried to be true to that goal -- to present mathematics in a very engaging way, while also making sure the site is mathematically correct."

A former high school math teacher, Lanius is the executive director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University. She created her Mathematics Lessons Web site while preparing a workshop on fractals for K-12 math teachers.

"I was frustrated that the Web at that time contained either very high level mathematics about fractals or just pretty pictures that were identified as fractals," Lanius told Education World. "I knew that a lot of children could understand fractals if the concept was explained in the right language, so I decided to publish my one-hour workshop on the Web. I taught myself some HTML and, six years later, the Web site has grown to hundreds of pages."

To make the material as practical and valuable to teachers as possible, Lanius has closely tied her math lessons to important topics taught in the classroom as well as to national math standards.

"I knew I didn't want teachers to see this site as some kind of fluff mathematics," she explained. "Teachers are under time constraints. They have to cover certain topics. So the Web site had to address topics, like fractions, that were tough and that teachers had to cover."

Lanius's site doesn't simply offer lesson plans for teachers; it teaches the lessons to the students, combining reading and mathematics. Although the Fractals unit remains the most visited portion of this online resource, the site also offers lessons in graphing, algebra, cartography, calculus, and more.

"Since I am no longer in the classroom," said Lanius, "it is very rewarding for me to have this connection to teaching and to mathematics -- two things that I love."

Article by Cara Bafile
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