Tools for the Common Core Standards

One of the enhancements in the last release of Illustrative Mathematics was making the site crawlable by search engine bots. As a result, you can, for example, google “illustrations for A-SSE” and get direct links to the tasks that illustrate Seeing Structure in Expressions in the Algebra category. Googling “illustrations for 2.MD” takes you to the page in the illustration index which includes all the illustrations for 2.MD. Bing doesn’t seem to be working as well at the moment, but there is a bing bot crawling the site at the moment, so it may get better.

Because of this morning’s spam comments on the forums, I have changed the rules so that you have to be a registered user of the site to post a topic or comment.

The most recent upgrade to Illustrative Mathematics brings a number of improvements, the most visible of which is a searchable index of the illustrations, which is visible to all users, registered or not. In addition, registered can now add tags to tasks (such as “MP3″ or “conceptual understanding”). These tags come from a predefined list at the moment; in the future we may allow users to create their own tags. And, the site now has a mock-up of what an illustration of a practice standard will look like, with a few sample materials such as videos, tasks, and slideshows. There are also lots of behind the scenes changes to make the site more useful for task reviewers and task editors.

Special offer for those who register for the Implementing the Common Core workshop before October 1st, you will receive your own copy of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics signed by lead author Bill McCallum! Register today on the IM&E website. Conference is October 12-14 in Berkeley CA.

Now that I’ve moved the blog to a private hosting company, you can register to become a subscriber to the blog using the links on the right. This offers a bit more than the email subscription that has been available for a while. Becoming a subscriber means you can create a profile with some information about yourself, which will be available to people who read your comments (if you are logged in). It also gives you some (not many) controls over forum notifications. I may add more features as I discover them.

I will keep the current email notification feature for those who prefer to keep using that.

If you have questions about the standards, please ask them in the forums (you can also always access this from the menu bar above). The old thread with questions is here, but it is no longer possible to add comments. Before posting a question, please use each of the search bars to the right to see if has already been answered.

I’m transferring this blog to another hosting service so that I can add some goodies (for example, I’d like to turn the general questions thread into a searchable forum); it might be down on Thursday, possibly for the whole day.