Global Math Week starts October 10 and ends October 17 (it is actually eight days long!) and it is the time to publicly celebrate our Global Community on social media.

The idea is that we’re asking teachers, math club leaders and math circle leaders to have a joyful math experience with students during that week – on the topic of Exploding Dots or one of our other topics – and share students’ thoughts and reactions on social media. Let’s encourage colleagues and friends across the world to do the same and start on the year-long math experiences of deep learning and deep joy we offer.

Be sure post math joy during Global Math Week for sure. (And all year long too!)

First: Be active on social media! Share your students thoughts and reactions with the world and compare them with the thoughts and reactions of other students across the globe. See that you are indeed part of a fabulous global community!

Second: If you are using Scolab’s Exploding Dots web app be sure to register your class so that your students can log KAPOWs! You’ll also see there the number of classes and individuals who have signed up to the app across the planet.(It’s well over 6 million and growing!)

Third: Be sure to sign up for our newsletter and be part of the community, and regularly check our EVENTS page.

Yes! And we can say that with confidence. During our inaugural Global Math Week in 2017 over 1.7 million students took part in the global event, and folk have been continuing to play with Exploding Dots and other activities ever since. We’ve grown to well beyond 6 million participants now.

So, don’t miss out! Plan to do something – big or little – with your fabulous students. Be sure to let us know you are part of the community.

This is a wonderful and amazing global phenomenon. Make sure you and your students count!

Go to Exploding Dots from our main page or from our COMMUNITY page.

We have full technology, low technology, and no technology options available for conducting all our experiences. Some teachers simply read our PDF lesson guides and then conduct the mathematics with no technology in the classroom. Some simply show our videos and then discuss the mathematics. (Actually … some educators project our videos on a whiteboard, pause on specific examples and have students complete the work on the board before seeing what James does on the video!) And, of course, Scolab’s web app provides a high-tech experience of Exploding Dots.

We are doing our best to translate our materials into multiple languages. We are a grassroots organization and rely on donations — be they donations of volunteered time, effort, or service, or donations of funding — to conduct all our services. But many of our lesson guides do appear in multiple languages and many of our videos have high-quality language subtitles.

If you would like to help with this translation work, please write to us: info@globalmathproject.org.

All the materials are and will forever be available for free. (But please do consider helping us out by making a donation! We do have operational costs and would also love to support efforts to translate our work into multiple languages.)

Yes! Please share comments, photos, and videos on social media. (But please do not post images of minors without written consent from parents and guardians.)

Have you ever seen an abacus? It’s just a set of rods with beads. On a basic abacus each rod has ten beads which you slide to the top. But the idea is that when you do slide all ten beads to the top, you push them back down again and slide just one bead up on the next rod over. People have been using abaci for millennia for counting and doing arithmetic.

But the amazing thing is, if you take this familiar idea and tweak it just a little, a whole new universe of amazing mathematics opens up to you. Instead of using beads and rods, draw dots and boxes. Instead of sliding beads, make them explode. Now you have… you got it… Exploding Dots!

Primary School: See the usual arithmetic algorithms as a beautiful story and see the role they play in advanced high-school mathematics.

High School: Start at the beginning to set the groundwork for high-school work, it takes about 40 minutes, and within another 10 minutes your students will be playing with polynomials like pros. Go a little further and have all the polynomial algebra from the high-school curriculum covered, and then start playing with infinite series too!

See the videos from Jill Diniz and Dr. Raj Shah on our COMMUNITY page to see what they have to say about all this.

See Dr. Raj Shah’s video on our PROGRAMS page.

Exploding Dots is the name of an astounding mathematical story that starts at the very beginning of mathematics – it assumes nothing – and swiftly takes you a wondrous journey through grade school arithmetic, high-school polynomials algebra, infinite sums, and advanced mathematics and unsolved research problems baffling mathematicians still to this day.

It starts with the mathematics you already know and transforms it in astounding new light. You and your students will immediately see the power YOU EACH have to play with and understand advanced mathematics with absolute ease.

The story of Exploding Dots is best for students aged around 8 or so, for high school students, for college students, and for all adults interested in exploring cool and exciting mathematics!

But youngsters too can start to learn about numbers, place value, and basic arithmetic too through Exploding Dots with properly guided play.

Not long! In 15 minutes you can have your first “wow” moment. In 30 minutes you can have a mind-blown moment. In a little bit more time you can have multiple mind-blown moments. And soon after that you can see a whole universe of mathematics to explore and play with before your very eyes.

After course, it is up to you how fast or slow you want to experience and play with this story. Do it all in one hit. (A complete, fast, action-packed version takes 75-90 minutes.) Or take it slowly, a lesson or two at a time, spread out over weeks. It’s your math to enjoy, so enjoy it and do it any way you and your students like best!

Yes! If you go to James’ personal site, gdaymath.com/courses, you will see new experiences being added to the EXPLODING DOTS course. Check out GRAPE CODES & NAPIER’S CHECKERBOARD and UNUSUAL MATHEMATICS FOR UNUSUAL NUMBERS, for instance.

Exploding Dots covers arithmetic and algebra of school mathematics – and more! – but is not tied to a particular curriculum. It is directly relevant to classroom work and remains universal.

Scolab, the makers of Exploding Dots, is invested in the respects of its users’ privacy and personal information. Currently, the only personal information collected is restricted to teachers. Students are invited to use the application anonymously which makes its adoption in the classroom very easy.

If you have more specific privacy concerns, we have published a GDRP compliant Privacy Policy:
https://www.scolab.com/en/exploding-dots-privacy-policy/