Watch this video first, and listen to Part 1.

Ko's Journey has the amazing power to change a student's relationship to Math. Not many can claim that or deliver on that bold promise.

I could write for a long time about the importance of the work of Imagine Education but you're better off having your own sense of this powerful game. So, I invite you to watch this video.

After you've watched the video, listen to Part 1 of the podcast.

About Scott Laidlaw: Scott Laidlaw has a doctorate in education and brings a broad background in teaching, research, game design, and product development to his role CEO and Lead Game Designer for Imagine Education, and principal investigator for this project. An educator for 14 years at elementary, secondary and university levels, he has developed seven story-based, semester-long math games that were fully incorporated into school curriculum. He has done extensive research into human imagination and learning and as a graduate student, his meta-analysis examining the impact of study design in educational research won the Dean’s Citation for Outstanding Dissertations at the University of Northern Colorado.

About Jen Harris: Imagine Education co-founder Jennifer Harris brings 18 years of diversified management experience in finance and operations, including 12 years with Fortune 500 companies.  Ms. Harris, who is a CPA and CMA, specializes in high tech software development companies and start-ups, structuring accounting systems, process design, and supporting the scalability of growth. 

Ko's Journey was among the winners in the EdTech Digest 2012 awards program.

I produced this podcast because I was curious about intelligent web agents and noticed this new edition of Michael Schrenk's Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers.

Why read Webbots, Spiders and Screen Scrapers?

1. Gain a bottom-up understanding of what webbots are, how they're developed, and things to watch out for.
2. Understand the mind set difference between traditional web development and webbot development
3. Learn how to get ideas for great webbot projects
4. Discover how PHP/CURL facilitates advanced file downloads, cookie management and more.
5. Reenforce what you learn with projects and example scripts
6. Learn how to leverage WebbotsSpidersScreenScraper_Libraries, the common set of libraries that the book uses to make writing webbots easy.
7. Learn from the author's 11 year career of writing webbots and spiders.

About the author

Michael Schrenk has developed webbots for over 17 years, working just about everywhere from Silicon Valley to Moscow, for clients like the BBC, foreign governments, and many Fortune 500 companies. He's a frequent Defcon speaker and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I saw an SAT math problem at College Confidential which essentially says this:

"A triangle has two sides of length 6 and 7. Which of the following could the area of the triangle possibly be?"

And then it gives three choices and ask which of the choices the triangle's area can be.

What do you think? Do you find it helpful?

Hat tip to io9.com.

About "A Mathematician Comes of Age:"

A Mathematician Comes of Age discusses the maturation process for a mathematics student. It describes and analyzes how a student develops from a neophyte who can manipulate simple arithmetic problems to a sophisticated thinker who can understand abstract concepts, can think rigorously, and can analyze and manipulate proofs. Most importantly, mature mathematics students can create proofs and know when the proofs that they have created are correct.

Mathematics is distinct from other disciplines in the nature of its intellectual development. The book lays out these differences and discusses their significance.

About "Dr. Krantz:

"Steven G. Krantz is an American mathematician at Washington University in St. Louis. He has also taught at UCLA, Princeton, and Penn State. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society for the period (2010–2015). Krantz is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications and Managing Editor and founder of the Journal of Geometric Analysis. He also edits for The American Mathematical Monthly, Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations, and The Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.

Steven Krantz has published more than 170 scholarly articles and more than 65 books.

Numberphile provides viewers a new perspective when it comes to numbers. From Googols and Googolplexs to Root2, this channel offers anyone the “Perfect Number”. Currently, they have a video on the sounds of Pi, here is the link to check it out – http://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile/featured

Here's a nice Numberphile video, very appropriate for Pi Day: "Professor Ed Copeland on a strange occurrence of Pi involving bouncing balls."