Squashing the Bugs in Education

vlorbik sent me to LeftoverPi where it is argued that the Number 1 bug in Education is that it is done by force.

What do you think the biggest bug in K-12 education is?

BTW, there are some interesting posts on LeftoverPi about topics that I have touched on, like the Math Wars and Lockhart's Lament. I love the description of the Number 1 bug in Ubuntu!


On his main page he asks:

If March 14th is Pi Day, what's the 15th?

A nice collection of Math videos on TeacherTube

My Google blogsearch for Sketchpad unearthed a nice collection of videos on TeacherTube:

Turning del.icio.us bookmarks into blog posts

Have you noticed that more and more bloggers are doing this?

I am not sure that I like it. If I wanted to subscribe to a blogger's bookmarks, I could add them to my network and subscribe to their feed as I do for dougpete, brightideasguru and beekeeper. Isn't it just enough to let your readers know you tag under a certain name somewhere?

BTW, I tag under the name rossisen.

Maybe, I am just feeling cranky because I have subscribed to more feeds than I seem to be able to handle (I saw the >1000 descriptor this week).

What do you think?

What are students like in a Web 2.0 world?

Doug Peterson introduced me to Michael Wesch's video about Web 2.0 at the RCAC Symposium last year where it was used to introduce Will Richardson. Incidentally, I have heard that Will will be a featured speaker at the Ontario Association for Mathematics Education Annual Conference next May.

Wesch's videos explore mediated culture, seeking to merge the ideas of Media Ecology and Cultural Anthropology. He is currently working on an ethnography of YouTube.

Today, I was the two millionth person to see this video about what post-secondary students are like:



Here is the original video that I mentioned. It is a fantastic introduction to what Web 2.0 is (much better that Wikipedia's technical talk about CSS and APIs).

Math Manipulatives

In April of 2005, a group of teachers from North East Ontario got together for a regional Leading Math Success working session and created introductory videos and powerpoints for six Math manipulatives. These were then used in local training events. When I let the participants know that they had been posted to a popular video sharing site, I got lots of replies and recollections about how worthwhile a professional development experience people thought it was - fodder for Judy's resume! The full collection of files has been posted for a while.

Algebra Tiles



Colour Tiles



Connecting Cubes



Fraction Circles

My contribution was a Geometer's Sketchpad sketch - a Fraction Circle tool and virtual manipulative.



Geoboards



Pattern Blocks