Should have stuck with talking about goalies!

I remember a Euclid Problem that was referred to as "that old chestnut - the goalie problem". This teacher should have stuck to talking about goalies...

We need more patient problem solvers

Dan Meyer says a mouth-full!



Need more? Spend time in his "What can you with this?" series.

It is not everyday that I re-post something I find at the Kitchen Table Math blog which they recommend!

A Mathematical Search Engine?

There has been a fair bit of buzz about Wolfram Alpha and even comparisons to Google, but I don't think I really started to get it until I saw Maria H. Andersen's Picasa Web Album via Teaching College Mathematics.

Now the wheels are turning. How is Math education going to change with tools like these available to students? CAS tells students answers, this tells students questions.

We are number 1 - oops, we are number 127!

According to a list of the top 200 jobs, Mathematicians have the best job. Teachers, unfortunately, hit the list at 127 - right between Vending Machine Repairer and Buyer.

See the related story, sent on to me by Dr. Doug Franks - maybe he was trying to cheer Dr. Dan Jarvis up on his birthday!

Absolutely Bone Chilling

I have been casually following the case of Julie Amero, a computer-illiterate supply teacher, who fell into the hands of the law after a disturbing run-in with pornographic pop-ups.

Now, from Ars Technica,

"It's over," said Julie Amero. "I feel wonderful."

This is not, to be sure, how most people would react upon being slapped with a $100 fine and having their professional credentials revoked. But after a four-year ordeal, during which the unassuming substitute teacher was decried as "disgusting" in the local press and convicted of felonies carrying a 40-year prison term, the plea agreement she reached with Connecticut prosecutors Friday must have come as a relief—even though a forensic report made public today shows she probably did nothing wrong.

The whole story is worth reading, even if it gives pause to anyone involved with using the internet with children in an ignorant and self-protective bureaucracy.

Allegories about Arid Mathematics Teaching

How is current mathematics teaching like teaching music without instruments or teaching art without using blank canvas? Find out by reading Paul Lockhart's Lament.

I found this on Vlorbik on Math Ed, where one of my posts was featured recently. You can also get a sense of how well it resonates with the Kitchen Table Math crowd. It also explains many of the challenges, including teacher content knowledge, that are being explored there.

What is number sense?

I have been participating in an interesting discussion about number sense, the nature of Mathematics, the role of rote learning as a result of a post at the Kitchen Table Math blog.

Perhaps you would like to add your two cents worth? There seems to me to be a remarkably large chasm created by the so-called 'Math wars'. I have been taking Will Richardson's advice and subscribing to some blogs that I don't necessarily agree with.

Teacher Effectiveness

The Kitchen Table Math Blog summarizes some fascinating data about the effect of a Grade One teacher on success in adulthood. A humbling, yet inspiring read.

Tribute to a Teacher

Dean Shareski's personal story about the impact of one teacher on his daughter and her poignant musical tribute embody so much about what is humanizing in the whole Web 2.0 world.

The XO Laptop - An Education Project

So far, I haven't spent much time with the XO applications that ship on the device. My children have been dabbling with TamTam and some of the others.

I have been fussing with getting Firefox, Flash, Skype and OpenOffice.org running. In the meantime, I have been learning a lot and experiencing a fair degree of frustration. This frustration is probably similar to the frustration/crankiness/feeling-dumbness that novice computer users experience at one of my workshops about Sketchpad or Fathom or some other application. When they are unfamiliar with the keyboard, don't understand the file system and can't find the sample files they are supposed to load and it feels like the experience is flashing by them, it is no wonder that they might think the whole thing is stoopid.

I think it is often useful to put ourselves back in that learning mode to regenerate empathy. It is like when Math teachers try to get a CAS to do what they are very comfortable doing on the blackboard. They have trouble and it should generate empathy for their students who will have trouble with whatever approach to algebra is employed since they are new to it.

OLPC has an insightful response to the rather lousy review that the Guardian gave to the device (it's for the kids - stupid!). The reviewer sounds like he was trying to do a lot of the same things as I am. We talk about paper-trained teachers. Well I am paper-trained and Windows-trained!

Like the Possum Lodgers, I can pray "I'm a man, but I can change. If I have to. I guess." But it is not so bad yet that I have to invoke their motto "Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati", "When all else fails, play dead".

It's the conversation, stupid

Sometimes I get so interested in the neat Web 2.0 tools that I forget what is important about teacher learning. That is why I found Tim Hawes' comment on Joan-Vinall-Cox's blog so germane.

In general, I'm less concerned about what medium teachers use than I am about that they may not have the conversation at all. Do we all as educators:

1. maintain an social active professional networking page;
2. Use 'live communication tools' like Twitter; participate in meaningful, timely professional development
3. have received or sent a text message; connect regularly with peers, parents, students
4. know what a wiki is; have a collaborative approach with our peers, and more importantly with our students
5. can tell you what RSS is all about... share our knowledge and best practices

Of course, those of us who have tapped into what the 'net can do to enhance all these actions hope that our peers will take advantage of them as well...

Thanks, Tim!