EDSS 530 Digital Reflection

#Edchat Experience

I have not had the opportunity to participate in a specific educational chat for the second time. I have observed and briefly participated in many and throughout the day on #edchat, but have not had the chance to fully engage in the conversation. So, as the semester comes to an end, I have decided to reflect upon my various experiences on the different educational chats.

Throughout my experiences, I would say the most beneficial aspect that I have noticed about the chat is the amount of resources that I am able to steal from other people. I really enjoy reading other's tweets and the resources that go along with it, and then if I believe it is a valuable resource I will bookmark it in Diigo. I am not sure I have the time to look at all of the resources I have come across but they are bookmarked in my Diigo for later when I have time.

I do also enjoy the atmosphere of #edchat. At first I was somewhat nervous about participating and putting myself out there, but after a while I began to feel more comfortable. I suppose I have realized that most of the people participating are in a similar situation as I am, and they simply want to collaborate and discuss educational topics just as I do. It also helps when you know nothing about anyone else, and you are just having a discussion educator to educator.

Overall, I am very excited and anxious to be able to participate in more #edchats, whether it be #edchat, #mathchat, #ntchat, and many others.

Teaching Kids Real Math with Computers

          From seeing other videos from Conrad Wolfram and on the TED (Conrad Wolfram: Teaching Kids Real Math with Computers) webpage, I was very interested in watching Wolfram’s video on Teaching Kids Real Math with Computers. In the video, Wolfram provides reasons for why math education should be using computers and technology throughout the curriculum. He begins by saying there are three reasons why math is important to teach: one, technical jobs; two, everyday living; three, logical mind training. He also answers the question:

           Wolfram points out that math education today is focused more than ever on the third point, computation. However, in today’s society there are computers to do this for us. He continues to argue that our focus, as math educators, should be on the other three steps. We should be getting out students to understand how to ask the right questions and formulate math problems and then interpret the results, something a computer is not as useful for. 

           I completely agree with Wolfram in this video. It is an ongoing topic in today’s world of math education. The main reason computation has been greatly stressed in education is because there used to never be such a resource like computers to be able to do the computation for us. Within the last couple decades, we certainly have reached this “math liberation”, as Wolfram says. Where tedious calculations can be made with a computer rather than by hang.  We should be teaching our students how to use the computer to make computations, while also teaching them about the concepts of mathematics. 

           I’ve discussed this concept with many math educators, that have similar opinions about the direction math education should be going. I suppose my next question would be to all of you is if this is our new goal in math education then how do we, as teachers, begin to implement such a curriculum? There is much more to this particular video that Wolfram discusses and I suggest watching the entire video in the link above.

Math Methods Comes to an End

EDSS 543 A&B


Our last math methods course was last night and I did not think about it being the last class until we completed an activity at the very end of the class.

The activity we did, all 7 of us prestigious math teachers, was to write on the board everything we could remember about the entire year in the course. It was an enjoyable activity that brought about many memories, fun and not so fun. Around this blog are pictures of what we wrote.

Overall, it got met thinking about how great of a class this was. The teacher was great and very fun to learn from, Dr. Brian Lawler. I wish I could spend more time in discussion with him about teaching and mathematics. There is truly so much to learn from him. My colleagues in class were always enjoyable to be around and have conversations with about teaching mathematics. I feel I have learned so much from just taking this one class. 

Last night, I also presented an ignite speech to our class. Of course, if you know me and are a math nerd, you all know my presentation would be on Geometer's Sketchpad and it was. Some background it was a 5-minute timed presentation, each slide had to automatically progress to the next every 15 seconds. My presentation was a very good end to this entire year. It was so much fun! I sadly do not have the presentation readily available at this moment, but I will promise you that I will post it as soon as I can!