9/27/12 Readings

The text presented some better ways to introduce recognizing patters and sequences than ways I have seen in text. I like the idea of using objects that the kids can arrange rather than a table of values or pictures on a worksheet. I was also excited to see it because it has a large connection to the material I am currently teaching. Getting students to shift from very computational/memorized fact mathematics to algebra, where students compute to solve a problem is tough. I think it’s analogous to the transition when kids go from learning to read to reading to learn.

I used to work at Ypsilanti High School in Michigan, where they actually had Algebra Project and YPP afterschool. YPP was sort of co-funded through a grant that I was working under providing free afterschool tutoring. I never sat in on Algebra Project classes, but I did participate in a few of the YPP meetings, which I thought were great. The students mostly played math games with college kids, and then learning the games and played them with younger students at local schools. Anyway, I really agree with Moses that students need to be proficient in math science and technology in order to function as a productive member of society. Successive generations will have to be able to do jobs that machines cannot do. I tell them that I don’t care if they can solve 8x + 10 = -2, a machine can do that, that if they don’t want to be replaced by a machine than they really need to learn how to take messy problems (ie contextual problems) and make sense of them. Most of the time I feel like many of my students don’t really get the connection, or don’t feel like making the effort. It is tempting for me to frame these things as a civil rights issue, but I have not yet because I am cautious about how they will respond, or I am scared that they won’t care.

I read both the calculator article and the technology article about using the equations applet. I thought the equations balance was a clever way to teach the concept of equations and examine the relationships of the values. The writer was correct that we have to emphasize the math, not the technology. I use graphing calculators every day in the classroom, and when I show a new concept we usually go over how to do it by hand first, and then I show them how to do it in the calculator. Using the calculator also allows us to do more complicated problems or contextual problems that might be computationally overwhelming if we didn’t have the calculators. I really should get better about using more technology in the classroom also (besides my graphing calculators) but I occasionally get sucked into a textbook/EOC vortex that favors those kids of problems.