I was at a session at a small math conference last fall, and the presenter was going through their list of things students must do to learn mathematics. When the presenter said that students had to do things according to the instructor’s method (“They have to do it MY way!”), I am sure my jaw fell to the floor. In my experience you have to let students think and experiment in order for them to learn and understand mathematics. As…
After 22 years at my college I finally took a bank leave this semester. Although there has been a lot of relaxing and traveling, I used my time off to do some reading and thinking about how I wanted to improve my math and statistics classes. In particular I wanted to help my students grow, learn to think, and take away skills that they would find valuable outside of the classroom. One of my ex-students (who I respect a great…
Last month my wife and I visited the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. We saved their Pop Art collection for the end because it’s a light way to finish a day at the museum. We were admiring an Andy Warhol piece on Elvis when a guide walked up to us and asked us if we’d like to learn about a piece in the next room. We love to learn, so we took her up on the offer. It did not…
I learned a lot at the National Mathematics Summit that was help shortly before NADE2016 in Anaheim. There are so many models for acceleration – the emporium model, the co-requisite model, modularization, quantitative literacy, math literacy, algebra literacy, pathways, new life project, … What it forces us to think about is whether we are teaching the right material in the best possible way to all students. I have much to digest on these topics, and I will share my thoughts…
Looking forward to my session on the importance of student discovery in developmental math at ICTCM this weekend in Atlanta. I will be sharing innovative approaches for getting your students involved in the discovery of material. When students are engaged and thinking the chances for understanding and success dramatically increase. The session is on Saturday morning from 9-9:30. I will be walking through Interactive Statistics in the exhibitor’s room from 10-10:30 on Friday morning. This is the new product I…
I’m in the middle of a one-semester leave, and in addition to working my way through Euclid’s Elements I have really cranked up my reading in anticipation of my return in Fall. I am currently reading Jo Boaler’s Mathematical Mindsets. I was happy to see that she supports my beliefs that student learning increases when students participate in the discovery of concepts as well as when students reflect on their learning. These have been two areas of emphasis for me…
One thing I like to do in class is end with a short assignment to see how well students understand the material from that section. There are a couple of short quizzes that are available in the 4th edition of my combined elementary & intermediate algebra textbook. First, in the Video Notebook (located for students inside MyMathLab) each section of the notebook ends with a 5-question self-assessment quiz that works really well for this purpose. I selected 5 problems that…
I wanted to share one of my in-class strategies for using the videos in my 4th edition combined algebra text. For the latest edition I created over 3000 short videos – conceptual, technology (TI-84), study skills, … In this article I am focusing on the videos I made that correspond to the examples in the textbook as well as the two associated Quick Check exercises. (Each example in the textbook has two corresponding Quick Check exercises.) Round One – Example…
At the beginning of the new year I started a blog project called uCLID. Each weekday, and most weekends as well, I intend to work my way through one of the propositions is Euclid’s Elements. It’s been a lot of fun. You can keep up on my progress through the “Blog” tab on my website, or by going directly to this address: http://www.georgewoodbury.com/euclid/ I just posted Proposition 24 in Book 1 today, so that puts me halfway through Book 1….
You can always see which way the pendulum is swinging at AMATYC. Lots of sessions on tablet/smart phone apps, getting online students more engaged, and various pathways approaches. So different from my first AMATYC. I have seen, firsthand, how mobile technology can impact the classroom. A couple of weeks ago I was introducing my students to the graph of a parabola. I wanted to graph a parabola using Desmos, have my students observe the results, and tell me which points…