Its
for math & technology
CLIME Session in Orlando: Summary (coming soon) |
Minutes of CLIME Meeting/session,
April 14, 2000 & summary of Questionaires
The meeting was a regular session during the annual NCTM conference in Chicago. The official title of session was: A View through a New Mathematics & Technology Portal. It was brought to you by the Council for Technology in Mathematics Education (CLIME) and the Math Forum. The session leaders were Gene Klotz and Ihor Charischak. [Participants] Agenda of meeting: (http://mathforum.com/clime/clime_session2.html) Details: After a slight delay in getting the Internet up and running, Ihor got the meeting started by introducing Gene Klotz (Senior Advisor @ the Math Forum) who made the opening remarks and commented on the purpose of this session. His first task was to distribute a questionnaire which he asked the attendees to fill out. He then talked about the recent acquisition (http://mathforum.com/announce/) of the Math Forum by WebCT, a group that develops software for creating on line courses. Gene is optimistic that this partnership will allow the Forum to continue with business as usual - except for the new advertisement banner, but there are no current plans for charging the public for the Forum services. He also hopes that with the help of the results of the questionnaire and the Math Forum's collaboration with CLIME, the Math Forum will organize and develop a technology/math portal that will be of use to math educators. The purpose of this session is to exchange ideas about some of the details. Ihor (who is heading up this endeavor) then talked about some of the areas that this new portal will focus on. The first one is the Teaching with Technology (TWT) project which Gene initiated while he was the chair of NCTM's Electronic Resources Committee and encouraged ERC to take on. This would be a discussion forum where educators could share and discuss effective ways of using technology in the classroom. Since there was not a strong interest on the part of ERC to support this project, Ihor (as a member of ERC) and speaking for CLIME saw this as a nice project for CLIME to do. As an attempt to develop a prototype of what TWT might look like, Ihor collaborated with Suzanne Alejandre, a middle school teacher in California and an author of many web based activities (http://mathforum.com/alejandre/), on an activity called "Traffic Jam" (http://mathforum.com/clime/page1.html) Suzanne and Ihor discussed the lesson, the classroom environment, and their collaboration. One conclusion was that the software used in the activity (a Java applet) helped significantly in aiding the students to solve the puzzle. Gene noted that Ihor forgot to mention that a web-based discussion area had been created and was in need of some moderators that would oversee and encourage its use. This discussion area would be a place where teachers could make comments about the "lesson of the month" (Traffic Jam being the first example) and offer their own ideas for lessons that they have done that would shared in this forum. The CLIME steering committee could be responsible for "quality control". Also hopefully they will be able to share lessons that they have found effective as well. Next we moved on to discussing some of software that is currently in use in classrooms (1) Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) and (2) Spreadsheets & Microworlds (used on desk/laptop computers and handhelds.) Ed Dickey (http://www.ite.sc.edu/dickey.html) from the University of South Carolina started off by discussing CAS systems. He shared a personal anecdote. Back in 1988 he was the sole distributor of muMath which he picked up after Microsoft had dropped it as a product. Realizing that in order for teachers to use it the manual needed to be revised so he did that. One of the problems that continues to this day is that since CAS systems are used mostly by applied mathematicians and engineers there isn't a strong push by the vendors to package the software for educational purposes. In fact, TI is grappling with the development of future software products concerned about how much emphasize should be placed on educational applications of their product. Ed then shared some useful websites (www.ite.sc.edu/dickey/cas.htm) that included examples of CAS software (1) for doing mathematics
(2) for teaching mathematics
Hollylyne Drier (http://www4.ncsu.edu:8030/~hsdrier/) from the University of Virginia (and will be an assistant professor at North Carolina State in the fall) then shared a example of an Excel microworld (Decimal/fraction/ratio world) which is downloadable (along with other examples) from http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/teacherlink/math/interactiveexcel.html. Hollylynne plans to share how to use these and other microworlds effectively as a part of the revised math/tech website. Herb Green (http://forum.swarthmore.edu/~stevek/ ) who works in the Philadelphia, PA public schools spoke about Graphing calculator staff development in his district; getting the teachers to feel more comfortable in this their 5th year of an NSF funded USI grant intended to promote urban systemic reform. Every HS teacher gets TI-83 pluses, 2 full days of training and 9th & 10th grade students can take them home. Plans include sharing lessons and getting rich conversations going between teachers and students. What is exciting about this development is that these handheld computers are now beginning to make available the kinds of software environments that were once available only on memory-rich desk & laptop computers. Comments and Questions from the audience:
Gary Stager mentioned that there are sensors and software from (imagineworks?) for the Palm Pilot that allow you to do water quality testing. The probes actually cost more than the computer! Marty Campbell asked about what we mean by a hand-held. Responses varied. But to most it seems to mean what can be held in one hand. Herb mentioned that there was now a handheld device for $3.95 that runs Derive. Leslie Howe asked how submissions to this site will be dealt with. This will be an issue that the steering committee will need to look at carefully. Initially we will highlight some of the sites that have been recommended here. Bill Jackson commented that he would like to see more videos instead of & in addition to written lesson plans. Gene responded that this is now beginning to happen. The Forum is looking at doing clips rather than entire 45 minute lessons. A new videopaper created by the Bridging Research and Practice group (BRAP) (mathforum.com/brap) shows some excellent examples of such videos. It also includes textual captions for those computers that are audio challenged. The difficulty of getting permission from students in videos was raised. Gene said this was particulary diffcult these days. The problem really came to light when Electronic Format Group were working on including videos in the NCTM Illuminations site (illuminations.nctm.org). Taking shots from the back would be of help or carefully editing out any students where permission was not granted. But Gary's pointed that this could undermine the presentation because the student's enthusiasm is harder to capture from the back. Lois Edwards raised the concern about quality control. She said that the situation today with video lessons is a bit analogous to the software situation years ago. People wanted more software so we got bombarded with mediocre software. Now with the web its even easier to get really bad stuff out there. We should put put out a few good, pedagogically sound examples rather than a lot of junk that could do more harm than good. Gene reacted by saying that he has heeded Lois' comments before and will do so again. Gene goes on further and talks about a funded projected (I think its funded) to collect applets for math and have them tested reviewed by mathematicians. This project is for the college level, but an equivalent one could be initiated for k-12 as well. Suzanne Alejandre commented on the Bridging Research and Practice (BRAP) project. Teachers of different levels got together and videotaped lessons; a kind of advanced version of what Ihor and Suzanne had tried. The site is open for public discussion. The coordinator of BRAP would love to hear from you. (Visit Mathforum.com /brap for details.) Ricky Carter suggested that some schapholding was needed for teachers of varied experience levels. Gene said that organizing by grade level would surely help with this; though there are plenty of novices at all levels. Charlotte Hartman brought up the need for video clips of not only classroom interaction but also of the need to develop animations that highlight mathematical ideas (animated gif files, applets, etc). There is a lot of this out there on the web but not organized. John Olive mentioned the project that his colleague Jim Wilson at the University of Georgia is working on called Intermath that includes a detailed mathematical encyclopedia/dictionary with animated GIF files. (http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/interMath/MainInterMath/MainInterMathPage/MainInterMath.html) John shared some examples later on. This ended the formal part of the session. What followed was a continuation of the informal discussion and acknowledgement of members who are contributing to the CLIME effort. First, a show and tell:
Post Meetings To Dos
Participants and Attendees:
ANALYISIS OF QUESTIONNAIRES
EMPLOYMENT RESPONSIBILITES THAT WERE IDENTIFIED 8 - math teachers
Grade Level focus
SUMMARY of RESPONSES to QUESTIONNAIRES What technologies are most important to you? ï Handhelds/Calculators (TI-83+, 73 mentioned)
ï Software
Titles included spreadsheets/graphs, Microworlds, Dynamic Geometry, Tesselmania ïInternet/Web
ï Video
ï Multimedia
ï Others
Major ways you use technlogy?
Describe why you use these technologies? * Teach math with computer more effectively
What do you do to seek out Information re new technologies? Search on the web
Which questions do you need answering? How to use/know about Stream video?
What sorts of information would you like to get from the web? lesson plans
What should the Math Technology Portal offer? Participants rated their
responses on a 0 (low) to 5 (high) basis. Below are the average scores
of all the entries:
Other:
How should the Portal be organized? by grade level* 3.81
*1-4/5-8/9-12
brought to you by the
|