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Re: Technology In Education
Posted:
Nov 30, 2007 9:00 PM
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Thank you, but I must not have been clear enough. I really do not
care about your "classroom procedures", that was never the nature of
my requests. My interest is content oriented, as with the California
Math Content Standards. If we understand the content, we can haggle
over procedures and pedagogy but "depth of understanding" for me is
meaningless in the absence of content. Is it clear what the content
is and is it being met? To this point, we still have not resolved
what you meant by "straight-edge and compass constructions" that you
have somehow replaced by means of Geometers Sketchpad to
save time. If you used to expect traditional constructions but did
not do (or expect students to do) their proofs, my question was and
is "Why bother?" Surely you can do better than "technology good /
traditional bad"; a concise summary of your posts to date. Once again:
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At 06:24 AM 11/28/2007, Strausz wrote:
> > You still haven't defended your assertion that you
> > "use it in place of straight-edge and compass constructions"
> > because "it gains me instructional time and more depth of
> > understanding." If you can defend it, please do.
>
>My defenses:
>1. My students do better on the common departmental exams now that I do this;
>2. I see it in class as we go over the material; and
>3. We are able to do more of the geometry content than we used to get to.
Good start, thanks; maybe were getting somewhere.
1. Please give us some items from the common departmental exams that
involve straightedge and compass constructions and proofs
thereof. If you have another interpretation for "depth of
understanding" than the proofs of these, please explain using
concrete examples.
2. More specificity, please. Specific straightedge and compass
constructions and the proofs thereof. If you mean something other
than this, please explain using concrete examples.
3. For me, for the state of California, and for geometry lovers
everywhere from the ancient Greeks forward, the most important
content of geometry, in regard to straightedge and compass
construction, is the proofs thereof. Is this what you mean? If not,
what do you mean? As I explained, "construction" means something
very special in this context such that, without it, protractors,
rulers, French curves, CAD/CAM software etc., are important tools for
the non-formal idea of construction. If the latter what you mean by
"straight edge and compass construction", why do you use the traditional name?
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At 05:26 PM 11/28/2007, Richard Strausz wrote:
>Wayne, I started to make some notes to answer a few of your
>questions, and then I realized that you gave the best answer of all
>when you addressed my question about your practices (see below. I
>have your level of confidence in my own to be honest- and I have the
>support of colleagues who respect my work, too. So there you go!!
>
>Richard
>
> >Wayne, how do you assess the validity of YOUR classroom practices?
>
>Truth be told, I don't try. I wouldn't be doing what I do if I
>didn't have confidence in what I do and, thank goodness, peer
>evaluation over the decades has supported this confidence. The most
>important practice, of course, is to know, to communicate, and to
>assess the content that the catalog prescribes and my department expects.
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