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Re: Continuing Education for Math Teachers (gnu math)
Posted:
Sep 27, 2011 10:31 PM
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Salvation is upon us. Yet again.
Wayne
At 03:12 PM 9/27/2011, Scott Gray wrote:
> > Kirby Urner Posted: Sep 26, 2011 5:02 PM
> >
> > Jerry Uhl was one such person, and my respect for
> > for him is boundless. But, did he change the nature
> > of the calculus curriculum in any large and important
> > way? I am guessing "no", for two reasons.
> >
> > First, had Uhl succeeded, I think we would have
> > ave heard a lot more about him and his program.
> > Second, there is the basic question of what is
> > s fundamentally wrong with the calculus curriculum.
> >
>I'd like to address this thought, since it hits home and misses many
>of the issues involved in trying to reform a dinosaur with the
>massive inertia that Mathematics Education has.
>
>As far as I know, The Calculus&Mathematica project is the lone
>remaining project from the NSF Calculus reform movement in the late
>80s and early 90s. It is still being taught at the university of
>Illinois both on campus and off through Netmath. It has been
>extremely successful there, and qualitative studies have shown solid
>results in the carry over skills that students carry over to their
>other studies such as engineering.
>
>The reason it hasn't spread to other institutions has nothing to do
>with it's effectiveness. It has to do with the difficulty and cost
>of adoption which thus far has been too much of a barrier for the
>system to go much beyond the walls of Algeld Hall at the University
>of Illinois.
>
>The system as it stands currently has many points of friction.
>First, in order to adopt this system, a professor or department has
>to get Mathematica in the hands of students and teachers, then they
>must put together a learning management system to handle handin and
>handback. But even beyond the support and cost upfront, now an
>instructor must manage 40 to 50 mathematica notebooks everytime a
>homework is due. All of this is simply too much to ask.
>
>My team and I are doing something about this. This January we are
>launching "Making Math" which takes the materials produced by Jerry
>Uhl and company and repackages them into a distributed online system
>that includes a high fidelity online version of mathematica, web
>based learning management tools, mathematica enabled forums, and
>gives instructors the ability to edit and add content.
>
>Now suddenly with the friction points gone and added features the
>materials that Jerry Uhl produced will be readily adoptable by
>anyone with a web browser.
>
>Keep an eye on this one!
>
>Scott
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