Author: David Wees (page 59 of 98)

(Image credit: miss_lolita)

I’ve worked on a few programming projects in the past few days, and as I’ve been doing it, I’ve realized that if someone gave me a test on JavaScript, or PHP, or creating Drupal modules, I’d likely not do very well. In fact, I might fail that test.

The problem is, when I program, I spend at least a quarter of my time looking up functions, finding solutions to problems I’m having, and just generally muddling about. My code virtually never works the first time I run through it, and I spend another half of my time trouble shooting and finding errors in my code, some of which are dead stupid. The final quarter of my time is spent on inspiration and actually writing down the code I’m producing, as well as checking that it works. Some of the projects I work on take hundreds of hours, many of which are spent when I should be sleeping. 

I’d fail that test because I don’t have enough of the programming knowledge in my head to be able to regurgitate it as needed. I might be able to rough out solutions to algorithmic problems, but I’d never produce a masterpiece as part of my exam, and I certainly would have to look up many functions and ideas to be able to finish any program.

As it happens, I do well enough on my programming to make money on the side. I actually have made many thousands of dollars over the past few years doing small programming jobs (although less recently). Why? I solve the problems people need fixing. I’m tenacious. I don’t stop when my code doesn’t work, I forge on and find a solution. I know how to find the pieces of information I need to fit into the code puzzle I’m solving.

When I think about my success in programming, and how I couldn’t easily represent my knowledge in an exam, I wonder how useful exams (particularly timed closed book exams) are for finding out about what people know. How many of us have things we "know" but for which we often have to look up additional information? A chef has a recipe book, a mechanic has a car manual, and a chemist has a periodic table of the elements (as well as countless reference books). Everyone who works professionally has some resource they access to remind them of things they know, and to fill in the gaps in what they don’t know. 

Yes, there is specific information related to programming which I know without having to look it up, but if that was all that I knew, I wouldn’t be able to successfully create anything but the simplest of programs. I’d be completely unsuccessful as a programmer based on the sum of the knowledge currently locked in my head.

We must find ways to assess what students "know" how to do which represent the actual conditions of the life they will enter. While there are a small number of times in our lives where we will have to do something without access to information outside of our head, the vast majority of the time we will be able to fill in the gaps in our knowledge whenever we need.

Should we assess students on  what they can memorize? Or should we assess them on what information they can access?

Richard DeMerchant shared this study with me today. It is a review of studies done in mathematics education research, specifically 189 studies which used good research practices. Here are the key findings from this review.

"Programs designed to change daily teaching practices – particularly through the use of cooperative learning, classroom management, and motivations programs – have larger impacts on student achievement than programs that emphasize textbooks or technology alone.

The most successful math programs encourage student interaction."

So in other words, programs like what I recommend, and a constructivist approach to math education, are better than just changing how students access information. 

An interesting finding of the study was "there was very little evidence that it mattered which curriculum was used, as none of the curricula showed any strong evidence of effectiveness." In other words, a focus on changing curriculum isn’t going to have much of an impact on improving student understanding of mathematics.

This finding to me suggests that Bill Gates attempts to use the Khan Academy as a replacement for teachers are particularly misguided. At least Sal has come out and indicated that he doesn’t see himself as a replacement for a teacher.

In the 40 qualifying studies [of computer assisted learning programs] that looked at these various programs, there was little evidence of effectiveness. No program stood out as having large and replicated effects, and computer managed learning systems were particularly ineffective.

The implications for mathematics education, as the authors state, are as follows:

1. Teachers can significantly enhance mathematics learning by adopting cooperative learning.
2. Teachers can change their classroom management and motivation strategies to improve student outcomes.
3. Professional development works.
4. The evidence did not support the idea that different curricula give different outcomes in terms of mathematics achievement.
5. There is limited evidence in elementary schools – and even less evidence in middle and high schools – that CAI math programs are effective.

One of the things I love about this study is the list of programs found to be effective, along with contact information (or a link to a website) so that you can follow up and try out these programs. There is also a list of programs for which the research that exists does not meet the reviewer’s qualifications for inclusion, and a list of programs which the reviews found to the research suggests are ineffective.

What implications does this have for your math program?

First watch this video, right to the end.

I love the analogies Gordon uses to describe how we should reform elementary school mathematics. He also has an excellent argument against "real world" mathematics. What he prefers to use instead is "engaging" mathematics and I am happy to reform my own use of "real world" to "engaging" as it is a more inclusive term, and includes more mathematical ideas than the more simplistic real world focus. For more information on Gordon’s approach to mathematics, see http://www.mathpickle.com. 

How can we make mathematics at all levels more engaging? Gordon suggests games, problems which are open ended and apply to a wide variety of learners, and abolishing our need for students to be "fast calculators" when computers can do this so much better.

What would you suggest?

I’m currently reviewing our educational technology we’ve used for the year. Here are two of the items we have in our inventory, and I just thought I’d share my comparison of them.

We bought 5 Flip cameras this year for our small senior school of 120 students. Almost immediately, the Flip cameras became a very popular item with our teachers and students. They have ended up being used almost every single day, and are either signed out as an individual item, or to be used in a class group project. I’ve only spent a couple of hours total for training students and staff how to use the Flip cameras, and another 10 or 12 hours training students and staff how to edit their resulting videos. Just a couple of weeks ago we bought 5 more for our junior school, and have so far seen a similar trend occurring, increased usage over time. 

Total cost: about $1500
Training time: about 15 hours

We also have 10 Smartboards, purchased over the last 4 years. Only two of our Smartboards see any regular usage as a Smartboard, the vast majority are currently white surfaces on which teachers project. I’ve spend about 8 or 10 hours training teachers how to use the Smartboards, and this summer we have some interested staff attending a workshop on how to use the Smartboards more effectively through UBC. We’ve also purchased two class sets of Smart Response clickers, which have also only been used by a couple of teachers. For these, I’ve spent 4 or 5 hours trouble-shooting the devices, and another 4 or 5 hours training staff how to use them. We have a plan to improve the use of the Smartboards by moving to mounted projectors instead of our current portable multimedia carts, and we intend to invest more time training staff.

Total cost: about $50000
Training time: about 40 hours

I know this is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, but it seems pretty clear to me which of these two educational devices has had a greater impact on the education of our students, and for a much smaller cost. 

It’s really important to remember that almost everyone thinks that what they are doing is for the greater good and that very few people will actually think of themselves as evil. So many people work really hard, and some of those people work hard in ways which are counter-productive to forming a sustainable global community, they just don’t see it.

How can you even tell that what you are doing is against the greater good? What warning signs should you heed that tell you that you are doing an evil act? Is it entirely obvious? I’m not sure that it is.

I’m not saying that we should cut anyone any slack for doing evil things, I’m saying that we need to act as though they don’t know they are doing evil.

A long time friend of mine, whom I met when I worked in NYC many years ago, recently sent me, and all of her other teacher friends the following email.

Many of you know that I have been in the green card process now for about six years. It has been a long, expensive, and quite honestly, a grueling and anxiety filled six years during which I have not been able to see my family. Well, my lawyers now tell me that the INS is very close to my "priority number", which means that I would be receiving my green card in either June or July. I write "would be receiving", because I have to have a job to port the green card, and I do not at the moment. I was forced to leave my current teaching job in San Francisco and I am now unemployed. If I do not have a teaching job by the time the INS gets to my priority number I will have to leave the United States.

I have been applying for jobs full time, day and night, and I have been applying literally all over the world (in case I have to leave the U.S.), and I have not heard back from anywhere. I am beginning to panic and I do not know what to do.

I have even applied for tutoring jobs, because my job description must be at least 50% the same as the job that got me into the green card process, which was my teaching job in New York, teaching high school English Language Arts.

The reason I am writing you all is that I am running out of ideas, and welcome new and fresh ones. Any ideas on what I should do next?

Suggestions? She is willing to work anywhere in the US.

I have to admit, I’m a huge fan of Google’s education products. In particular, I use Google maps all the time. First, as a map to find my way around, but also as an interactive mapping tool with students. Here’s an example from our 8th grade social studies unit.

View A Region in Turmoil in a larger map

The purpose of this project was to take news stories about the protests happening in the Middle East, and map them to a location in the world, so that the students could tie media, news, and other information to actual locations. This map has now been viewed over 6000 times and was recently included in the NY Times Learning blog.

Tom Barrett, has also curated a presentation on Google Maps in the classroom, which is worth sharing here. 

Here, the tool is important, since you can do things with it that you really can’t do with a traditional paper map. When we examine educational technologies with our students, the best tools to use are the ones which give us pedagogical affordances we wouldn’t otherwise have, and which allow for our students to collaborate easily, and share their work authentically.

"The greatest thing, you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return." ~ eben ahbez

I want to challenge the notion that the best things we learn in schools are the academic and job preparation skills, but instead the "soft" skills, all of those skills we supposedly learned in kindergarten.

There are areas where our society is in turmoil because these lessons have not been learned by everyone. Love each other is a very important concept, and one where we, as a society, need a lot of work. From Tea Partiers who believe that we should not fund education for everyone, to Internet trolls who post cruel and disgusting things on a 13 year old’s work, we see a lot of evidence of a lack of love in the world. We see it in how we distribute our "wealth" amongst our citizens, and how we prioritize funding for different programs, both in the Western world, and for aid programs abroad. If we lived in a world where "love thy neighbour" was actually followed by everyone, would we even need aid programs for the "under-developed" world?

While I am grateful for all of the scientific knowledge that we have, it seems that our ability to solve scientific (requiring academic skills) is vastly superior to our ability to solve even the simplest of social problems. Perhaps it is time for our society to focus on solving the social problems for a while? Maybe one of the roles of school should be to develop "good" citizens?