Math Accent
Math games and anti-social behaviors
Dec 2nd
This blog post originally appeared on Technology Integration in Education, where I am a guest blogger. More interesting is Colleen King’s response – she’s the author of the widely stolen games.
I am absolutely thrilled when new math resources that include interactives appear online. Cataloging, annotating, tagging and making collections can add value to interactives. These jobs don’t necessarily have to be done by the same people who program math games or applets.
Right? Right?!
Here is an altogether positive example of a resource catalogue: MathForum’s Internet Math Library, the Software page. It provides tagged, searchable short reviews of sites with math interactives. One big minus of the library is that it does not deep-link individual games.
Deep-linking even many resources can be done appropriately. Take a look, for example, at MathsOnline blog. It links and categorizes several hundred math games created and hosted everywhere. Each game has a short (original?) review, a screenshot, tags, and the link to the site where it is hosted. Here is another example of such a site.
Some people object to deep-linking to their sites, especially if no content (no value) is added by the process. I confess it is annoying to find the same interactives, with the same descriptions, indexed by the same category and tag set, in gazillions of places. Instead of providing service to educators, this practice wastes time when people click link after link only to find the same content.
Then there is outright stripping of credentials. I don’t want to call this “theft” if it is done to something that is already freely available to anyone. It is not about property. It is, however, a deeply anti-social, anti-community behavior.
Consider an example that recently came up in a discussion of math games. “Percent shopping” is a game Colleen King created for her site Math Playground. It features a kid shopping at a store called “Troy’s Toys.”
There are automated content-aggregating sites, apparently dozens of them, that not only embed the game without any attribution to the author, but also offer its embed code to their visitors. Some examples:
http://www.wordfreegames.com/game/percent-shopping.html
http://www.home-games.org/game/116/Shopping-at-Troy_s-Toys.html
http://www.freekidsmathgames.org/game/18/Shopping-at-Troy_s-toys.html
The sites sell ads. Using other people’s content. Without adding value to the content. This is bad.
The problem is also self-propagating, because new aggregating ad-selling sites, which are built automatically, simply take content from old aggregating ad-selling sites. Also honest but newbie site builders may take content from these “free and nameless” collections without realizing anything is wrong.
A consolation: math is now so hot that thugs break laws for its sake.
One may be a strong proponent of the Pirate Party on the grounds of making content available to people in need. But this situation is different: the content is already available. The only other freedom some of these sites provide is making the content embeddable – but they strip the credentials in the process! Cory Doctorow recently wrote, in his Guardian column:
In my world, copyright’s purpose is to encourage the widest participation in culture that we can manage – that is, it should be a system that encourages the most diverse set of creators, creating the most diverse set of works, to reach the most diverse audiences as is practical.
Piracy, arguably, can encourage wider initial participation – but discourage large and expensive projects. In my mind, games that are already available for free, on a well-organized site without ads, don’t require any further liberation. Or do they?
Is easy embedding such a big deal? Here, I took a screenshot of Colleen’s game and linked it to her site. Is this significantly worse for promoting wide content creation than the ability to embed the game right here?
Colleen King’s response to the original post
It isn’t often that I’m mentioned in a blog post so I was very curious to read this. I wonder if people are aware of just how prevalent this problem is.I agree with your description of this practice as “deeply anti-social, anti-community behavior.” And I agree that it’s not about property. And while this isn’t theft in the traditional sense, since I am still in possession of the original games, I think the consequences of such actions are more destructive than people may realize.
I’m going to describe a fictional but more real world example that depicts what is taking place and the potential harm it may cause.
Imagine that a group of people decide to organize a community theater. The idea is to create original, short films and show them free of charge to people who enjoy such productions. The group writes stories, builds sets, licenses music, rehearses, records the action, edits the film, and finally presents its work to the community.
Everything is wonderful. The theater group is doing what it loves to do and the community is enjoying the films.
Eventually, the theater group must face the economics of providing a free service. There’s rent and utilities, licensing fees, and editing software to consider. And demand has become so great for these films that the theater group is working practically full time without any compensation.
The group considers its options. It could begin charging the public to view its films. The group argues that doing so would prevent some members of the community from seeing the films for financial reasons. That didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Then someone suggests asking local businesses to sponsor the community theater. The group would place ads from local businesses in its brochures and show ads to the audience before viewing films. This seems like a win-win situation. The community theater covers its expenses and can even pay its members a small salary. Local businesses are gaining new clients and customers. And the community is enjoying wonderful films free of charge.
Flash forward.
Mr. X has been watching the success of the theater group from afar. He thinks this is something he’d like to do. However, Mr.X doesn’t know how to make films and doesn’t wish to spend any time learning. Besides, he rationalizes, the theater group already created a good product. And Mr.X is really only interested in the profit potential of the community theater. Providing a service is just a secondary benefit.
Mr. X finds some low cost space for his theater, comes up with a catchy name, and makes the theater attractive and comfortable. He then pays a visit to the original community theater group. Mr.X finds copies of all the films the group has ever produced and proceeds to take one of each. He wastes no time adding the films to his own theater’s list of events. The idea is working! Mr.X is earning money while providing a terrific service. Businesses are doing better than they ever have and the people in Mr. X’s community are thrilled to have such wonderful films to watch free of charge.
Meanwhile, Ms. K, one of the members of the community theater group decides to do some traveling. And in her travels, she stumbles upon Mr. X’s theater. Enjoying films as she does, Ms. K decides to go to an afternoon show and, much to her surprise, the film is one she made some years ago! Ms. K looks through the theater’s listings and finds nearly every one of her films on the list. But there is no mention of her work or anything at all about the community
theater group she founded all those years ago. Then Ms. K finds something even more disturbing in the brochure. Mr. X is giving away copies of the films! She tries to contact Mr.X but he is nowhere to be found. Feeling somewhat helpless, Ms. K returns to her theater group to discuss the matter.They view a graph showing the number of people attending the theater over time and spot a disturbing trend. Traffic has been diminishing. People no longer think it’s necessary to visit the original community theater since the films can be viewed elsewhere. The group then looks at profit charts and observes a similar pattern. When traffic declined, local businesses no longer saw any benefit in sponsoring the community theater. The theater began earning less and was struggling to cover its expenses. It could no longer afford to produce new films thus depriving the community of its unique and innovative work.
The story of the community theater is a sad one but I wonder if it had to be so. Could the community theater story have a different ending?
How can organizations protect themselves from unauthorized distribution of their creative works, apart from invoking the law? Would the community theater prosper if it had decided on its own to distribute its work under a creative commons license? I can see how that might return control of creative works to the organization but I wonder if it would eliminate or even reduce the attribution problem. Is it beneficial to have copies of creative work available in hundreds of locations? Online, the concept of location is mostly inconsequential. There are exceptions but generally we have access to the original work and every location that stores a copy. What’s the benefit of multiple copies?
This is a very interesting problem with many subtleties to discern.
I’m really like to hear what others think.
Math 2.0 Newsletter December 1st 2010
Dec 1st
November was a busy math at Math Future community, and December promises to be even more fun. Here is what we did and what we plan to do…
In November, we submitted two proposals for projects. The first one is the Knight Foundation News Challenge, where our group is the only one that has ever submitted a STEM news proposal, named Math 2.0 Interactive Community News Map. The second proposal is for the International Commission on Mathematics Instruction’s conference. It is called Notations Across Cultures for Teaching.
Many members participated in the Global Education Conference, the largest peer-run online unconference on education. You can view their presentation recordings following the links:
- Scott Laidlaw – Breaking Through the Emotional Resistance to Math
- Donald Cohen – Calculus By and For Young People-ages 7 and up
- Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska – Screencasts, Captions and your Global Audience
- Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska – GeoGebra in Math Education – Global Community
- Maria Droujkova, Ihor Charischak, Colleen King, David Weksler – Math 2.0 Interest Group
- Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska – Classroom Wikis and GeoGebra
The weekly Math 2.0 online events in November included:
- November 17th, 2010. “Math without words” and other Thinking Mathematics projects Host: James Tanton, Interviewer: Sue VanHattum
- November 10th, 2010. Mathalicious Host: Karim Logue
- November 6th, 2010. MathPlace.net and other projects Host: Tom O’Brien
- November 3rd, 2010. Imagine Education – Teaching Math through Stories and Games Host: Scott Laidlaw
December collaboration plans include the super-secret book club, planning open courses for P2PU, a model for interactive teacher communities proposal, and the computer game group proposal to build a collaborative cross-indexed repository of math game mechanics. Because of the holidays, we only have two open online community events in December:
- December 8th. SubQuan: A cross-reality solution to finally understand mathematics Hosts: Daniel Cooper Patterson/Cooper Macbeth (SL), Rebecca Reiniger/Ute Frenburg (SL)
- December 4th.APGS programming language: Transforming the Spiral of Life into the Crystal of Life Host: Dani Novak
The December 4th event is in Elluminate, provided by our sponsor LearnCentral.org, and the December 8th event is in Second Life. Please join the fun!
Math 2.0 wiki membership grew by more than 10% in November. Members contribute to web pages and receive news about all upcoming events.
Math groups on Flickr
Nov 23rd
This is a guest post for Technology Integration in Education.
Math is beautiful. A tangible proof: there’s a lot of mathematics on the premier social site for sharing beauty. Check out the newest shared images from a few of 700+ Flickr groups that have “math” in their descriptions. Aggregation of similar content is one of the more accessible ways to move from sharing to collaboration (Shirky). Once a large example space is collected and tagged by the community, it becomes a valuable learning object.
Members of Math World, a general math group with about eight hundred members, have collected about three and a half thousand computer and physical models, and photos of found mathematics.
Credits: antarctica246, ~RND Modelshop, dkuropatwa
Seven and a half thousand members of Geometric Beauty are prolific, having shared more than a hundred thousand images. This is an example of collecting pictures by academic subjects.
Credits: mikhailovat, Agnes.L, craig h1
There are many groups devoted to more narrow areas within mathematics that are particularly beautiful. About a thousand groups have the word “fractal” in their descriptions.
For example, the group simply named Fractals shares computer art and fractals from nature.
Credit: 4everMiku
The group Fractal Spirals is more narrow in its focus.
Credit: Thomaniac
Fractals Transformed is devoted to collages and other transformations of fractal images.
Credit: Cal KT
Some groups focus on particular type of spatial transformation. If a picture is worth a thousand words, thousands masterpieces created with each transformation answer the question, “What is this math for?” with an incredible power.
Credits: Duncan C, Lyle58, fotobananas
Credits: Vincent Montibus, helen sotiriadis, Michael LaPalme
Software-centered groups collect images where, to quote the description of Algorithmic Abstracts, “the code is the art.” In image comments, members discuss finer points of programming and arrange to exchange source files for building upon previous work.
Algorithmic Abstracts requires members to write the code for their images themselves. “Obviously the use of frameworks is expressly allowed.”
Credit: Kim Asendorf
Structure Synth is a generative art application, and the group shares images made with it. Focus on a particular tool is a typical principle of collecting pictures.
Credit: wsanter
On the other hand, members of digital flower can use any piece of software, as long as they generate images of flowers with it.
Credit: Marina0195
Math clubs, Olympiads and other events sometimes make Flickr pools for their members. For example, MEMO 2007 is a collection of Middle European Mathematical Olympiad pictures, organized as a group.
Credit: Memo 2007, Eisenstadt
Other collections are organized by tags. For example, I store my math club photos under the tag naturalmath.
Credit: Natural Math
Organizations create Flickr accounts devoted to their work, such as Center for Science and Math Education.
Credit: Center for Science and Math Education
How narrow can a focus of a Flickr group become? You’d be surprised! For example, consider Hyperbolic Crochet. Understandably, it’s not a large group. But isn’t it marvelous that there are 44 people in the world who openly agreed to collect photos of their crocheting projects devoted to hyperbolic surfaces? And that I can not only admire the photos, but comment, ask for tips, and join the project?
Credits: DETEXO, daisymae cs
Multiples of 37 members have collected almost two thousand pictures featuring you-guessed-what. It leaves one sort of speechless. It helps their collecting cause significantly that 666 is a multiple.
Credits: Rodent Badcock, SARK S-W
From Decorative stars to Origami Tesselations – intersections of sets defined by shape, color, technique, software and other qualities make for wonderfully quirky image collections.
Credit: cinderella.girl63, LidyaDiard
This is a sampler, not a comprehensive review. There are very interesting math-rich Flickr communities devoted to 3d modeling, animation, data visualization, networks and so on. If you like math, Flickr is the place to find it by users, groups, galleries and tags.
Dig and fill: The shadow scholar
Nov 22nd
One of the most-discussed articles this month in Chronicles of Higher Education, The Shadow Scholar introduces “Ed Dante” who writes student assignments for hire. Here’s how he describes his daily work…
“In the past year, I’ve written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won’t find my name on a single paper.
I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.
You’ve never heard of me, but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work. I’m a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can’t detect, that you can’t defend against, that you may not even know exists.”
One of the most heart-wrenching parts of this story: what took Dante over the moral event horizon was his college experience. He wanted to do some real work that OTHER PEOPLE WOULD FIND USEFUL.
“I was determined to write for a living, and, moreover, to spend these extremely expensive years learning how to do so. When I completed my first novel, in the summer between sophomore and junior years, I contacted the English department about creating an independent study around editing and publishing it. I was received like a mental patient. I was told, “There’s nothing like that here.” I was told that I could go back to my classes, sit in my lectures, and fill out Scantron tests until I graduated.
I didn’t much care for my classes, though. I slept late and spent the afternoons working on my own material. Then a funny thing happened. Here I was, begging anybody in authority to take my work seriously. But my classmates did. They saw my abilities and my abundance of free time. They saw a value that the university did not.”
Some prisons and armies use a form of punishment: first, you dig a trench. Once you are done, you fill it back in. Doing work that nobody will ever appreciate reminds me of this psychological torture.
Different people require different use/practice ratio to find their practice (learning tasks) reasonably meaningful and motivating. Everybody understands that doing work that is useful for others requires some amount of practice tasks. However, many college courses and whole program set this ratio to zero. The prospect of current tasks being useful years into the future is way too distant to motivate most humans.
Have more tasks that have immediate use for some currently living people and communities. Students can write for collaborative open resource projects, review papers for conferences, program and distribute needful software, and otherwise pitch in where work is needed. This way, even if they hire someone to do their work (which will be less likely this way), at least the work will be useful to the society!
A few examples of immediately useful learning tasks that proved successful in my teaching
- Write a Wikipedia article
- Compose music for a clip based on an essay
- Illustrate a book
- Comment on an active popular blog or forum
- Answer questions at a topic help forum
Another big huge motivator is play. In a twisted perverted way, grades provide a game mechanics that supply a sort of motivation. But this is another story.
Math 2.0 at Knight News Challenge – please comment and vote
Nov 21st
The need to have a better “knowledge system” for aggregating and sharing news and information about math communities came up during many events and conversation. I summarized these ideas and submitted an application to Knight News Challenge for participatory media. They have been supporting worthy social media projects in the past, so we are in a good company there.
Please follow this link to rate the application and to leave comments.
There are many other interesting applications there, as well – please explore – though ours is the only science and math project applying.
The deadline for the final version of the application is December 1st. I very much hope to get editing suggestions until then!!!
Here is the full text of the application I submitted. I hope it may help those of you who are writing grants of any sort.
Math 2.0 Interactive Community News Map
Describe your project
Math 2.0 Interest Group is a diverse, international grassroots network of mathematicians, educators, and developers working on projects involving social media, online communities, and computer systems – as well as new approaches to math education. We started weekly online interviews with founders and leaders of mathematical communities in the summer of 2009, which are available at http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/events
While mathematics was once on the forefront of teaching with technology, with many innovative projects and ideas, it has been lagging since the mid-eighties. The integration of social media in mathematics education has been especially problematic. Few communities have created mathematically-rich social objects and most social platforms in use today do not support mathematical representations. There is still a challenge to easily produce mathematical notation online. Math has fallen behind other subjects in class-centered web 2.0 communities for children. There is an even larger lag in informal, recreational communities. Children’s mathematics remains very much confined to classes, homework, and standardized tests, or activities that closely imitate them. Most class-centered math communities are not sustainable and dissolve after the class ends. Some existing sustainable math-oriented communities are intellectually elitist and demographically exclusive.
The unique focus of the group is to address the issue described above by helping new and niche communities join forces and collaborate among themselves and with more established, larger communities. We aggregate math community news, especially recorded open and free live events with community leaders, from a particular point of view and with a particular explicit purpose. This purpose is inviting immediate collaboration, and collecting and disseminating information on the types of support communities need from the larger mathematics educator network. This focus is different from all other education media, and is a definite need in the field.
In the next few months, we plan to explicate and to visualize the rich data we, as a group, aggregated on the existing Math 2.0 communities. This project is centered on a crowd-sourced category and a tagging system for community news. In the first stage, for which we request the funding, we will closely work with member communities to define the initial categories and tags that describe them, their news items, and the essence of their social objects. Based on these data, we will build an interactive relational map of communities, news about their current projects and news about their collaborations. This project includes aggregating the software necessary for adding new communities and news items to the map. In the second stage, once the categories are defined and the system of adding tags and new items works smoothly, the tool will be opened to non-members, and will be made freely available for other communities.
How will your project improve the delivery of news and information to geographic communities?
A few mathematical communities operate purely online. Some are local with an online presence, such as math centers and math clubs that makes their materials available online, and host a discussion forum. Others support local chapters, groups or events, as well as global online projects and exchanges of social objects. By including geographic information in the tagging system, we will achieve several goals. First, it will be easier for prospective members to find local math-related communities open to participation and collaboration, which will promote their growth. Second, the rich data will situate local communities in the context of the global network of mathematicians and math educators, will make their news a part of larger stories, and will help similar communities find one another for collaboration. Third, this will encourage online and global communities to create, to support and to make more visible their local chapters and local events.
What unmet need does your proposal answer?
The math community tool we propose will help crowdsource rich descriptions and news that promote collaboration within and among mathematics communities. This need emerged from the activities of the Math 2.0 interest group, which has been doing this work “by hand” during the last year and a half. The main needs are overarching communication channels, news aggregation by categories authentic to math communities, and collaboration spaces.
How is your idea new?
There are multiple components that distinguish Math 2.0 Interest Group and the proposed interactive map tool for supporting its operations. The specific focus on community-building needs, such as news of successful uses of social media and communication platforms for math-rich projects, is unique in the field of mathematics education. The group is an open and inclusive community of practice, providing support to beginner community and project leaders, start-ups, and niche communities, yet including veteran educators and representatives of large, robust communities. The map tool will support, promote and explicate this openness, at the same time, unlike a directory, maintaining the strong focus on collaboration, co-production of content, and communication. Finally, the map tool will provide a directory based on categories that emerge from intensive, up-to-date qualitative research, crowdsourced by community members, of living communities and their daily happenings.
What will you have changed by the end of the project?
If one seeks participation or collaboration, surveying the landscape of existing mathematics and mathematics education communities currently takes individual searches of widely varying descriptions, joining communities that don’t make their discussions and news available to non-members, navigating within community structures to find right members for communication, and other labor-intensive tasks. News and valuable content that can benefit wide audiences stay within disjointed communities, because there are no accessible ways of finding appropriate target audiences. By the end of this project, some of these tasks will be accomplished with a click of a button, which will promote the growth of communities and collaboration among them. This will encourage generation of news, making content into social objects and sharing of news and content among communities. We will use snapshots of the community landscape, visualized by the map tool, to track changes in the ways communities use the system. We expect these changes to include the growth of existing small communities and the appearance of new ones. We also expect qualitative differences in the topology of collaborations among communities, viewed as a network, such as denser connections (mesh structures) that make information exchange more stable and efficient, or nodes with more connectors indicating larger inter-community partnerships.
Why are you the right person or team to complete this project?
The organizers of the Math 2.0 Interest Group have been surveying and annotating mathematical communities for a year and a half. The interactive map project we are proposing is a natural continuation of the activities of the group.
Among us, we have the skills of software developers, community managers, social science researchers, mathematicians, teachers of all levels, curriculum designers, and library scientists. This expertise will allow us to understand all types of communities comprehensively, and to develop the tools necessary for the project.
By now, many leaders of math communities are members of our network, and more join every week. We have good working relationships and open communication channels with many projects and communities open to participation and collaboration. The interviews we have recorded up to now, as well as our collective access to the news channels within communities, will allow us to map communities efficiently and authentically. The reception of presentations about the Math 2.0 Interest Group activities at national and international conferences, as well as communications from researchers, developers, teachers and parents tell us that the mathematical community at large sees the need for what we are doing, and will continue to volunteer time and support for our projects.
What terms best describe your project?
The terms we use to talk about Math 2.0 interest group in general, and the interactive map project in particular, can be grouped by several categories. The links that follow some of the terms lead to their sources, though we redefined the ideas to fit the needs of mathematics educator communities.
Community and network news
- Community of practice http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
- Central and peripheral participation, support of the long tail of participation http://www.amazon.com/Long-Tail-Revised-Updated-Business/dp/1401309666
- Flat, peer-to-peer structures
- Decentralized network
- Mesh sharing models http://www.amazon.com/Mesh-Why-Future-Business-Sharing/dp/1591843715
- Hybrid local and global participation
- Collaboration-level community, supporting sharing-level activities http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/1594201536
Social objects
- Social objects http://www.slideshare.net/jyri/microblogging-tiny-social-objects-on-the-future-of-participatory-media
- Rich descriptions that make social objects out of community artifacts
- User-defined categories and tags
- Aggregation of news and long-term objects along multiple dimensions
- Linkable, shareable, editable, taggable, embeddable objects
Research and development
- Qualitative research including educational ethnography, case studies and emergent methodology
- Collection, analysis and visualization of quantitative data
- Co-production of research and research communications in peer groups
- Psychology of mathematics education http://igpme.org/
Mathematics education
- Collaborative material and curriculum development
- Focused niche projects: humanistic mathematics, math games, ethnomathematics, story-based mathematics, mathematical art
- Computational tools
- Peer and community assessment
- Computer tools and community support for highly individualized education
- Modeling
- Programming
Traveling with the souls of others
Nov 20th
I have to correct what I said above. Some geeks I know don’t like sci-fi or fantasy, but use math for their otherworldly needs.
The Global Education Conference 2010 is done. Linda Stojanovska compiled the list of links to recordings of math sessions below. When I followed the Twitter stream of Kevin Simpson, the volunteer moderator of my presentation, his first message read: “Silent and Listen are spelled with the same letters.” So I thought it would be nice to animate it. These days, if you can formulate your software requirements as a web search phrase, you will probably find a free tool that does what you want. The search for “anagram animator” brought up this instrument from WordSmith.org which I shared with Kevin.
I will use this for “Magic Lantern Math” guided visualization activities. Long silent pauses are the key component there.
Monday, November 15th
15:00 – 16:00 KEYNOTE: Hall Davidson – Three Classroom Projects that NEED the World
18:00 – 19:00 Dr. J. Gail Armstrong-Hall – A New Spatial Theory.
20:00 – 21:00 Patti Duncan – Developing Essential STEM Skills Through the Use of Digital Media
Tuesday, November 16th
14:00 – 15:00 James Gerry – Web-Based Collaborative Innovation: Beyond Web 2.0
16:00 – 17:00 KEYNOTE: Jim Brazell – The Future is Here: The Role of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (TEAMS) in Global Innovation
17:00 – 18:00 Scott Laidlaw – Breaking Through the Emotional Resistance to Math
21:00 – 22:00 Donald Cohen – Calculus By and For Young People-ages 7 and up
Wednesday, November 17th
08:00 – 09:00 Lisa Johnson – The 180 Degree Mathematics Classroom
11:00 – 12:00 Richard Snow – Teaching High School Mathematics Curriculum using TI Nspire CAS
11:00 – 12:00 Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska – Screencasts, Captions and your Global Audience
12:00 – 13:00 KEYNOTE: Dr. Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska – GeoGebra in Math Education – Global Community
14:00 – 15:00 Corey Nascenzi – Engage and Motivate Math Students with CYBERCHASE PBS Online Resources
20:00 – 21:00 Maria Droujkova – Math 2.0 Interest Group
21:00 – 22:00 John Sowash – Collaborative Projects for the STEM Classroom
Thursday, November 18th
08:00 – 09:00 Iftikhar Husain – Visual Math with Geometer’s Sketchpad
18:00 – 19:00 Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska – Classroom Wikis and GeoGebra
Conrad Wolfram, a Progressor
Nov 17th
This is a guest blog post for Technology Integration in Education.
In his TED talk, Conrad Wolfram makes a call to replace traditional math courses with programming. Here are edited quotes from discussions of the talk from two math communities, Natural Math and Math 2.0.
The video:
–
David Weksler started the thread at Math 2.0 and Rachel Lunt started the thread on Natural Math.
Dani Novak:
To me it is all unfolding human consciousness and evolution, but most of
my colleagues do not feel that way, and some students don’t either.
Edward Bujak:
Excellent points are made throughout the Ted Talk by Conrad Wolfram, but I like the one at about the 12 minute mark when he said, “to understand math, program it,” which is certainly true for any topic when you program it, but more so for analytical subjects. The other big take-away is that computers liberate the human from the drudgery of math intensive laborious calculations so that humans can do the more cognitive higher-level thinking that we need to do and that only humans can do.
Bradford Hansen-Smith:
The real incentive that drives math seems to be the money that can be made. How would one expect any different in this money-focused culturally corrupt planet we live on. Money is not how the universe works, nor is mathematics. We have so far shot ourselves in the foot and do not notice our leg turning green because we are looking at the abstractions of our own constructions.
Kirby Urner:
If technology means anything good, it means helping to provide more alternatives. For those who do elect to take the programming route, there are a lot of details to consider, such as “programming what?”, and “programming how?” In my various classes over the years, I’ve put some emphasis on working with pre-written programs, which students are able to read and change. This in contrast to “blank canvas” programming.
A lot of math-with-programming people tend to focus on the very young and go for a lot that’s colorful and glitzy. I’m not against doing this, however my own focus is a more mature audience with an active imagination. A lot of the “picturing” of what’s happening in the code needs to go on in the student’s head, in the mind’s eye. The output may nevertheless be colorful and textured.
Bradford Hansen-Smith:
My question and challenge is to see what can be generated if as much time and effort went into programming of folding with the
circle as is done with the square. That would mean people would have to start seriously folding circles to know the difference and I don’t think that is going to happen very soon.
Kirby Urner:
Your focus on the circle as a starting point is at least well demarcated and easy to comprehend. Sharp distinctions make useful niches in the
ecosystem of ideas, you have that going for you. Likewise this
tetrahedron stuff I’m doing as Martian Math has an easier time gaining traction than just another brand of blah.
Joshua Gay:
I disliked the first 12 minutes of the talk. But, fortunately, he is actually getting into ideas similar to Papert’s constructionism and Montessori’s manipulatives (feeling and playing with math). I like his idea that programming and playful process-oriented investigation can and perhaps, should form a cornerstone of education. However, I think there are a lot of other options such as role-playing games; collaborative activities; new forms of dialectic/brainstorming, etc. that have many things in common with programming that could also be introduced into such a curriculum.
Also, I don’t agree with his call that math should be replaced with a computer focused curriculum. I can see a place in a curriculum where “math class” is an opportunity for students to explore pure math, problem solve, do origami, etc etc. Although, certainly agree that we should demolish what is becoming the traditional mathematics curriculum and course.
Lastly, if we do arrive at an age where we integrate computers into our curriculum, I do hope we consider a purely FLOSS philosophy for our schools and not become entrenched into using Wolfram|Alpha or Mathematica :-)
Rachel Lunt:
I do not necessarily agree with Wolfram on a personal level, but I think more debate and discussions opened about maths and the way it is taught is positive… Here in France, there is no debate and teaching is very stagnant.
Maria Droujkova:
The old Russian sci-fi term “Progressor” means a person from an advanced
civilization who infiltrates a backwards world, trying to promote its progress. Conrad Wolfram is one of the most successful Progressors I know. His projects affect millions of people. That’s one reason I got his TED speech from about a dozen different sources yesterday alone.
Given where humans are now, what math-rich endeavors should a Progressor choose, to make the most impact? Everything
related to computers, such as programming, computer modeling, system analysis, data visualization, and computer science – all these areas are HOT. Millions of people work in computer industries that did not exist a couple of decades ago. Absolutely all areas of life are affected.
A variety of math niches is very important for ecological health, and intrinsically valuable. Modeling activities such as Sliceforms, Differential Analyzer, and SubQuan have to keep finding followers, grow, develop and spread. That’s what our Math 2.0 Interest Group is all about!
I just can’t blame Conrad for riding the computer wave. As a Progressor, he’s maximizing his impact. People may find the rest of our
work easier to comprehend, once they accept SOME change. Programming communities spearheaded the incredible recent growth of modeling, math art, amateur physics, maker and other
math-rich communities.
Dani Novak:
Things are changing now so fast in the Physical dimension that what we will do in education 10 years from now is beyond imagination. Just
like what we are using now was hardly imagined ten years ago. What is important is to remember the holistic nature of human beings: what it is like playing on the beach, building sand castles and just having fun: integrating physical activities, mental activities, spiritual activities, working in communities, etc.
Murray Bourne:
I was in a meeting yesterday demonstrating Wolfram|Alpha to some lecturers. For the math people, I showed some integrals and graph drawing, for the chemistry lecturers, I showed some chemical compounds, and for the non-scientists, I searched on one of their birthdays.
The non-scientists were very impressed, wanted more and could see the immense potential, but the math/science people felt threatened and said things like “I would never show my students this tool. They wouldn’t know what to do with it or understand what it is telling them.”
I don’t totally agree with all of Conrad Wolfram’s talk, but I am very concerned about the lecturers who refuse to use powerful mathematical tools that have been around for a quarter century.
Book review: Sliceforms
Nov 13th
Recently, my friend Galina told me that the world I live in isn’t quite real. I thought it just meant the usual transformations of the last decade, such as using networks rather than organizations. However, in my life, not only purely informational entities (such as stories or money) appear through the nets. Physical objects do too, such as an envelope from Britain with my invitation to Hogwarts a medium-thin book which, in turn, magically contains real 3D beauties such as a paraboloid and a Cassinian solid.
A sliceform is one of the best “worth a thousand words” explanations of what calculus is all about I have ever seen. The idea also passes my “accessible to a five-year-old” test, but it is quite exciting for grown-ups.
The book mostly consists of paper parts that create the sliceforms. Naturally, I opened it in the middle first, because I was eager to see how shapes are made. Looking at flatland pictures and guessing the resulting 3d shapes is fascinating.
“Sliceforms” isn’t just about cutting along the lines to repeat pre-made crafts, however. The majority of its text (well, three out of its five text pages) is an explanation of how to make your own models. I was so happy to see this!
Of course, I immediately attempted to make a sliceform of my own – and failed. I wasn’t tracking enough dimensions in my head – I only paid attention to two, not three. But I see how to fix the problem, and this learning of dimensions through sliceform grids feels both valuable and sweet. Some people will probably enjoy reading the directions in the book before messing with paper, though!
Model-making activities are appropriate for people who are either strong on fine motor skills, or want to become strong through a lot of exercise. By time, model-makers need to be able to focus for an hour or so, to appreciate the depth of the activity. Younger kids and casuals will still get a lot out of playing with finished models.
Wish list: A student-invented notation wiki
Nov 11th
Paul Libbrecht has created a very inspiring wiki collecting math notations from different countries. We are currently discussing the wiki at the Math Future email group. Here is what I dreamed up, inspired by it…
There are quite a few existing collections, in books and sites, unfortunately NOT aggregated in one place yet, of lesson plans devoted to children inventing notation. John van de Walle had written about it, for example. “Living Math” community, led by Julie Brennan, has a lot of discussions about this. I do this activity routinely, with all my students in most of the topics. When this is going on, students LOVE to look at multiple historical or modern notations, which we usually do after they’ve invented their own. This way, they see themselves as a part of the long continuum of math creators.
For the purposes of such an activity, my wish list is:
- a place like your wiki available (check!)
- a place just like that, but for student- and teacher-invented notations
- a cross-linked depository of lessons/activities using the above census items (somewhat like Joel’s http://geogebramath.org/lms/nav/index.jsp); that is, aggregation of links to activities where each notation is used on notations’ pages, and links back to the notation census from activities’ pages
- a way of commenting back and forth with people who are contributing activities (like blog comments)
The next step toward my wish list is to start a sister wiki for student notation.
Global Education Conference: math-related sessions
Nov 4th
The Global Education Conference 2010 is an active five-day online conference with more than 300 presentations. Here are those I found that relate to math. Please let me know if there are more. I am happy to see familiar names of Math 2.0 members there! Times are in Eastern Standard (New-York).
Monday, November 15th
15:00 – 16:00 KEYNOTE: Hall Davidson – Three Classroom Projects that NEED the World
18:00 – 19:00 Dr. J. Gail Armstrong-Hall – A New Spatial Theory
20:00 – 21:00 Patti Duncan – Developing Essential STEM Skills Through the Use of Digital Media
Tuesday, November 16th
14:00 – 15:00 James Gerry – Web-Based Collaborative Innovation: Beyond Web 2.0
16:00 – 17:00 KEYNOTE: Jim Brazell – The Future is Here: The Role of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (TEAMS) in Global Innovation
17:00 – 18:00 Scott Laidlaw – Breaking Through the Emotional Resistance to Math
21:00 – 22:00 Donald Cohen – Calculus By and For Young People-ages 7 and up
Wednesday, November 17th
08:00 – 09:00 Lisa Johnson – The 180 Degree Mathematics Classroom
11:00 – 12:00 Richard Snow – Teaching High School Mathematics Curriculum using TI Nspire CAS
12:00 – 13:00 KEYNOTE: Dr. Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska – GeoGebra in Math Education – Global Community
14:00 – 15:00 Corey Nascenzi – Engage and Motivate Math Students with CYBERCHASE PBS Online Resources
20:00 – 21:00 Maria Droujkova – Math 2.0 Interest Group
21:00 – 22:00 John Sowash – Collaborative Projects for the STEM Classroom
Thursday, November 18th
08:00 – 09:00 Iftikhar Husain – Visual Math with Geometer’s Sketchpad
18:00 – 19:00 Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska – Classroom Wikis and GeoGebra
Could not find times or descriptions (talking with organizers who work on schedules about it).
TBA Scott Laidlaw – Breaking Through the Emotional Resistance to Math
TBA Charles McKinney – Global Viewers
Detailed descriptions of sessions, in the order of appearance
PRESENTER: Hall Davidson, Discovery Educator Network
KEYNOTE: Three Classroom Projects that NEED the World
To ensure the necessity of global collaboration, it is important to find projects which must cross borders to work. For curriculum-based collaborations, the best projects require creative thinking and the kind of skills global thinkers will need. This session explores two replicable examples. First, a math/science project that allows globally connected students to determine the size of the earth—without calculator or encyclopedia. This can only be done by partnering with another school on the same longitude, and on a special day. It follows the method the Greeks used in 300 BCE (afterwards, the size of the moon and the distance from the sun can follow). Along the way, translation tools, and Web 2.0 sites become important. For the other side of the brain, explore language arts/social studies projects that utilize the Facebook advertising engine. These can target the global community in surprising and inexpensive ways (figure a budget of $10 US). Have mobile phones and video cameras ready if you want to participate live in the third project.
TITLE: An Educational Theory that will make future generations of people smarter
PRESENTER: Judy Gail Armstrong-Hall Ph.D., Larson Middle School (U.S.A..)
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: An Educational Theory that will Make Future Generations of People Smarter. Success in math, science, reading and writing are tied to specific underlying spatial skills. Spatial skills being defined as the interaction of the mind with body movements and external objects. Eight spatial skills will be outlined and examples of how to reinforce them will be proposed. Balancing and strengthening these skills leads to improved academic performance.
TITLE: Developing Essential STEM Skills Through the Use of Digital Media
PRESENTER: Patti Duncan, Wallenpaupack Area School District (United States)
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Most STEM educators know that it is essential for students to think, problem solve and work independently. The problem comes with HOW do you TEACH a skill? Using certain types of digital media are a great way to help students develop these all important skills. In many cases the key lies not in the use of the media but HOW it is used. This session will focus on best practices for using digital media as a way to produce strong thinkers, problem solvers and independent workers.
TITLE: Web-Based Collaborative Innovation: Beyond Web 2.0
PRESENTER: James Gerry, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (USA)
CO-PRESENTER: Carl Heine
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: This session, brought to you be the creators, showcases CoolHub.IMSA, a free collaborative innovation platform that integrates document sharing, wikis, blogs, video conferencing (via Elluminate) and more to improve STEM teaching and learning. CoolHub.IMSA demonstrates how students, teachers and scientists allover the world work together as equals in an environment without walls supported by commodity Web 2.0 resources. CoolHub.IMSA is currently in its Beta release.
Jim Brazell
NSBA
KEYNOTE: The Future is Here: The Role of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in Global Innovation. Robot cars. Virtual reality phones. Supercomputer toys. This is not fiction, not a dream, not the future. This is the 5th World—a place where the World Wide Web has leapt off of the computer screen to link physical, virtual and imaginary worlds. The Future is Here explores the role of STEM in driving change in the 21st century. Forget crystal ball technology forecasting and pie-in-the sky predictions. This presentation explores real world technologies, jobs, communities and schools in a way that has implications for everyone. Learn about emerging strategies to create wealth, improve educational attainment among youth, and increase collaboration in broad stakeholder communities.
BIO: Jim Brazell is a technology forecaster, public speaker and strategist focusing on innovation and transformative systems. He is a member of the Radical Platypus group and the Thornburg Center for Professional Development.
TITLE: Breaking Through the Emotional Resistance to Math
PRESENTER: Scott Laidlaw, Ed. D., Imagine Education (United States)
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Math, by itself, is not widely regarded as a problem. That is, unless, you are part of the student population in middle schools around the world. Surveyed about how they feel about math, most middle school aged students just don’t see the purpose. It’s not an issue limited to country or gender. Students from Korea, regarded by many as the top students in math, ‘do math because they have to.’ The pervasive attitude for math pedagogy everywhere in the world is, ‘Give rewards for doing math.’ Candy, grades, points are given out for doing work. Verbal lashings are given out for those who do not make the grade. We reach a point now where see this approach as fundamentally dysfunctional. We see the change as occurring now in classrooms as opposed to a future goal.
TITLE: Calculus By and For Young People -ages 7 and up
PRESENTER: Donald Cohen, The Math Program, Don Cohen-The Mathman (United States of America)
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Don will use his A Map to Calculus to show what children have done when they are encouraged to ask questions, look for patterns, create changes, solve problems in different ways, solve problems without the teacher showing them how to do it, use ratios and differences, create new things, use hands-on activities, applets, calculators, Scratch, GeoGebra, and Mathematica, leading to important mathematics: including patterns, visualization, infinite sequences, infinite series, algebraic and geometric transformations, i, e, Pi, Phi, slopes -> derivatives, the area under curves -> the integral, and Spirals.
TITLE: 180 Degree Classroom
PRESENTER: Lisa Johnson, Jefferson County Public Schools (USA)
CO-PRESENTER: Jose Alfaro
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Student time in math class is spent creating and viewing video lessons using TabletPCs, iPod Touch multimedia devices and teacher as resources. The student-created videos are then posted online for viewing on the iTouches. While students prepare and learn from the video lessons they create, the teacher can focus on providing just-in-time learning opportunities and classroom experiences which incorporate their new learning.
TITLE: Teaching High School Mathematics Curriculum using TI Nspire CAS
PRESENTER: Richard Snow, Center for Distance Learning and Innovation (Canada)
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: In this session participants will learn how the TI Nspire CAS (Computer Algebra System) can be used to enhance the teaching of mathematics curriculum at the high school level. Topics such as factoring trinomials, derivatives, so much more will be covered.
Dr. Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska
KEYNOTE: GeoGebra in Math Education – Global Community. GeoGebra is free dynamic mathematics software. We talk about the impact of GeoGebra on math education around the world, about the global GeoGebra community that has translated GeoGebra into nearly 50 languages, maintains a active wiki for resources, an incredibly vibrant forum for help and a YouTube channel. We then give some live and (hopefully) interesting for all demonstrations of how GeoGebra can be used in any classroom.
BIO: Linda is a long-time advocate of practical integration of technology in the everyday mathematics classroom of every school. She and her brother Tim Fahlberg who pioneered making mathcasts – screencasts for mathematics – 14 years ago for his students have developed the website math247.pbworks.com with content and resources for teachers to learn how to freely/cheaply integrate technology effectively. Linda has held online webinars and regular workshops for learning dynamic math freeware GeoGebra. She runs the YouTube GeoGebraChannel and has made over 60 HD captioned videos for this channel. She works together with classroom teachers from across the globe taking their fantastic ideas/applets – mostly from GeoGebra – and developing and publishing them as free applet activities.
TITLE: Engage and Motivate Math Students with CYBERCHASE PBS Online Resources
PRESENTER: Corey J. Nascenzi, Thirteen/WNET (United States)
CO-PRESENTER: Audrey Hornick-Becker
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Cyberchase is a PBS animated television series and Web site that features three curious kids who use math and brain power to save the day, and is based on the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics standards for 8-12 year olds. Join our interactive session to explore over 45 interactive mathematics games and dozens of simple yet effective, downloadable math activities available for free at Cyberchase online. Attendees will also learn about VITAL, our exciting online video-based teaching and learning resource, which contains 1,000 free media resources from the best in public television. These classroom resources, featuring media from NOVA, Frontline, Design Squad, American Experience, and other public broadcasting and content partners are easy to use and correlate to state and national standards. All session attendees will have the opportunity to sign up to receive FREE materials for the students.
TITLE: Math 2.0 Interest Group
PRESENTER: Maria Droujkova, Natural Math (USA)
CO-PRESENTER: Colleen King CO-PRESENTER: David Weksler CO-PRESENTER: Ihor Charischak
FORMAT: Open Discussion
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Math 2.0 Interest Group is a diverse, international network of mathematicians, educators, and developers working on projects involving social media, online communities, and computer systems – as well as new approaches to math education. During the talk, we will look at different community types and discuss their accomplishments and needs. Participants will learn what founders of math communities consider important tasks in mathematics education and how they go about accomplishing these tasks. Participants can use the event to find math communities that will welcome your participation and add to your personal learning network. We will share plans and dreams of the Math 2.0 group for the upcoming year, including virtual and face-to-face conferences, the math game development forum, publishing efforts, and spin-off event series.
TITLE: Training Global Collaborators
PRESENTER: John Sowash, Chrysalis Learning (United States)
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Science is a collaborative endeavor that crosses geographic and cultural boundaries. The Human Genome Project was completed quickly and cheaply because of collaboration between labs around the world. Today’s students must be taught how to effectively collaborate with their peers both face to face and virtually if they are to be successful in STEM fields. This session will discussion the importance of collaborative projects and demonstrate 5 collaborate projects that can be easily incorporated into any STEM classroom: 1. Student generated surveys 2. Class data aggregation and analysis 3. Scientific journal summaries 4. Multimedia lab reports 5. Infographics
TITLE: Visual Math with Geometer’s Sketchpad
PRESENTER: Iftikhar Husain, University High School, Newark Public Schools (USA)
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Audience: Grade 7-12 Students, Mathematics Teachers, Mathematics Supervisors. Mathematics becomes interesting and meaningful if its concepts are delivered in easiest possible way, which is the visual approach. Visual learning is a basic catalyst to understanding and memory. Without them, the brain must work harder to understand concepts and skills, and will have a tendency to reject learning and understanding of concepts and procedures. Visual learning, which provides connections, is used before the symbolic representation. In this workshop, the presenter will use the Geometer’s Sketchpad and solve few math questions and discuss related concepts. Presenter’s unique approach will amuse the participants. New and experienced teachers will learn new approaches to familiar topics that will help your students to apply them with easy. The topics discussed in this presentation are Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Trigonometry, Pre-calculus, Calculus, and more. No experience with the Geometer’s Sketchpad is required.
TITLE: Classroom Wikis and GeoGebra
PRESENTER: Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska, Univ. St. Clement of Ohrid (FYR Macedonia)
FORMAT: Presentation
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: In this 45 minute presentation, we first discuss the global educational implications of GeoGebra as free, multi-platform, translatable, dynamic mathematics software that enjoys a global community of users who really do work together. In the second part, we get down to the business of integrating GeoGebra into the global classroom. We see how GeoGebra can be used in the daily curriculum. We see integration with just a computer and a video projector up through a state-of-the-art laboratory, integration by the teacher who just wants a ready-to-use demonstration up through the teacher whose students construct their own worksheets and finally integration for a standards-based lesson or for an exploring and fun-with-math lesson. In the last part of the presentation, we show teachers how to share their work in a classroom wiki – how to embed an interactive GeoGebra file and explanation screencast without uploading files to the wiki itself.
TITLE: Global Viewers
PRESENTER: Charles McKinney, Jefferson County Public Schools, Louisville Kentucky (USA)
FORMAT: Open Discussion
LANGUAGE: English
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Invigorate your science, math, language arts, and social studies units with Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D (now called Bing Maps 3D), and NASA World Wind. There are currently three free top global viewers: Google Earth, Bing Maps 3D, and NASAWorld Wind. Each of these viewers is web dependent and offers to show us most earthly locations with map and satellite photo views. Stars and planets are present in Google Earth and NASAWorld Wind. Google Earth and Bing Maps 3D permit you to locate a particular landmark, point of interest, or street address with travel routing to your destination. All three viewers allow you aerial or satellite photographic view or location or a combined map with photo overlay; you may alter your relative position to view many landscape features with a 3D perspective.
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