A fresh look at the new math days of the late 50s and early 60s

Why does today's new math look like the old math repainted? Back in 1969 Morris Kline had a problem with what was called the new math at that time. Here's what he wrote in chapter 1 of his seminal work "Why Johnny can't Add."

"Evidently the class is not doing too well and so the teacher tries a simpler question. "Is 7 a number?" The students, taken aback by the simplicity of the question, hardly deem it necessary to answer; but the sheer habit of obedience causes them to reply affirmatively. The teacher is aghast. "If I asked you who you are, what would you say?"
The students are now wary of replying, but one more courageous youngster does do so: "I am Robert Sinith."
The teacher looks incredulous and says chidingly, "You mean that you are the name Robert Smith? Of course not. You are a person and your name is Robert Smith. Now let us get back to my original question: Is 7 a number? 0f course notl It is the name of a number. 5 + 2, 6 + 1, and 8 - 1 are names for the same number. The symbol 7 is a numeral for the number."

Technically the teacher is right. 7 IS a numeral that represents the idea of "7ness" meaning 7 of something: an abstraction. Though accurate it was way beyond the call of a beginning student's duty to need to contemplate such subtlety. Though a bit of a stretch sometimes this kind of distinction gets play time when discussing traditional pure math and the necessity for rigor like in the numeral/number distinction. Rigor has its time and place. But not when you want students to have creative adventures in discovering powerful ideas about math or even having students invent their own math. There is a big distinction between what a professional mathematician would consider "inventing new math" and what an average student might do to behave like a mathematician. I discovered that distinction when I personally discovered Pick's Law. Of course, I didn't invent it; it was already a part of mathematical lore thanks to George Pick and Hugo Steinhaus. What I did was recreate it from scratch and that adventure was very meaningful for me. I was now a "mathematician" actually doing math (albeit not inventing it) and certainly not just practicing ideas that the teacher insisted I know whether it was currently relevant or not. I was on a mathematical journey where I made up the path as I went along. The endpoint was defined, but I had to determine the details of the journey following clues along the way. This to me is the new "new math" not an extension with a fresh coat of paint but something all together different. Something that is lacking in most classroom enviroments. I will be sharing some adventures (examples of what I mean) that I've been thinking about in future blog entries.

Levels of Looking at Learning: Cena's fragile knowledge about place value

Keith Devlin writes in his recent blog "How to design video games that support good math learning: Level 4":

"A major problem with video games, or more generally any mechanized educational delivery system, is that the system has no way of knowing what the player, or student, is learning. That a player who moves up a level in a video game has learned something is clear. Video games are all about learning. But all you can reliably conclude from a player’s leveling up is that she or he has leveled up. It could have been happenstance."

The student may not have learned anything significant. Appearances can be deceiving as Keith noted after he watched this video.

Keith continues:

"If you are like me the first time I saw this video, when you heard Cena’s answer in the class you concluded that she understood place value representation. She certainly gave the right answer. Moreover, to those of us who do understand place-value, her verbally articulated reasoning indicated she had conceptual understanding. But she had nothing of the kind, as the subsequent interview made clear." 

Let's review the video above. Here's what happens.

The teacher drew 49 stars and circled 4 groups of 10. When she got to the last 9 stars, she asked the class whether they should be grouped? 

"No," says Cena. "You got uhh one, two, three, four tens. You like put a four right there. And you have 9 stars left over so you put 9 right there." 

To which the teacher replies, "So does everyone understand?"

At that moment Marilyn Burns comes on and says, "Children's understanding is often fragile but what they know in one setting doesn't always transfer to another."

New scenario. Marilyn is now sitting next to Cena with a bunch of tiles on the table. Marilyn continues, "Put the tiles in groups of 10 and count out loud so I hear what you are doing." Cena counts out ten as she places them in a pile. "Can you make another pile?" Marilyn continues. "So how many groups of 10 do you have? "2," Cena responds. how many more do you have? "4". Do you know how many tiles you have all together? Cena responds with "Uh-uh (no)."

How is that possible? This is the same girl that so brilliantly knew to write that there were 49 stars by counting 4 groups of 10 with 9 left over. Keith didn't offer a possible explanation and neither did Marilyn. That, of course, was not their purpose; all they wanted was to make the reader/viewer aware that what you see is not necessarily what you get.  So that begs the question for me. What would you do: (1) as the teacher in the classroom to confirm Cena's understanding and (2) as a tutor ala Marilyn Burns?

Cool Graph about the Growth of Charter Schools

click on image for animation

Whether you like them or not Charter Schools are here to stay. If we want our kids to have 21st century skills then they need schools that will help our students achieve them. Ronald Wolk in his book "Wasting Minds: Why our education system is failing us and what we can do about it" writes that what we need is in addition to reforming our existing schools is a parallel strategy of alternative schools focusing on creativity and innovation.  He says: 

"Standards-based accountability is here to stay – at least for a long time. So the only other rational response I can think of is to adopt a parallel strategy and pursue it simultaneously – what my friend Ted Kolderie (2010) calls 'a split screen' approach to improving education. [Link] Why should we bet everything on a single strategy, especially if it isn't working? Why not have at least one alternative strategy? Why not have parallel strategies that seek to achieve the same objectives? Why can't we walk and chew gum at the same time?" (Wolk, 2010)

Wolk holds promise for innovation in the marriage of technology with chartering. He says "Chartering and the Web, though still fledgling efforts, have laid the foundations for a second strategy of creating new educational opportunities that put students and learning first." (Wolk, 2010) Sounds good to me. Now how would that work? The Wanna do curriculum movement (see my book proposal) will be one positive step in that direction.

Kolderie, T (2010, April). Innovation-based systemic reform: Getting beyond traditional school. Education Evolving. Retrieved from http://educationevolving.org/pdf/Innovation-Based-Systemic-Reform.pdf

A New Journey Begins

Welcome to my other blog. Starting in September this will become my main blog and CLIME Connections will then be my other blog. Why do I want to put it on the backburner? Well, I've been involved with CLIME since 1986 and it's time for me to move on. Not immediately. I'll be stepping down as president and proprietor of the CLIME organization at the end of the 2012-2013 academic year.
One of the goals I wanted to accomplish after I retired from Stevens/CIESE in 2007 was to help put Web 2.0 on the math teacher's radar screen as they plan for their student's learning experiences. Last April at the NCTM meeting in Philadelphia I had a revelation that the math community had turned a corner and Web 2.0 had made its imprint. For the first time, at a annual NCTM conference attendees had free Wifi access (when it was working properly) almost everywhere in the convention center. So for the first time it made sense for a conference attendee to carry a smart device (iPhone, Android, laptop etc.) with them to the conference. NCTM made a free app available so you didn't even need to carry around the annoying program book that's never convenient when you really need it or worse if you lose the book which I'm prone to do. For the first time NCTM has sent a message that ubiquitious connectivity is the future not only for conference going but also in schools where taking advantage of this new power with students and using it effectively is the ultimate 21st century challenge.  How my vision for this new Dynamic Math Classroom as I call it plays out is what I'll be writing about in this blog.

Next: Math 2.0 - Scenes from a Dynamic Classroom - the book.

Average Traveler Activity Redux

At the NCTM Conference last April I did what I call the Average Traveler activity with the 36 math educators who attended my session "Math 2.0: Scenes from a Dynamic Classroom."
Based on the distances that each attendee traveled to get to this conference, I asked who in this room would represent the average distance traveled? Guesses ranged from 200 to 800 miles. Since we didn’t have access to computers to do this in real time, I used the distance from each attendee’s school (or administrative office) to the Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA (where this session took place) to figure this out. I added placemarks at each school's location using Google Maps and used the distances provided by the software. Which school’s placemark do you think is closest to the average distance that the participants traveled to this conference? The yellow marker is the site of the conference.

I used Geometer’s Sketchpad to draw a circle with the location of the session at the center and the radius of the circle gives an estimate of the distance to the various schools represented. By changing the radius of the circle I could approximate what the average was. The radius of the circle in the image is 809 miles which is the approximate value for the average. Note there are no schools that are candidates for being closer to the average distance than Mr. Fogg. Take a look at Google Maps and identify your location. The sites are open for you to make corrections and updates.

Here is a Google spreadsheet of the relevant data.

Please post your comments or questions about this activity below.

In Search for the Last Digit of Pi

Fig. 1

Ever wonder what the last digit of Pi is? Well, if you are one of those in the know, you know that there is no such thing. Pi is irrational. Right? And you know that the decimal expansion of Pi (3.14159...) goes on forever without any recurring patterns. 

Fig. 2

But what about this headline back in 2004? 

Did this really happen? Read the rest of the article by clicking on it. What do you think?

"The Last digit of Pi" is the title of Dan Cohen's very interesting blog about how some people passionately pursue the last digit despite knowing that they will fail. It's also a nice story about the evolution of knowledge about Pi. He also has done an entertaining TED talk on the topic. 

Sunday Morning (CBS) highlights Pi Day

This a recent segment about Pi day.

For more Pi Day resources see my Pi Day page.

My favorite Pi Day activity is the Buffon Needle Experiment. See my lesson. See also this link. See also Matthew Blake's cool simulation of the needle experiment.

Here we go again

Latest issue of Summing Up

Latest "NCTM Summing Up" posts the inevitable. More study needed. What a surprise. As if we haven't done enough studies already! It's business as usual. The major players in the math ed community want to have fun telling us what we should be doing with our students using scare tactics to get the nervous public to go along with their latest hype. We're still a "Nation at Risk" and will continue to be as long as the "hafta-do" curriculum rules in most schools. Kids need to be heard more and college professors less because the current paradigm is not making any substantial improvements in teaching school math.