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This is the software that is v.similar to Geogebra and shows the points/slopes etc visually.
http://education.ti.com/calculators/timath/ Some of the activities are almost the exact same, only colours are different. Dr. Gail Burrill was at the conference yesterday, she was very interesting. She was telling us about the new curriculum in the US that is being rolled out in 2014 for maths. 47 out of the 50 states in the US are participating in the new common curriculum for the first time to be rolled out by 2014. http://issuu.com/leahjensen/docs/smarter_balannced_assessment_design?mode=window&pageNumber=1 http://www.corestandards.org/ adoption by state http://www.k12.wa.us/SMARTER/PressReleases/MathDraftContentSpecs.aspx http://www.k12.wa.us/smarter/ http://www.ode.state.or.us/news/announcements/announcement.aspx?=7587 She showed a lot of textbook examples and how the trend is changing, you don’t give lists and lists of problems to solve at the end of the chapters anymore. We give a few that need to be thought about that are selected very carefully that need to use most of the rules. Introducing algebra was a topic that she covered along with showing some technology from texas instruments.(where she is an advisor) tea and coffee problem, you are the waiter, you collect the orders, when you collect the orders, you summarise from three tables that table number one wanted 2 teas and 1 coffee, table two wanted 3 teas and 3 coffees and table number three wanted 4 teas and 4 coffees. teas gets summarised to t coffees gets summarised to c total now is 9t + 8c, that is now your algebraic expression. ‘oh by the way… this is algebra’. Catherine went into detail about the two types of ways people meet other people the ‘oh by the way’ and the formal ‘this is’. Usually people remember the ‘oh by the way’ after they hear the detail about the people. The student teachers are now learning this way of introducing topics. Introducing slopes... graph... combination of x + y... the goal is x+y = 10 the students will choose (5,5) (7,3) (3,7) etc to make up x + y = 10. URN problem, height of an urn and water inside. the shape of the urn changes at a point so the line increasing / like that on the graph will be jagged. Black Scheduling is another topic... blocking off time for teaching students by topic for a number of hours. This is one of the ways of teaching maths that will extend the lessons from 40 minutes to up to 90 minutes and cover a topic from simple introduction. South Korea and China are being used as examples of introducing topics and the focus is on a few problems to solve and think about them rather than being given a list of equations to solve. Cost of filet mignon problem, 5oz cost 14.95, 8oz cost 19.95, there are many ways to solve this to figure out how much you would charge for 20oz. You could say 8 + 8 + 5 = 21oz is 14.95 +14.95 +19.95 minus 1 oz You could figure out how much 1 oz costs You could say 8oz is worth 5/8ths of the cost of the 5 oz etc etc as shown in her slides. Another problem, if you had a triangle... where would you put a light in the triangle for it to shine most efficiently around most of the area? Another problem, mast on a ship, you have a 5ft mast and an 8ft mast, most efficient way to put the rigging! Very insightful in looking at ways it can connect to real-world problems and activities which is one of my research questions. I’m waiting on the slides from her presentation. They were really very good and will give us a ‘heads up’ for what to expect in Ireland. A lot of policy makers attended the event and I can see a ‘summer seminars’ being held in Project Maths as well for up skilling teachers that are already teaching and not qualified to teach maths. Gail directs the summer schools for teachers in the US which is held for three weeks over the summer. http://pcmi.ias.edu/ Comments are closed.
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