Tag: The Future

What A Parent Wants From A School

As a parent, I look for two categories of attributes when choosing a school for my child:
– Ones which benefit my child directly
– Ones which benefit my child indirectly, by helping others (teachers, parents) do their jobs more effectively

Schools that satisfy more of the attributes in both categories are likely to have happier parents and more successful students.

The Administration and Teachers Should Help My Child

Directly By:

  • Being aware of history. Before the start of each school year, my child’s current teacher(s) should have reviewed all of
    – last years’ teacher comments for my child
    – my child’s transcript (all courses, all years at the school)
  • Helping my child to both pursue existing  Continue reading What A Parent Wants From A School

Flipped Classroom: It’s About Timely Formative Feedback

The phrase “Flipped Classroom” is appearing with increasing frequency in publications and blog postings. Yet, it seems to mean different things to different people. Many of the references I see to flipped classrooms are made by people or organizations who have a vested interest in selling goods or services, which probably affects their view of the issues.

As proposed by Salman Khan in his TED Lecture, flipping the classroom involves using internet-based video to move “lecture” out of the classroom to some other place and time of a student’s choosing. Class time can then be used for student problem solving and group work. Dan Meyer and others have critiqued aspects of Salman Khan’s approach, with some such as Michael Pershan offering constructive ideas for improvements.

Eric Mazur, a physics professor at Harvard, has also been advocating a “flipped” approach  – and for considerably longer than Salman Khan. His conception of “flipping” focuses on getting students to Continue reading Flipped Classroom: It’s About Timely Formative Feedback

Grant Wiggins on Mathematics Education

Grant Wiggins was the keynote speaker last night at the annual “Anja S. Greer Conference on Mathematics, Science and Technology” hosted by Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH. The focus of his talk was mathematics education, and the points that were noteworthy to me included the following:

Increasingly, schools and standards bodies are setting their goal for mathematics education to be the development of good problem solvers. Yet,
– few schools focus their curriculum on problem solving
– nationally, dismal percentages of students can successfully solve problems of types they have been taught to solve, let alone problems they are not familiar with
– a significant percentage of students hate their mathematics courses

We face some big questions that are challenging to answer:
– What is the problem with mathematics education today?
– What are we going to do to address it?
This is the problem that math teachers and curriculum designers must solve.

If students are to be able to solve problems of types they have not necessarily seen before, they need the ability to transfer their knowledge and skills to new domains. Yet, most of mathematics education today focuses on Continue reading Grant Wiggins on Mathematics Education

Game-like Engagement

A New York Times Magazine article titled “Games Theory” (September 19, 2010) mentioned some interesting points:

– “going to school can and should be more like playing a game, which is to say it could be made more participatory, more immersive and also, well, fun.”

– One way to “make school more relevant and engaging” to those who find it boring and are therefore at risk of dropping out is “to stop looking so critically at the way children use media and to start exploring how that energy might best be harnessed to help drive them academically”

– Games provide “‘failure-based learning,’ in which failure is brief, surmountable, often exciting and therefore not scary.” Students will “Fail until they win.”

– “Failure in an academic environment is depressing. Failure in a video game is pleasant. It’s completely aspirational.”

– “When it comes to capturing and keeping Continue reading Game-like Engagement

The Purpose of High School Mathematics

The 2011 Anja S. Greer Conference on Secondary School Mathematics at Phillips Exeter Academy provided many opportunities to hears others’ ideas about the purpose of our High School Mathematics Curriculum.  Some of the statements I noted were (with apologies that none are exact quotes, and my lack of attribution on some):

In life, not to mention just about any academic subject, students should question information they come across, then work to support or refute it using numbers as needed.

Quantitative situations can be found in poems, literature, environmental claims, social justice issues, and social service needs.  We teach mathematics so that students can decide for themselves whether the quantities involved make sense or not.  Ray Williams (St. Mark’s School, Perth, AU) presentation.

Let the students ask Continue reading The Purpose of High School Mathematics

Re-thinking Our High School Math Curriculum

Nils Ahbel of Deerfield Academy gave a thought provoking presentation at the 2011 Anja S. Greer Conference on Secondary School Mathematics (held at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH) on the history and potential future of the American High School mathematics curriculum.  The Prezi that he used to illustrate his talk can be found here.

As I recall, his core points about the state of things today were that:

– our curriculum has remained largely unchanged for 119 years (witness the content of the textbook whose pages fill the number 8 in his prezi).

– the current goal of most high school curricula is to Continue reading Re-thinking Our High School Math Curriculum