I've been working my way through the 9^th Carnival of Education which pointed me to Mentor Matters exhibit. She wonders "how and why do teaching strategies common to the first grade classroom get blacklisted?" She goes on to say:

We got to this discussion because in meetings with upper level grade teachers, it became clear that our students’ basic math facts skills are weak. The idea about conducting daily Mad Minute timed practice tests came up as one intervention strategy. One of the veteran teachers remembered several years back teachers were told not to time kids; timing caused a stir among parents and therefore, some school leaders. So no more Mad Minute.

Brian J. Beck, an Engineering student, comments: "The problem is that you need that basic arithmetic as a stepping stone to understanding higher level concepts, and also for use in science." I couldn't agree more.

In all the classes I teach I explicitly tell my students we begin each unit learning the algebraic massage necessary to solve more interesting problems. Some examples:

• »Exponents and Logarithms .... "Y'know how scientists say one dinosaur lived 1.5 billion years ago but this other one lived 2 billion years ago? Well, how do they know? Were they there?"
• »Probability .... "Y'know how when you go to the doctor for a really important test and you call him up for the results and he says: Well, we have to do some more tests. Why are doctors so cagey?
• »Differential Equations .... "Y'know how on all those police shows the coroner arrives at a murder scene and says to the detectives: The victim was murdered yesterday between 2:00 and 2:15 am. How does she know that?

These questions and more are answered at the end of each unit. But in order to get there we first have to learn the basic skills. Work through the blood, sweat and tears of manipulating the numbers and learning the basic calculations necessary to answer those questions. Students need competance and confidence with basic skills before we can even discuss sophisticated concepts and applications in more interesting problems.

To all of you teaching kids in the younger grades. Please, please, please don't give up the Mad Minute. You're giving them one of the special gifts only a teacher can give: the tools for success in the grades that follow; you're making a difference.

All's quiet on the wiki front. I'm not happy about that. It generated a little excitement when I first published it. I got email from couple of teachers who thought it was a great idea and wanted to join in the fun. Both also said they would be passing on the address to other folks they know and I'm confident they did. But if you go look at the recent changes on the wiki .... there are none except the ones I've made.

Hmmm .... how to make this technology work. Accessability isn't the issue; the wiki's wide open and all my students have internet access at home or at school. I read some comments over at Bud The Teacher's wiki that perhaps people were hesitant to edit someone else's work. Maybe that's an issue here. The students see it as my wiki, not theirs. Ok, so how do I convince them that it really is theirs? Maybe the issue is my own impatience; maybe they need more time to absorb and accomodate the technology; more time to reflect on what or how they wish to contribute?

Maybe I set it up all wrong. Essentially, I took the learning outcomes prescribed for each unit and pasted them as headings in each unit's wikipage. Maybe I need to give them a different sort of prompt to get things going.

I recently posted about the wealth of things to learn in Alan Levine's post on the Learning Objects workshop he facilitated. Tonight I tumbled down the rabbit hole to this article excerpted below (emphasis mine):

To truly empower students within collaborative or coconstructed activities requires the teacher to relinquish some degree of control over those activities. The instructor’s role shifts to that of establishing contexts or setting up problems to engage students. In a wiki, the instructor may set the stage or initiate interactions, but the medium works most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process.

Epiphany! That's it! Maybe I have gone about this all wrong. Instead of posting a dry list of learning outcomes I'll post one or two interesting problems that we learn how to solve in each unit. The students would then be challenged to solve the problem. In the process, they would have to explain the steps they took to do so, including:

• »all calculations done. They should be annotated so that another student who missed class the day the material was taught would be able to replicate the work. [basic skills, low level thinking]
• »what do the numbers mean? Interpret the results in light of the problem given. [applications, higher order thinking]

I don't know if this is the solution but it's worth a try. I'll try to get started this weekend; get some feedback from the kids next week and see if it makes a difference.

Wow! I smiled for 15 minutes straight. Great teaching tips from a teacher par excellence as described by a former student .... 25 years later!. Mr. Cappucci; I've never met him, but what an impact he made! Something to aspire to ....

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Check out the 9^th Carnival of Education. There are gems in every edition.

I wish I could work in the same building as Alan Levine. Not only because I think he's a brilliant teacher but also because he's regularly involved in facilitating exciting and innovative professional development opportunities for educators.

Two days ago he blogged about a Dialogue Day on Learning Objects, Wikis, And Other Curious Things; a full day workshop on learning objects. That particular post is rich with links to learn from. I clipped a copy of it in my Bloglines account and still haven't finished reading through all the facinating things Alan points to. Each link I followed lead me down a rabbit hole of curious things to learn about.

Alan invited Brian Lamb from the University of British Columbia to lead the workshop. One of the coolest things Brian did was to set up a wiki with a page titled MuddiestPoint: "our mid day check in on what participants want to learn more about." Sometime during the morning sessions the workshop participants all had a chance to edit that page. Brian then addressed those issues in the afternoon sessions. It's not just the content that's amazing, it's the medium!

Another reason I like Alan Levine is that he likes Canadians. ;-)

Alan and Brian are two teachers making a difference .... I wonder if we could get them to come to my school .... what a great day that would be!

Not too long ago I made my first audioblog or podcast. The tenor of my comments were that I saw only limited benefits to audioblogging and in fact felt as though there was greater learning value in writing. This evening I came across this article at Apple Hot News some of which is reproduced below:

The entire Duke University class of 2008 received Apple iPod digital devices as part of a university initiative to encourage creative uses of technology in education and campus life. This mix of pop culture, information technology and pedagogy has generated enormous interest from other educators as well as news media.

Here's another article about how Duke University is using iPods.

Hmmm .... rethinking my position ....

About a week ago I stumbled across The Education Wonks Carnival of Education. I had the good fortune to have one of my posts here publicized there in the eighth edition of the carnival. Next week brings the ninth edition. Check it out for a variety of differenct perspectives from the edublogosphere. EduWonk's invitation is reproduced here:

An Invitation: All writers and readers of education-related posts are invited to contribute to the ninth edition of The Carnival of Education. Please send your submissions to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net. We should receive your contributions no later than 10:00 PM (Pacific) Tuesday, April 5, 2005. The Carnival midway will open here at the 'Wonks Wednesday morning. Get our easy-to-follow entry guidelines here. View the latest edition of the Carnival there.

You might also want to consider submitting a post from your own blog....

Nancy McKeon has a post over at Random Thoughts that raises an issue I think math teachers all over the world face:

I suspect the problem goes far beyond our country's minority population. I see it in the students in the college where I teach. Many of the students do not come to college prepared to do college level math. I am talking here about white male students coming out of Louisiana high schools.

As the article says, we have to do something to improve math instruction and help all our students with math. The decision at my school has been to lower expectations. We will no longer require students to take a college algebra class, opting to offer a more "practical" type of math instead.

Somehow, I don't think that is the answer.

To be flip, I think the "answer" is to raise the bar, not lower it. Not being so flip, the answer is more multifaceted. We've had a similar problem at my school and we've decided to tackle it on several fronts.

Encourage more students to take advanced math. Success is most dependant on effort and the willingness to learn.

Improved student performance through better pedagogy. We learn from each other by observing each other's classes. We collectively implement a research based teaching strategy each year. We choose and deliver workshops to each other. (Teaching strategies, overcoming test anxiety, whatever we determine our students need from us.) And we market and encouage students to sign up for AP courses.

We've also reached out to our Jr. High feeder schools to work collaboratively. Toward this end we have a full day workshop together, just the math folks, once each year .... well .... actually, this is year 1. ;-)

Anyway, that's the plan. Time will tell if it makes a difference.

Nancy also says that her school is looking at offering "a more practical type of math" course in the place of algebra. That's not such a bad idea. Not every high school student will go on to post secondary studies or pursue a career that requires knowledge of advanced math. I think these students most need to know the mathematics necessary to be responsible citizens: probability and statistics.

In Manitoba all students take the same math course from K-9. In grades 10-12 they self select one of three paths: Precalculus (exactly what it sounds like), Applied Math (the focus is on solving problems in context with the aid of technology so that students can focus on understanding and working with mathematical concepts), and Consumer Math (has a little bit of algebra and trig but mostly focuses on the mathematics of income and debt, mortgages, investments, statistics, taxation, etc.). There are problems with this system, but it does have the virtue of recognizing that students pursuing different career paths require different types of mathematical knowledge.

Another thing that would really help this situation would be college and university professors communicating to curriculum designers exactly what skills they find students lacking and help the high school curriculum designers create a curriculum that matches the needs they identify.

Our curriculum is about to go through another major revision. I understand that there has been a consultation among educational professionals at the different levels. I hope the result is a positive one.