Wind Map

Wind Map during Hurricane Sandy, October 30, 2012

My friend, Michael Lye, just showed me a live wind map you can access online at http://hint.fm/wind/

The above picture is a saved image of the wind map during Hurricane Sandy.

School is starting soon. This would be something to put up on the screen as students enter the room. Ask them questions like...

What do you notice?
What do you wonder?
What information are you being given?
How do you interact with the map?
How was this map created? What do you think the creators needed to know and be able to do?
When would you most like to look at this map?
If you had created the wind map, how would you have done it differently?
What other data might lend itself to being displayed in a similar way? 

On Productive Failure

Here is a 7 minute video of a young math major, Elly Schofield. She reflects on her K-12 mathematics education, and the disconnect between that and the mathematics she encountered in college.

Educon 2015

I can see why many Educon attendees remarked that they’d spent their own money to be there. The conference, held at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia is that good. It was an eclectic group of out-of-the-box thinkers, innovators, and activists. I knew I wanted to go when I saw Chris Lehmann, founding principal of the SLA, speak in Killington last year.

I was a first-timer. Day one was spent at the school - a public high school that is an inquiry-driven, project school - in partnership with the Franklin Institute. I and a few of my colleagues found a student to guide us. She patiently walked us to different classes where we watched, listened, and sat with students to chat. Students in one class passionately explained a project in which they protested the closing of a huge number of Philadelphia public schools. Students in Doug Herman’s photography class told me what they’d learned about composition and layering and why they were in the photography room even though it was actually their lunchtime. In Algebra II they had designed a catapult to hit a target and were typing a reflection about their group process. I was hooked.

Then, of course, there were many great workshops, Ignite talks, and side conversations on Saturday and Sunday. Here are some of the people I met and learned from, along with some quotes and resources.

A highlight of the conference for me and many others, I’m sure, was Raghava KK, the effervescent, charming presenter and self-proclaimed TED whore. Here’s a 4 minute TED on bias and perspectives in history. He helped me remember what it means to be truly creative. You don’t matter, he said to all the educators in the room. Art should be the medium by which stem is taught... Art is how you teach everything... Incorporate visual literacy in everything you do.

Every disagreement is a chance to learn about a different perspective.

Raghava’s co-presenter, Meenoo Rami, an SLA teacher, hosted this session in her classroom. After meeting her, I was sorry I hadn’t made it to her class on Friday.

Diana Laufenberg, of SLA, led a workshop on school transformation and Joni and I sat with a Eric Dale from the Dwight School in NYC and Andrew Gallagher of the NYC Department of Education. We enjoyed hearing about Eric and Andrew's work, marveling over the vastness of the NYC school system. Diana recommended the book Immunity to Change.

Deterritorialize departments. Get away from content and move to skills.

Jamie Gravell shared a collection of articles on Inequity in Education.

The one thing I wish I'd known about was this idea of transformational resistance.

Is the student trying to transform the environment in some way instead of doing something wrong?

Math and Social Justice, was a session I didn’t attend, but wanted to. Thank you for posting these resources.

Burlington High School (Massachusetts) has a course called Help Desk. See their great website here, which was presented by female STEM enthusiasts on their way to becoming engineers.

There was a really cool panel I was late for. I liked the conversation that was happening when I arrived, which included comments from Otis Hackney, Principal of South Philadelphia High School.

When people say ‘they don't have the background knowledge’, I say, it is your job to give them the background knowledge they need! If they walked in already knowing everything, they don't need us. As an educator you have a job to do.

What if you had a school with mostly white students and all black teachers, what would that be like?

David Jakes, Imagining Digital Spaces for Learning. In groups, we designed a digital learning space, but we were not allowed to discuss any specific tools. Anyone who is working in or redesigning a school should read Toolkit for Designing a Digital Atelier.

Have you intentionally designed a space that intentionally supports your vision of learning?

How do you design a physical space for an increasingly virtual education?

Last but not least, I was in a wonderful session called Shifting the Focus: Elevating Student Voices led by students and their teachers, Josh Block and Amal Giknis. First, the students shared their projects and then we were asked to create an “education manifesto” in 30 minutes that could be posted to twitter with hashtag #focusonvoice. The students were so open and passionate in their presentations and then were so effective as they came around to help us with our assignment...this session is one that has really stuck with me. I was fortunate enough to sit with Renee Hawkins, a very thoughtful educator from a school in Baltimore.

I don’t know how I’ll stay away from Educon next year. I had my mind blown by great thinkers, got to spend time with beloved colleagues, and had my first taste of a grapefruit brulee doughnut from Federal Donuts. As Raghava said, Don’t mess with passion.

Sugata Mitra: School in the Cloud

Sugata Mitra recently won the TED Prize for 2013. His wish is to build a virtual school where children learn from each other.

Well, I bumped into this whole thing completely by accident. I used to teach people how to write computer programs in New Delhi, 14 years ago. And right next to where I used to work, there was a slum. And I used to think, how on Earth are those kids ever going to learn to write computer programs? Or should they not? At the same time, we also had lots of parents, rich people, who had computers, and who used to tell me, "You know, my son, I think he's gifted, because he does wonderful things with computers. And my daughter -- oh, surely she is extra-intelligent." And so on. So I suddenly figured that, how come all the rich people are having these extraordinarily gifted children? (Laughter) What did the poor do wrong? I made a hole in the boundary wall of the slum next to my office, and stuck a computer inside it just to see what would happen if I gave a computer to children who never would have one, didn't know any English, didn't know what the Internet was. - Sugata Mitra

The Future of STEM Education

Hear Professor Roni Ellington’s inspirational talk from TEDxBaltimore, 2013.

Fly with math

This is my new favorite TED Talk. It's called Vijay Kumar: Robots that fly...and cooperate. It is one of the best I’ve seen. UPenn researchers have created mini helicopters so elegantly programmed that they function autonomously and can work together. You must watch the entire 16 minutes. Use this to inspire and motivate students, and to help keep math relevant.

Being Less Helpful

Less helpful. That is Dan Meyer’s tag line on his blog. He is a high school math teacher who says we must give students more time and less help in solving real math problems.

Here is an excerpt from Dan’s talk entitled Math Class Needs a Makeover:
David Milch, creator of "Deadwood" and other amazing TV shows...swore off creating contemporary drama, shows set in the present day, because he saw that when people fill their mind with four hours a day of, for example, "Two and a Half Men," no disrespect, it shapes the neural pathways, he said, in such a way that they expect simple problems. He called it, "an impatience with irresolution." You're impatient with things that don't resolve quickly. You expect sitcom-sized problems that wrap up in 22 minutes, three commercial breaks and a laugh track. And I'll put it to all of you, what you already know, that no problem worth solving is that simple. I am very concerned about this because I'm going to retire in a world that my students will run. I'm doing bad things to my own future and well-being when I teach this way. I'm here to tell you that the way our textbooks -- particularly mass-adopted textbooks -- teach math reasoning and patient problem solving, it's functionally equivalent to turning on "Two and a Half Men" and calling it a day.

Right now I am taking a fantastic class with Sandi Stanhope about math problem-solving in elementary school. She frequently mentions the need to “sit on our hands”. We’re so used to teaching, guiding, instructing, that we deprive students of the opportunity to develop into competent problem-solvers and mathematicians. Our homework for Sandi’s class is to pose appropriately challenging problems to our students and then to encourage them to solve them in whatever way makes sense to them. We work on our ability to ask good questions and to facilitate high-quality dialogue among students rather than to front-load students with algorithms and strategies we hope to see.

So far, it has been incredible to work with students this way and to hear others in the class describe their experiences doing the same. Our students tend to pleasantly surprise us with when we let them. They also demonstrate the ability to work long and hard on a single problem when we allow and encourage that.

Be Less Helpful can be applied to homework as well. If you find yourself very involved in a young person’s homework, it might be time to take a step back and rethink things. I have applied this principle to my involvement in my own children’s homework. I find I am still helpful and supportive, but just in different (better) ways.

In Sandi’s class, we’re using a book by Larry Buschman called Share & Compare. I highly recommend it. Buschman has also written many great articles in NCTM’s Teaching Children Mathematics magazine.               

I'll close with Buschman's two most important discoveries as a teacher:
Teachers give themselves teachable moments by carefully listening to children.
Teachers give children magic moments by letting go.

Math > Calculation

This morning I found a New York Times article about using calculators on exams like the SAT, GRE, etc. It led me to Conrad Wolfram's TED Talk entitled "Teaching kids real math with computers", which I have embedded below. It is well worth taking the 17 minutes to watch it.

The title is misleading; it seems like you'll be hearing about doing our usual classroom stuff with technology instead of paper. Don't be fooled: Wolfram's talk is about boldly rethinking and reinventing mathematics education.

Hyperbolic Space

Poincaré disc model of hyperbolic space from fractalsciencekit.com

Margaret Wertheim gave this interesting lecture called "The Beautiful Math of Coral".

  

She does a thorough job of explaining the math of hyperbolic space here on her website, the Institute for Figuring. There are photos of the gorgeous crocheted coral reefs, too.

In her words...

The Crochet Reef Project was inspired by the technique of hyperbolic crochet originally developed by Dr Daina Taimina, a mathematician at Cornell. In 1997 Dr Taimina discovered how to make models of the geometry known as "hyperbolic space" using the art of crochet. Until that time many mathematicians believed it was impossible to construct physical models of hyperbolic forms; yet nature had been doing just that for hundreds of millions of years. It turns out that many marine organisms embody hyperbolic geometry in their anatomies - among them kelps, corals, sponges, sea slugs and nudibranchs. Thus the Crochet Reef not only looks like a coral reef, it draws on the same underlying geometry endemic in the oceanic realm.

There are very good reasons why marine organisms take on hyperbolic forms: this geometry is a marvelous way to maximize surface area in a limited volume, thereby providing greater opportunity for filter feeding by stationary organisms.

An unidentified folded coral in Flynn Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef, near Cairns, Queensland, Australia. By Toby Hudson.

Crochet works because it is an easy way to increase stitches in each row to produce ruffling. I haven’t crocheted since childhood, but I do remember increasing stitches when I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe I should try a coral reef. 

Math and Image

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the role of images in mathematics. When it was time to create fliers for upcoming elementary school Math Nights, I decided to forgo the usual clip art. I used some mathematical images, including Sierpinski’s Triangle and a fractal tree like the one shown here. I’m happy with the way the fliers turned out.

Professor Tim Whiteford blogged about these fliers and more in a post entitled “Sierpinski and the Joys of Learning Math”. Says Tim, “...communicating the aesthetic component of math, [is] a critically important element if we are ever going to help students enjoy math for what it is, the science of pattern. Imagine learning to read and write without poetry, fiction, literature and creative writing? Imagine if the only thing we learned in language arts was the ability to read directions and write formal descriptions? Imagine if reading and writing were reduced to a purely utilitarian function?”

Teachers often use more than words and numerals to teach mathematics. They incorporate image and structure by encouraging students to work with manipulatives, make towers, draw tesselations, and create patterns. In light of this good work, should we continue to explore creative ways of teaching math? I think so.

Matthew Peterson discusses how language can get in the way of math in his TED talk called “Teaching Math Without Words”. In this 8 minute video we get a glimpse of a software program designed to show math with pictures. I found the software visuals intriguing, as are other apps and interactive math websites (i.e. a Tetris-like game called Factor-tris). As I watched the video, I found myself wanting to defend the role of language and dialogue in mathematics education but Matthew beat me to it. He shared a poignant story about a student with autism finding richer language as a result of his work with the math program.

A great companion to Matthew Peterson is Temple Grandin’s “The World Needs All Kinds of Minds”. If you haven’t read her book, Thinking in Pictures, you can get the gist in this 16 minute TED Talk. Temple mentions math, saying “You see, the autistic mind tends to be a specialist mind. Good at one thing, bad at something else. And where I was bad was algebra. And I was never allowed to take geometry or trig. Gigantic mistake. I'm finding a lot of kids who need to skip algebra, go right to geometry and trig.” Temple is one of my heroes. I love what she has to say about her visual thinking and I love the embroidery on her quirky western shirts.