Week 2: Problem posing and solving

[Maria Droujkova]

Hello,

We are now entering Week 2 of the course, with the topic of problem posing. You will find the maps to this week's adventures here: http://ed526b.wikispaces.com/Week+2

I am quite impressed with what we have accomplished in the first week. I summarized ideas from your blogs and all the media you found and made a Wikipedia article about multiple representations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_representations_%28mathematics_education%29
One of this week's tasks is to improve the article.

We can't refer to our new blogs on Wikipedia, so I also made a page on our class wiki acknowledging people's contributions to the article: http://ed526b.wikispaces.com/Multiple+Representations
Among the thirteen of us, there was a lot going on in the first week!

There will be more live events listed later in the week. Some communities send notifications just a day or two before their events.

Talk to you soon!

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

[sam morrison]

Maria, I love your posting discussing the differences between exercises and problems. I think the main distinction is as follows: exercises are exactly what they sound like. I like to think of a professional athelete who must stay in shape to remain at the top of his/her game. It's all about repetition. Consider a baseball pitcher that pitches how ever many balls each day. It's like this in math. Exercises are those activities that repeat basic skills so that we can move on to problems. I loved Dan Meyer's piece on patient problem solving. Solving problems requires having the basic skills acquired while "exercising." It's higher level thinking.   As far as which students require more exercise as opposed to more practice? I believe that students who come to, let's say 8th grade, performing at a 5th grade level, need more exercises in order to bring them to the place they need to be. Again, it's all about repetition. I believe it is only through repeating exercises that these students will be able to suceed and move on to that next level. Not that they are unable to solve problems, but they must first acquire the basic skills that will allow them to be prepared; because a "problem" is just that, something that needs to be figured out using the skills or knowledge that came prior to the problem--very similar to life.    I will post this once I figure out how. Thanks again for your patience.   Best,   Sam Morrison --- On Mon, 7/19/10, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote: