Fail quickly

[Maria Droujkova]

Research on new education methods, if it attempts quantification at all, goes like:

- On the average, the test scores increased by 45% in the treatment group, compared to 25% in the control group
or
- 45% of the treatment students achieved success, compared to 25% of the control students

There are certain assumptions behind these studies - namely, that everybody will use the same method. What I would like to see, instead, is something like:

- This method has been successful with 5% of the students. Here is a reliable way to quickly try the method to determine to these 5%.

Some of my favorite methods of learning math - such as computer programming, art and music projects, origami, engineering, storytelling - work exceptionally well for small minorities of students and don't work at all for the rest.

We need to quickly try a plethora of methods, fail at the most of them painlessly and quickly, and select the few that work for future continuing use.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

[Brenda Weiss]

I love this idea!  Also needed: a faster way of finding the plethora of methods.

How about

- If you're wanting to teach x, here are all the methods that have been used.  Method a works with __%, method b works with __%.  Or grouped by thinking styles to predict likelihood of matching success with student.

This reminds me of the posters you've been creating, Maria, with ways to teach multiplication.

Brenda

[Sue VanHattum]

I like that idea, Maria! Getting away from the factory model... (May I use this in the book? I think I'd put it in the introduciton to the last section.)

Warmly,
Sue

---

From: drou...@gmail.com
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 09:56:57 -0400
Subject: [NaturalMath] Fail quickly
To: natur...@googlegroups.com

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[loren...@aol.com]

Another useful idea for practical applications might be to look if there is a correlation between effectiveness among the various methods.  Schools look for a one-size fits all method because it is impractical for teachers to spend class time on a method that will only benefit 5% of the class at any given time.  If instead we can find a correlation between different methods, we can base math groups on the kind of strategy that is effective for that type of learner, rather than on topic and the teacher can direct attention towards the groups based on what is effective for that group.  Ie, if we know can find a correlation among methods there may be a profile to identify students.  ie, if origami works with a student, we know that this whole group of methods will also work, that way the teacher can come up with a curriculum for that student.  Otherwise even a quick to fail model will only work in a 1:1 setting.  It is unfortunate that the classroom model has both positive and negative aspects... one of the negative drawbacks is that it can be difficult to fit a unique curriculum to each student.

This may go back to the old audio, visual, and kinesthetic learner models.  Those models failed to produce the kind of results one would expect because letting the teacher know that the majority of thier students would learn from visual, a small amount would learn kinesthetically, and the balance would learn from listening just meant the teacher would spend most of their time in visual and audio with a tiny portion devoted to kinesthetic learners.  This model failed horribly because although a student's learning model was identified, it didn't change the methods used to teach them...   Instead, the classrooms must be organized according to learning type so that students are in classrooms that will devote the majority of the time to their learning style the majority of the day.  A visual class, an audio class and a kinesthetic class. 

I think this may be applicable here because the origami learners might prove to be kinesthetic learners, as storytelling learners are most likely audio learners, etc.  This may give us a fast track way to know which methods will work for any given student.

The problems for much research is that it doesn't make it to practical application in the classroom.  Back in the 1980's there was a study that teenagers learn better if their day starts up to 2 hours later than their younger counterparts in Elementary school.  My old district still starts elementary at 8:55 and middle school at 7:35, though after many years they finally shifted HS forward an hour, (though that resulted in shifting middle school earlier by an hour).  The research was trumped by the fact that the district used the same buses for all of the schools and that those schedules were set around the scheduling practicalities of parents heading out to work - not the natural circadian rhythms of the respective ages of kids in each school.

Here in LA, front line educators protested vehemently against merging the 6th graders into the old junior HS to create middle schools.  6th graders are not yet ready for that kind of autonomy and kids who have borderline learning disabilities are still being identified.  However, LAUSD joined in on the money-saving bandwagon of middle schools to disastrous results for the kids.  Indeed, middle school is where many kids seem to hit a wall and slide through the crevices.  Being shuffled between 6 or more teachers over the course of the day, each of which may have a hundred students or more (once you add all the sections) nobody gets a good enough look to see fundamental problems that may otherwise become evident.  Likewise, kids are divided among classes based on test scores 2 or 3 years old (since classes are assigned prior to the release of test scores) and kids who have received special services may not have the benefit of those services reflected in those grades.  LAUSD won't even test for dyslexia (a very common learning disability) until the later elementary grades whereby the child's scores are still reflecting the disability and not their true aptitude.  I've attended dozens of LAUSD meetings where they laud progress in elementary and high school and admit that middle school is just awful, yet they never go back to restructure their mistake.

I don't mean to digress, but even with the best methods and research, techniques must be applicable to 'on the ground' education situations.  Districts must balance the realities of budget, and stakeholders (parents, teachers, state bureaucrats, and others) in meeting the needs of a group that doesn't truly have adequate representation in the decision-making process and is often ignorant of both the research available and the machinery in place to supposedly 'help' them get through the factory.

Loren 

[Roland O'Daniel]

Maria, 

I don't normally weigh in, but I do love this approach for forming new approaches, but do have the concern that some new approaches take time to develop. We all know the implementation dip concept, that might cause us to drop new approaches because teachers and students aren't comfortable with the new approaches/strategies/routines. 

I'm currently working with teachers on a blended instruction model (60% face to face, 40% computer based) and it takes a full year for the teachers to get comfortable being able to deal with all of the nuances (questioning, very intentional reflection/synthesis, students creating examples/models, students learning to investigate/explore applets). 

I this case, I think it is worthwhile considering to have teachers spend two years with the model before we consider ditching this approach. I don't know that this approach will have significant impact on all learners, but it does offer students a very intentional individual learning environment that allows them to explore or receive remediation. I think it is the basis for an excellent tier 2 model for mathematics. 

Thanks for all of your incredible thinking, 

Roland 

 

--

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 12:35 PM, <loren...@aol.com> wrote:

Another useful idea for practical applications might be to look if there is a correlation between effectiveness among the various methods.  Schools look for a one-size fits all method because it is impractical for teachers to spend class time on a method that will only benefit 5% of the class at any given time.  If instead we can find a correlation between different methods, we can base math groups on the kind of strategy that is effective for that type of learner, rather than on topic and the teacher can direct attention towards the groups based on what is effective for that group.

Loren,

What a splendidly practical approach! And now that you mention is, there are good news: collecting information about these correlations can be crowd-sourced.

I actually tried to implement something like it that last year in that Family Multiplication Study. The inspiration comes from Amazon.com collecting "if you liked this book, you will love that book" data. At this point in history, the pedagogical knowledge is probably not sufficient to generalize to methods, even - we have to collect correlations by particular material authors or even units. But once you find one method you like, correlations will help you navigate to others, which works good enough with books.

This may go back to the old audio, visual, and kinesthetic learner models.  Those models failed to produce the kind of results one would expect because letting the teacher know that the majority of thier students would learn from visual, a small amount would learn kinesthetically, and the balance would learn from listening just meant the teacher would spend most of their time in visual and audio with a tiny portion devoted to kinesthetic learners.  This model failed horribly because although a student's learning model was identified, it didn't change the methods used to teach them...   Instead, the classrooms must be organized according to learning type so that students are in classrooms that will devote the majority of the time to their learning style the majority of the day.  A visual class, an audio class and a kinesthetic class. 

I think the models don't work because the category of "visual learner" etc. are way too broad. People probably fall into thousands of different overlapping correlation categories. Amazon.com does not make those book offers based on the past behavior of customers by genres.

I think this may be applicable here because the origami learners might prove to be kinesthetic learners, as storytelling learners are most likely audio learners, etc.  This may give us a fast track way to know which methods will work for any given student.

Well, I know that people who like origami are more likely to also like macrame (and both topology and knot theory in math). However, I love origami and I am a pretty sequential, step-by-step learner and reasoner. My visual skills are spotty at best. I am attracted to origami precisely because every fold holds a bit of a surprise for me, is that much more of a puzzle, as I can't reason through steps visually till I make a fold many times. Same with weaving.

The problems for much research is that it doesn't make it to practical application in the classroom.  Back in the 1980's there was a study that teenagers learn better if their day starts up to 2 hours later than their younger counterparts in Elementary school.  My old district still starts elementary at 8:55 and middle school at 7:35, though after many years they finally shifted HS forward an hour, (though that resulted in shifting middle school earlier by an hour).  The research was trumped by the fact that the district used the same buses for all of the schools and that those schedules were set around the scheduling practicalities of parents heading out to work - not the natural circadian rhythms of the respective ages of kids in each school.

I hope classroom style learning will take its "respectable minority" place, at 10-15% of educational settings, among other methods of administration. Then, maybe, the listening skills of everyone involved improve, or else the few early birds among teens will self-select for that method of learning, etc.

[loren...@aol.com]

I almost included a comment on global vs. sequential learners when I mentioned audio, visual, kinesthetic.  I don't know if you're familiar with the personality matrix that compares intuitive/feeling, thinking, judgemental, intravert, extravert etc.  But I'd imagine that one can graph A,V, K against sequential/linear and global, etc. to come up with a similar matrix.  Another dimension might be intrinsically motivated, high self-discipline and those needing more structure and support.  Not a perfect solution, but it would facilitate a crude grouping that may work enough to give the field some practical applications in the classroom, which is where the vast majority of students learn math.  Independant group study's are nice for research, but let's face it, kids with wealthy or involved parents will always have a help up.  For math to reach everyone, it needs to reach down to the kid who is dropped off at school at 7am, transfers to an after school program at 3pm or heads to 4 hours of burger flipping before going home to do homework at 8.  That is the group that most needs inspiration and is also likely to be least responsive to the status quo (since both learning disabilities and IQ both carry genetic components but can be influenced by environment).  While parents are most interested in knowing what will help their kids, schools need programs that can be implemented within the current structure, because for the vast number of kids who are not home schooled or unschooled, that factory is not going away.

Loren

PS.  FYI - I HIGHLY recommend the book, "Freakonomics", by Levitt and Dubner.  Levitt uses statistical data to push past mere correlations to find causation and explores many pressing questions in our everyday world.  He loosely quantifies the human interactions of motivation, and incentive in surprisingly areas of life. Levitt does not have privy to special data, but he has a better understanding than most of how to use the data available to find information that is not just interesting (correlations) but actually useful (causation)

-----Original Message-----
From: Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com>
To: natur...@googlegroups.com

[Carol Cross]

In relation to the point that knowing student's learning styles
doesn't improve education unless teachers expand their teaching
styles--I read a report a while ago that studied school teachers'
Myers-Briggs personality styles (introvert/extrovert, sensing/
intuitive, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving) and found that
the great majority of teachers were sensing and thinking styles, with
additional prevalence towards judging and, I think, introversion.
That kind of personality style does really well within the meta-rules
of traditional education--that is, they like close-ended, structured
learning activities, going from bits to whole, working independently
rather than collaboratively, having a single sequenced path to reach a
specific goal, engaging with material intellectually (rather than
kinesthetically or emotionally), having an objective outside authority
give them feedback about their performance, all that kind of stuff.
So, basically, this study suggests, our ancestor educators set up a
system that served their particularly personality style well, but
doesn't work particularly well for, say, predominant feelers, who need
to have an emotional involvement with their subjects, or predominant
perceivers, who like to color outside the lines and explore far afield
from the initial subject at hand.

My point is that individual educators can try to diversify their
educational methods within their classrooms, but the entire
educational structure is predisposed towards supporting some kinds of
personality styles and not others.

Carol

____________________________________
Interested in knowing more about early adolescents (ages 10-14)?
Check out Teaching Your Middle Schooler at
http://www.teachingyourmiddleschooler.com

[Hull, Karen]

This year, I will be teaching 6th and 8th grade math, including two inclusion classes (half will have some sort of learning disability and a specialist will be in the room). I am on a team that received one of the ARRA grants. My class will have wireless laptops which I really want to utilize but most of the training the state has given us has a lot of theory and what/why we should do things differently, nothing math specific. I still need a lot of help knowing how to integrate our state standards, differentiate, and monitor what everyone is doing. My class sizes range from 24 to 32. I wish we had someone working with us the way it sounds like you are doing.

 

Karen Hull

6th and 8th Grade Mathematics

Eastern Heights Middle School

 

Mastering challenging mathematics is not just a classroom skill—it’s a life skill!

 

---

From: natur...@googlegroups.com [natur...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Roland O'Daniel [rlod...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 1:02 PM
To: natur...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [NaturalMath] Fail quickly

[Hull, Karen]

I really this idea. We are given very little planning time and I find myself staying at school until 6 (we are allowed to leave at 2:30) and still working at night and on weekends to try to create interactive lessons on my Smartboard and evaluating students' work. I really like the idea of putting the percentages.

 

As far as grouping, we haven't had any control on this. I came from an elementary school teaching 3rd and, more recently, 5th grade, before coming to our middle school to teach 6th grade two years ago. We have honors classes which this year will be changed so that there will be two levels, high honors for those gifted or testing advanced on Ohio Achievement Tests, and honors for students that are accelerated (category below advanced) and possibly for overachievers based on past teacher's recommendations. We also have inclusion classes but they often have 26-30 students with half or more with some type of learning disabilities. We do have a special education teacher co-teaching with us, but I know I don't utilize my co-teacher like I should. In my elementary class, there were usually only 5 or so special needs kids and the specialist would only be in my room for part of the time, basically helping students individually during the lesson. I'm getting adjusted to using a second teacher more, but I will be working with a different person for the third year in a row which makes it a little harder for me to give up my control.

 

I also am struggling this year with the way our schedule is changing from block scheduling to the typical junior high. Our block schedule gave us two days a week with 2 hours per class and the 5th day had 55 min. class periods where we would teach all of our classes once. From what I understand, I'll have 50 min. periods so I'll have each class for short times daily. During block scheduling, I had time to direct instruct, small group work, play games, use manipulatives, etc. I'm not sure how I'll be able to do this now. I also want to use technology more, including wireless laptops.

 

We'll see how it goes. I enjoy ready about the natural math activities and also enjoy the pop culture math blogs. I keep trying to find ways to reach all of my students, to get them excited about math no matter what their current ability, and to get them to grow beyond what they thought was possible, but what I know they can do. I'm hoping to see this plethora of methods you speak of, Brenda.

 

Karen Hull

6th and 8th Grade Mathematics

Eastern Heights Middle School

 

Mastering challenging mathematics is not just a classroom skill—it’s a life skill!

 

---

From: natur...@googlegroups.com [natur...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brenda Weiss [bjrw...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 10:06 AM

To: natur...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [NaturalMath] Fail quickly

[loren...@aol.com]

While teachers may be predisposed to have one personality type, students come in all 4 'flavors'.  I refered to meyer's Briggs (thank you I had forgotten the name) as an example of a matix that references a style.  If learning styles could be more precise, linear visual, or say, global kinesthetic, then it may be possible to group math students according to learning styles which could prove beneficial.

As for the educational ancestery, elementry schools were origionally set up to mass educate a populace who were primarily destined for factory work which is why the sytem can seem so factory like, even given the best efforts of educators.  High Schools were developed as preparatory schools for college that focused mostly on producing educators or other specialized professions (clergy, medical and legal specifically)  it is only in the past decades that it has become a goal for every student to go on to college, and quite unnecessary (if you ask me) many outstanding professions can and should best be learned on the job.  The near mandatory nature of a college degree has cheapened it's value in the marketplace and caused an entire generation to start out in life with tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary debt.  At the same time self-education (reading without a professor telling you how to digest the material) and other modes of life-long education outside the goal of a degree have become downplayed causing a sharp dividing point between the learning and earning periods of life.

L

PS, thank you to all the teachers and educators who contribute, I love hearing of what's happening in classrooms other than our own.

-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Cross <ccr...@mindspring.com>
To: natur...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Sat, Aug 14, 2010 1:12 pm
Subject: Re: [NaturalMath] Fail quickly

In relation to the point that knowing student's learning styles doesn't improve education unless teachers expand their teaching styles--I read a report a while ago that studied school teachers' Myers-Briggs personality styles (introvert/extrovert, sensing/intuitive, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving) and found that the great majority of teachers were sensing and thinking styles, with additional prevalence towards judging and, I think, introversion. That kind of personality style does really well within the meta-rules of traditional education--that is, they like close-ended, structured learning activities, going from bits to whole, working independently rather than collaboratively, having a single sequenced path to reach a specific goal, engaging with material intellectually (rather than kinesthetically or emotionally), having an objective outside authority give them feedback about their performance, all that kind of stuff. So, basically, this study suggests, our ancestor educators set up a system that served their particularly personality style well, but doesn't work particularly well for, say, predominant feelers, who need to have an emotional involvement with their subjects, or predominant perceivers, who like to color outside the lines and explore far afield from the initial subject at hand. 

 
My point is that individual educators can try to diversify their educational methods within their classrooms, but the entire educational structure is predisposed towards supporting some kinds of personality styles and not others. 
 
Carol 
 
____________________________________ 
Interested in knowing more about early adolescents (ages 10-14)? Check out Teaching Your Middle Schooler at 
http://www.teachingyourmiddleschooler.com 
 
 

--You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NaturalMath" group. 

[Brenda Weiss]

From Loren:

If instead we can find a correlation between different methods, we can base math groups on the kind of strategy that is effective ...

 

From Maria:

But once you find one method you like, correlations will help you navigate to others, which works good enough with books.

Correlations, yes.  I picture a branching web of correlations leading from one piece that works to others that might be a first priority to try, to others that might not be as intuitively obvious.  You can dive in at any point, and if you can find something that works, it leads to a whole group of other suggestions.

With regard to learning styles, I'm doing a quick turn-around.  As a homeschool mom of three, I try to be aware that we function better with lots of hands-on activities and  movement, interspersed with periods of quiet talk and reading.  We don't really have to know why an approach works to make use of it (fun question, and would be nice to know, but not necessary).

One of the points made by Thomas Armstrong in popularizing Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences for the youth audience is that when you find something you're good at, you can use it to help develop things you don't feel as strong in (You're Smarter Than You Think: A Kid's Guide to Multiple Intelligences).  If you can find an approach, a storyline, a game, an idea that works, it gives you a new tool for your learning toolbox, and may create the connection for something else that didn't make sense before.

Here's an example from physical science:  My 12-year-old daughter and I have been playing with black and white beans and quinoa grains representing protons, neutrons and electrons to understand atomic structure and the periodic table.  We talked about the electron cloud for each orbital as being the "neighborhood" where the electron with that energy was most likely to be.  (quick fail?)  When I described it as being like the range of paths a group of ballet dancers could take while staying out of the way of the principal dancers, something clicked.  Suddenly it made sense physically because she has been there.  Now we can look at pictures of electron clouds together and they start to have meaning.

Love the idea exchange!

Brenda

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Roland O'Daniel <rlod...@gmail.com> wrote:

Maria, 

I don't normally weigh in, but I do love this approach for forming new approaches, but do have the concern that some new approaches take time to develop. We all know the implementation dip concept, that might cause us to drop new approaches because teachers and students aren't comfortable with the new approaches/strategies/routines. 

Roland,

Thank you for raising this question! "Fail quickly," yes, but: HOW QUICKLY IS TOO QUICKLY?

Actually, most students (and many educators) I meet do not realize the extent of The Dip at all, and many don't know it exists. Alan Kay recently wrote about it, in an online conversation that led to inviting him for the Math 2.0 series a couple of weeks ago http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/Important+questions
He talks about a period of two to three years before educational experimenters can barely start getting valid data about a new approach, beyond the noise of early implementation.

This model applies to research think tanks, but for practitioners, it is hugely problematic. As a parent, there is NO WAY for me to spend three years figuring out what works for my child. The child will be in a totally different stage and the answer, "This did not work, after all" is never acceptable. Even three weeks is on the long side, let alone three years. We get better and more comfortable with time, but we have to be "comfortable enough" that our kids don't suffer meanwhile. As a group activity organizer, my tolerance for activities that don't work is even smaller, because there are more people involved.

The model I describe below has to do with Agile Development methodologies in software. I think about it as a system of filters, based on correlations like Loren and Brenda were describing in their letters (bottom-up), or better worked-out formal criteria like Meyers-Briggs Carol described (top-down). It's what I do as a math club organizer and as a homeschooling parent. It applies to activities I develop myself, and those I find "in the cloud." I would appreciate comments and criticisms.

• Level 0: cloud filtering - Fail to pay attention to most educational activities (out of hundreds of thousands existing and those you can make up), because there was nothing and nobody to recommend a glance.
  
• Level 1: bookmarking - Very few activities do recommend themselves through a correlation, human- or machine-made: a word from the trusted people of the PLN (personal learning network) or "Ten million viewers of this 5-star YouTube video can't be wrong" or Amazon's "If you liked this book, you will love that book" or the next game in a series from a beloved developer. In short, look for an idea that clicked with those ideas that previously worked well. Among such ideas, select a few to try, based on how rewarding are the process and the results of the activity.
  
• Level 2: quick trial - Rewards have an approximate timeline for reaping them. I am bold, maybe reckless, in the child-like rejection of, "You don't see any point in the exercise now, but you will appreciate the results ten years later." Some short-term rewards should be apparent to all participants within minutes or hours of starting an activity. This filters out about 95% of existing methods. Try remaining Level 2 activities for long enough that they "work as intended." If this means going too far out of the personal or group flow channels, reject the activity or send it back to Level 1 to try it later.
  
• Level 3: love and growth - Out of activities that worked as intended at Level 2, select a few you want to do again. That's where investigations and research of long-term benefits can happen. Use these activities as the basis for correlations at Level 1.

Level 0 fail takes no time or seconds, because the filtering is automated and happens as a by-product of doing other things. Level 1 rejections take minutes, Level 2 trials take hours. Level 3 consists of activities that did not fail quickly.

Carol Cross and I wrote an essay "Family Educator  Commons" that also explains this "agile filtering" from a different angle.



The infographic is based on:
"PLN" by Alec Couros via Terry Eberhart (link)
Tag cloud from Denise's "Let's Play Math!" (link)

~*~*~*~*~*
Here is my EDUCATION RESEARCH QUESTION

Are there systemic, long-term losses if activities that fail to show short-term, visible rewards to participants are very quickly rejected?

The current hypothesis is - NO.

MariaD

[Maria Droujkova]

Alan,

Thank you for this point. One may argue that in the case of writers skateboarders, the immediate reward is the "legitimate peripheral participation" in a cool community. As soon as you put your foot on the skateboard amongst your skating pals at the local ramp, you become one, even if you are a newbie. Writing is interesting in this regard, because there are distinct communities of writers (professionalized, money-related, high stakes for entry) and "ficcers" (informal, no entry barriers, everybody is invited). Again, as soon as you upload your first "fic" to a community, you are in. The "vertical" of being a skateboarder reaches all the way down to the very beginners who can't even skate yet.

In addition to what Montessori did for math, Suzuki for playing the violin, or what we are doing in families or clubs, working on extending the vertical of being a mathematician to little kids can be a way to address "the tough position." It felt somewhat painful to tell my club kids they probably can't put their sequences on http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/ without making them significantly more mathematically interesting. But projects like http://www.squeakland.org/ or even http://graphjam.com/ are welcoming everyone. In the last ten years, ways to peripherally participate and/or appreciate math, as a beginner, have been growing. Not enough yet, but getting somewhere, I hope.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Alan Kay <alan...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi Maria

Montessori had many great ideas about how to handle this.

One notion was that the "stuff" (she called them "apparati") in her classrooms should be seen as toys by the children, and that they should also have beneficial side-effects on learning and outlook. She would design these and make them (or have them made) and then put them in as part of the "toy shelves". If the children didn't like them as toys, she would remove them. If they did like them as toys, she would then do her longitudinal observations to see if her intended side-effects actually happened. If they didn't, she would remove them.

The San Francisco Exploratorium is a larger version of this (with less scrutiny for both issues, but with a much wider range of "apparati" for each idea).

I think it's very important to note that there is another very important category which isn't well served by the above good ideas -- and this is "ideas and stuff" which require quite a bit of learning and work, but then pay off in ways that simpler stuff can't.

A violin is an example, and there are many others. A milder one in the old days were bicycles, and perhaps today are skateboards. None of these give early rewards, and a lot of work is required to start getting rewards.

The goad on these examples is not whether the learner gets some reward early, but whether the learner can see the possibility of "the glory of" the long term reward. And, they generally acquire this imagination by watching others both do the activity, and for some kids, they see others getting huge praise for having mastered the tough activity.

From this standpoint, we can see the relative powers of the environment with regard to sports, especially difficult ones that are easy to get started on (so less convenient ones like tennis, and even baseball are losing ground), music (violins aren't a center of pop music, but guitars and drums are), and there is essentially nothing in the American environment that shows anything admirable and praiseworthy being done by readers and writers and mathematicians and most scientists and engineers.

This puts reading and writing, math and science (and violins) in the tough position of having to supply rewards in the short term in order to motivate. It is possible to organize environments that help make this happen (even for violins), but it is not easy and requires a lot of effort by the educators.

Cheers,

Alan

---

From: Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com>
To: natur...@googlegroups.com

Cc: alan...@yahoo.com
Sent: Sun, August 15, 2010 7:23:07 AM

Subject: Re: [NaturalMath] Fail quickly

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.squeakland.org/ or even http://graphjam.com/ are welcoming everyone

Just for clarification, this is a bit of a joke. Squeak is a design project with roots that span decades and having implications, or direct influence, on all major children's programming environments, like Scratch from MIT. In contrast, GraphJam is a subsidiary of LOLcats headquarters, the epitome of "why the internet is silly and unproductive." I thought it would be funny to put the two in one sentence about "math for everybody."

[Alan Kay]

Hi Maria,

I think the skateboarders (by nature of the activity) probably do a pretty good job of avoiding the "Guitar Hero" problem of "feeling you belong but without having to get fluent in the real thing".

A perusal of blogs on the web indicates that this is probably not happening for writing -- most of the writing is poorly done and I can't recall seeing anyone complaining about it. There's no question that just doing a lot of something leads to some improvement along some dimensions, but for writing, I don't think this is near enough to get above threshold for "the real deal".

It certainly is not happening for Etoys or Scratch (the latter has more than one million posted examples of Scratch projects, but most of them are "I'm here!" cries from the pop culture, and are not part of any effort to learn math, science or even programming).

The professional cultures of Science and Math offer "membership" at a price (you need to learn enough to be allowed to join the club, and the club will "help" by offering criticisms of what you are doing). This is not popular in the pop culture, which generally wants identity and participation without having to put out much effort.

I think this is a critical aspect that has to be addressed before the promise of the new media can really be realized and harvested.

Cheers,

Alan

---

From: Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com>

To: Alan Kay <alan...@yahoo.com>
Cc: natur...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, August 15, 2010 10:42:45 AM

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Alan Kay <alan...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi Maria,

I think the skateboarders (by nature of the activity) probably do a pretty good job of avoiding the "Guitar Hero" problem of "feeling you belong but without having to get fluent in the real thing".

I would like to make a sharp distinction between the two. "Guitar Hero" has a gradient of skill, a "vertical" - which does not connect, other than through roleplay, to playing guitar or other band instruments, or singing. "You cannot get there from here." The endeavor does welcome everybody, but into a different endeavor. Similarly, there is a community for playing air guitar, with worldwide competitions even. I saw a very touching movie about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea32R_2jSxg Playing air guitar is open and welcoming, is based on roleplay, has a gradient of skill - and does not lead into music communities in any way!

Someone who bought a skateboard and a helm and came with his (it's almost always boys) friends to a meet-up at a ramp is also mostly roleplaying in this early stage. However, this activity is a part of the real thing, and the kids won't try to prevent him from calling himself a skater (belonging) before reaching fluency. They may call him a noob as a way to qualify... But it's significantly different from the "Guitar Hero" situation! A newbie skater is still a skater. A newbie "Guitar Hero" gamer or a pro gamer is not a musician.

A perusal of blogs on the web indicates that this is probably not happening for writing -- most of the writing is poorly done and I can't recall seeing anyone complaining about it. There's no question that just doing a lot of something leads to some improvement along some dimensions, but for writing, I don't think this is near enough to get above threshold for "the real deal".

There is a whole genre of "rant communities," mostly by and for teens, where they critique (and often bitterly make fun of) newbie writers, that is, one another. There is also the institution of "beta readers," reviewing, voting on quality and other community tools for improvement. Some participants improve. Some of the modern recognized authors, for example Naomi Novik who I like for style and imagination, say that's how they learned to write. Examples of the tools:
http://community.livejournal.com/fanficrants/ - a rant community
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage - a summary of tropes, created and extensively used and referenced by writer communities
http://www.fanfiction.net/ a site for posting fanfiction, voting preferences, finding beta readers and so on

It certainly is not happening for Etoys or Scratch (the latter has more than one million posted examples of Scratch projects, but most of them are "I'm here!" cries from the pop culture, and are not part of any effort to learn math, science or even programming).

I would go further: many of these applets are not part of any EFFORT at all. They are results of trying out something new, possibly because someone said it was a neat thing to try: the "Hello, world!" programs. In the levels I described, this is Level 2 of filtering: people decided to try something, but not necessarily that they like it enough to do it again. There are more people trying than going to Level 3. However, there are community tools for identifying those for whom Scratch became a loved activity with some level of success. In the Projects category, there are buttons for "Most viewed recently" and "Most loved recently" and "Most remixed recently" - these are project peer-reviewed by the community and found more worthy. They are are higher-quality projects. Kids who decide to work on Scratch more than once read comments on their project pages and watch their rankings.

As with writers and skateboarders, these communities have the verticals leading up and reaching all the way down, though. Someone who made a "Hello, world" applet is already a member.

The professional cultures of Science and Math offer "membership" at a price (you need to learn enough to be allowed to join the club, and the club will "help" by offering criticisms of what you are doing). This is not popular in the pop culture, which generally wants identity and participation without having to put out much effort.

I very much like the idea of low- or no-effort opportunities for slight (peripheral) participation in communities that lead to the real thing. Math Olympiad communities, for example, lead to the real thing for many, but they don't welcome slight participation.

Here, I would like to mention three very different math ed works in the direction of accessibility, one through pop-culture, one through tech, one through stories:

Ryan Goble and Kelly Clark hosted a Math 2.0 event about their "Making curriculum pop" (using pop-culture approaches):
http://mcpopmb.ning.com/group/matheducators
http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/Making+Curriculum+Pop
Dan Meyer's "What Can You Do With This?" format of problem-solving using video and other rich media introductions is described in his blog: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?cat=70
Julie Brennan's "Living Math" is about stories and history: http://livingmath.net/ Julie also did a live event at the series: http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/Living+Math

I think this is a critical aspect that has to be addressed before the promise of the new media can really be realized and harvested.

In my dream world, newbies are invited for slight participation with no barriers, while central community positions still require significant effort. Math in particular can do with many more accessible "on-ramps" for newbies!

Cheers,
Maria D.

[wka...@aol.com]

Hi Karen:

 

I co-taught a 9th/10th grade Algebra 1 Inclusion Class with a SPED/Math dual certified teacher. We - in PA - had been beneficieries of a grant which gave my classroom a 'smart' board; DLP;  a 30-iBook laptop cart to be shared with 2 other teachers; and me an iBook. The only software - which is the KEY ITEM/s - provided was EasiTeach for the 'smart' board and Compass Learning (a program that the district forced down our throats and had purchased for a hefty price wihout any math teaher iput.)

 

On my own I identified two separate programs which are ideal to create in essence Individual Learning Plans for each student. Neufeld Learning Systems - http://www.neufeldmath.com/ - can be used in a: collaborative manner with 3 students on one laptop with supporting Inquiry worksheets; individually; or whole class. The second program is ALEKS - http://www.aleks.com/ - which I had students use individually as I used ALEK as the ILP for each student. In my inclusion class the kids abilities ranged from 3rd to at best 7th grade so I was able to use both systems to meet each individual students needs. These programs take a ton of the administrative - record keeping - workload off a teacher's shoulders and real bonus is that the kids get INSTANT FEEDBACK on their efforts. None of their input is multiple choice; they have to enter their responses including the appropriate units. I was able to do this for one semester only - we were on the block schedule - on a PILOT basis. Despite the success and students' enjoyment of these programs the district refused to pick up the cost for this software stating that THEY had decided on Compass Learning. So, that's we used the 2nd semester and I saw all of the kids' enthusiasm, motivation, and progress fly out the window. I've since resigned from the district and have taken up tutoring at risk kids.

 

DISCLAIMER: I neither work for either of these companies nor do I receive any compensation from them for any recommendations for the purchase of their software; I do this of my own accord since I've searched high and low for software that meets students' needs at various levels both effectively and efficiently.

 

Please feel free to contact me directly - wka...@aol.com - should you like to discuss any of  the above further.

 

Good luck and best wishes.

 

Wally

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