February 13, 2012: Summary and catch-up week

[Maria Droujkova]

We are at the one-third milestone for the course! During Week 5, I want to invite you to look back at the tasks so far. The topic for this week is blogs, forums and other social media, because it seems a big interest among participants.

PARTICIPATION SO FAR

Please take a look at the course participation statistics, which I aggregated from Weeks 1-4: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqenMfoYXJb3dF9vcG0waTdiVGN0M2VVdjZuY1NoOHc

This is work in progress, for example, I want to record bonus tasks from the second week where several people helped with the planning, and comment and email participation. You can find your name there and see what I recorded for your participation. This information comes from public pages and is therefore shared openly, as this is an open course. This was done by hand, so if you notice typos and errors, please email me.

We had 10 tasks so far. For people taking the course for credit, the following applies (from the full description of the course):  http://p2pu.org/en/groups/ed218-developing-mathematics-the-early-years/content/full-description/ 
A: 90-100%
B: 80-89%
C: 70-79%
D: 60-695
F: 0-59%

For people who follow the course non-credit - now is the good time to look back at all tasks and leave a comment. Even a one-liner can make a difference!

Because for many people this is their first online or first peer-to-peer class, I want to dedicate this week to aggregation and catch-up. People who participate for credit can go back to tasks they missed (just follow links conveniently located at the top of https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqenMfoYXJb3dF9vcG0waTdiVGN0M2VVdjZuY1NoOHc ) and see what others did and contribute. This will count (fully) toward the grade, and will help with our ongoing tasks, such as making a collection of questions with infinitely many answers.

In particular, most live events, not just our class meetings, are recorded. The class meeting recordings are linked at the top of that event's task page. Recording of most other events, such as Math Future webinars, can be found by following links to events.

If you have any questions or need help, call or email me.

WEEK 5 TASKS

Blogosphere and multiplication (a controversy! check it out) http://p2pu.org/en/groups/ed218-developing-mathematics-the-early-years/content/week-5-blogosphere-and-multiplication-february-13-19/
Scratch from MIT - have you programmed before? http://p2pu.org/en/groups/ed218-developing-mathematics-the-early-years/content/week-5-scratch-from-mit-february-13-19/
Live events this week http://p2pu.org/en/groups/ed218-developing-mathematics-the-early-years/content/week-5-live-meeting-february-13-19/

A SAMPLER FROM CLASS FORUMS

Keisha
After doing some research this got me thinking about the worksheets I did in elementary school that were about patterns. I  never knew it had anything to do with math until I got older. I just thought is was cool to color in. None of my teachers took the time to explain the shapes and the pattern that they were in. Here's what I'm talking about.... http://geometrip.com/ We used to get these a lot in class during free time or to take home and do for fun.

Kathy Cianciola
Departing slightly from the theme of patterns as discussed in the context of visual patterns, I wanted to bring up teaching patterns involving movement, sound and music.  There are some great children's audio music CDs and music videos out there to accompany movement. Moving in rhythm to music is a great concept to assist in learning.  You could incorporate clapping, drumming etc. with any of these music Cds.  It could be a great diversion for the children after sitting for hours in the classroom, yet they will be hearing and learning along with the music.  Repetitive movements plus repetitive lyrics help the students solidify ideas embedded in the songs. It's kind of a sneaky way of teaching. I think they call it "Back Door Learning."

Carolyn
My mind goes all over the place when I think of patterns, but it never went to muliplication charts. Multiplication charts are most definietly patterns and in the mnay classrooms that I have been in, most have the chart taped to all the desks. I was recently in a 3rd grade classroom and again every desk had a multipliction chart and a number line. Now that I think about it a number line could probably also be considered a pattern, each number has the same spacing-3.5 is equally between 3 and 4 just as 4.5 is between 4 and 5. Just the fact that this classroom had these "patterns" on each desk I think speaks to how relevant patterns are, no matter the form.

Amanda Graf
Listening to the meeting from February 7 really sparked an interest in blogs for me. I have never blogged before; I don't write or read them. After listening to the meeting, I looked for some math blogs online, and found a few interesting ones. I found one math blogging cite (math-blog.com) that was written mostly by Ph.D mathematicians, however, a lot of comments were from a wide variety of people - college students, teachers, professors, etc. So it was really interesting to see math from the perspective of such a wide range of people. One article I found interesting was an article that discussed how actual math equations were used in a CBS television show called Numb3rs. I've watched that show a few times and wondered if the math in it was credible or if it was altered to compliment the plotline of the show, so it was cool to see that other people were wondering the same thing!

Denise

The multiplication/addition controversy can be difficult to fathom. I laid out my responses to Devlin's argument in two posts:

 If It Ain’t Repeated Addition, What Is It?

What’s Wrong with “Repeated Addition”?

I found the book Children Doing Mathematics to be tremendously helpful in understanding the difference between multiplicative reasoning and the reasoning involved in addition situations -- and how very important it is for us as teachers to help children understand these differences.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
919-388-1721

Make math your own, to make your own math