[Math 2.0] Tired of being nice: NCTM re-recap

[Maria Droujkova]

As a few of you know, we had bad audio problems during Ihor's NCTM recap. I did a separate interview with clean audio. Here is the new recording.

I will try to pull some key quotes from the weekly meetings from now on. This should promote our conversations. Here are quotes from Ihor's talk.

• The bottom line is: I am just tired of sitting, and being nice. I have heroes, technology leaders, who just quit.
• Technology and social media at NCTM and conferences:
  • I am a very harsh critic of NCTM, but I am also a huge defender. I have been on committees, program committees, various meetings and trips. The people are great. The presidents are outstanding people, they are all outstanding citizens.
  • The problem is the culture of NCTM. It's static, and the board runs it, and they get elected, and technology never makes it to the top of the list. Yet some of the best technology innovations come from NCTM people like Patrick Vennebush.
  • As far as social media, neither NCTM nor NCSM promotes it in any way.
  • There isn't much cultural history of it at meet-ups.
  • People check their internet at the entrance to all the sessions.
  • About 10-15% of the conference [NCTM] had some technology feel to it, whereas at NECC [now ISTE] it's more than 80%
  • People who go to the conference like it. They enjoy it. NCTM always gets positive reviews. The problem is, they don't publicize negative ones. They don't have an open blogging system. I was invited to blog for NCTM conference. There were 5 other people to blog!
  • There is good stuff coming on on Illuminations. There is some mediocre stuff, but also some very good stuff. I could not find anyone to write to about it! I had to find through colleagues who made a wonderful tessellation activity. You are welcome to comment on the page, but your comment does not get displayed. You can't start a discussion.
  • They have an Illuminations Facebook site devoted exclusively to talking about it. Does anyone go there? No! There are a lot of people out there who are interested - I know because I talk with them. But there's no space where they all talk. How do you get these people together?
• Technology in the booths:
  • It's dominated by textbook companies, and they all do want to sell technology, but it's in a more conventional ways, such as e-books: to teach the math they've been teaching. It is in the spirit of NCTM standards, and they certainly want to be effective in it, but the technology is an add-on.
  • Individual booths had internet access. It cost $100 a day. They mostly used it to demonstrate vendor software [rather than inviting people's content] so it was very much Web 1.0 kind of deal.
  • Some noticeable large tech players weren't there. Google SketchUp was at the last one, but not this year.
• Innovation
  • Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of "Wow!"-s, mostly there were disappointments, but there were some. The idea that you can use technology in collaborative ways isn't even on the drawing board yet.
  • Math bloggers such as Dan Meyer
  • 3dVinci.net and Bonnie Roskes, zebragraph.com with Jonathan Choate - Google SketchUp
  • Key Curriculum with three strong pieces of software [Sketchpad, Fathom, TinkerPlot], though Sketchpad is in trouble, they admit, because of GeoGebra. I love their main guy, Nick Jackiw. He was demonstrating how you could use Sketchpad to create some of the morphing in the movie "Avatar" - that was a highlight. Their booth was also interesting, and they had people come up and write notes on a whiteboard - kind of like a Facebook without the internet.
  • Fast Math: If someone got this program and would just stick to it, most kids would know their facts. It's not a high priority to do facts in schools.
  • One of the most effective venues for using technology is Calculation Nation led by Patrick Vennebush. It is brilliant: you can play games with other people, and what is special, they turn best Illuminations ideas into games.
• Ihor's petition
  • I sent it to 185 people who were speakers on the technology themes. I actually sent the petition to all speakers at the conference. I got 12 signatures. That tells you the story.
  • We should bring back the 2008 resolution and to get the board to understand we are not messing around. This is critical to the future of math education. If you [NCTM] don't get on board, you are going to die!
  • I heard several comments that NCTM as an organization is going to go into the oblivion, or become small potatoes.
  • I am extremely pessimistic about what's going on in the math education from this [NCSM] perspective. But what I am optimistic about is that these fifty-seven year olds [the average age of NCSM attendees] are not going to be around anymore in ten years, and in fifteen, things will change.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
http://www.naturalmath.com

Make math your own, to make your own math.

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[Colleen King]

Maria,

 

Thank you for taking the time to redo the audio and for sharing Ihor's quotes. I was present at the meeting and missed all of these key points.

 

Not sure how you do it but thankful that you do!

 

Colleen

[LFS]

I am printing this out – thanks so much for making it available. Linda