Computer-Based Math Education Summit

[kcrisman]

FYI:

http://www.computerbasedmath.org/events/londonsummit2012/

The only sponsor is Wolfram, and his brother (who gave an excellent TED talk about this a while back) is the founder.  But still, 

Now in its second year, The Computer-Based Math Education Summit is fast becoming the hub of a major change in math education.

It will again bring together a broad cross section of leaders with a stake in math—from industry, technology, government, and education—to answer the question,"What are the steps to delivering computer-based math education worldwide?"

so one would think that someone talking about solutions that work in a variety of economic climates would be relevant :)  Last year one of the Geogebra folks was one of the invited speakers.

[Andrea Lazzarotto]

2012/8/28 kcrisman <kcri...@gmail.com>

"What are the steps to delivering computer-based math education worldwide?"

The first step is not using proprietary software. :D

Anyway, I used the video of Conrad Wolfram when I had to introduce Sage to HS students, and the summit seems interesting (but costly). :)

--
Andrea Lazzarotto - http://andrealazzarotto.com

[Gerald Smith]

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gerald Smith <math...@yahoo.com>
To: "sage...@googlegroups.com" <sage...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 1:16 PM
Subject: Fw: [sage-edu] Computer-Based Math Education Summit

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gerald Smith <math...@yahoo.com>
To: "sage...@googlegroups.com" <sage...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 1:13 PM
Subject: Fw: [sage-edu] Computer-Based Math Education Summit

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gerald Smith <math...@yahoo.com>
To: "sage...@googlegroups.com" <sage...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 4:09 PM
Subject: Re: [sage-edu] Computer-Based Math Education Summit

I have a school all set up on the virtual world of Second Life wth three classroom towers, a 120 seat stadium that can be set up with a big media screen or large open stage, and a large media hemisphere floating in the sky above the complex.  The three classroom towers, stadium and mediasphere are all set up with their own provate media channels.  Every classroom has full access to the internet, up to and including playing You Tube videos. Multiple internet pages can be opened up simultaneously. The only restriction on the net is that Second Life has yet to implement Java applets so those don't work directly in Second Life. However ,every browser screen in Second Life has a widget that opens up the current page in your perferred browser (as a seperate window so it can run along with Second ife) so everybody can still follow items that require Java applets. For math, I am using GeoGebra for basic levels of math (free and open source) and  Sage  Math for higher level math.  I have a Sage Math server set up on RackSapce Cloud and Sage Math works beautifully in Second Life (but you have tto turn off secure mode) with the one exception of the help files and JMOL graphics.  These can be accessed though by that trick I mentioned of opening up the current page being displayed in Second Life in your browser. All it takes is one click. Animated graphics display fine in Second Life. I use the proprietary whiteboard. conferencing software Twiddla to provide an efffective working white board in Second Life with a lot of capabilities. Although, proprietary, Twiddla offers their "Professional" model free of charge to students and educators. It is an endearing program and fun to work with. I use it in conjunction with GeoGebra. Geogebra needs Java applets and does not work directly in Second Life but it is very easy to transfer Geogebra pages to Twiddla and display them in Second Life.  Once you do so, the instructor and students can write comments.  Twiddla aalso lets people who are on the web but not in Second Life participate in the class though they do not get quite the full experience of those who are actually present in the virtual classroom.  There is a large amount of material already preopared for classroom use at all levels in both Sage Math and Geogebra. There is an enoprmous amount of material on the web that teachers can use to create High quality multi media lesson plans  The fine instructional videos of the Khan academy web site come to mind and play very well on any prim with a browser texture in Second Life.  In a virtual classroom, the personal experience is remarkably like the personal experience in a real life classroom. People are present as their avatars and sit in assigned seats. Everybody can interact by text chat or voice chat with the entire group. The teacher can open a private channel to any student  and groups can each have their own private communication channels.  You can set up automatic translation into a vast assortment of languages of text chat for those students whose knowledge of English is limited.  Individual students can set up translation individually into their own language. All students in the classroom can write on the white board as well as the teacher. All instruction and interaction can be recorded as a text log or as a video file which is stored on the hard drive of each participants computer. The Build features of Second Life allow the teacher or the students to create 3 Dimensional models that can be stored or given away freely.  The convenience of online virtual classrooms means that stufdents can be present from remote locations. including overseas , simultaneously in the same classroom. Students who are homebound or in the custody of the criminal justice system can participate if they have access to computers. The teacher can hold impromptu classes at any time with everybody attending in the comfort of their own home. Yet ewith all the marvelous potentialities of this technology that I have spent years developing, I have been completely unable to interest any educational authorities in this. My attempts up to date have failed to get a response of any kind. Many educational institutions make it remarkably difficult to obtain access to their educators anyway.  I have generated interest and excitement among educators on Second Life. Linden Labs, the company that runs Secind Life have offered me their help if I need it. But so far nothing has come of it.  My Second Life contacts have tried introducing me to various educational instutions with zero result.  My attempts to get local educational institutions and educators have also failed.  When I talk to people, it is as if I were lecturing them in fluent Klingon.  They stare goggle-eyed in amazement with blank looks of complete incomprehension.  i have never succeeded in getting anybody to go onto Second Life to see it for themselves. They act like fearful Medieval peasants who are sure that they will lose their souls if they dare to set foot in Fairyland!  The technophobic Luddite reactionary attitudes I encounter amaze me. Everybody recognises we need to change yet everybody is just terrified of change!  All the current computerized and web based math teaching I have seen so far is just terrible.  Boring, antequated and limited are just the beginning of what I see. The field is dominated by highly expensive proprietary systems that do a poor job of presenting out-moded poorly designed math instruction that both teachers and students just hate.  Most would rather have root canals done.  The technology already has tremendous potential that appeaars to be nearly completely ignored. I guess most of these systems are snow jobs sold by slick salespeople to techno-naive and gullible administrators then foisted off on the unfortunate students and teachers. I fear this London coinference will turn out to be largely an arena where manufacturers of pedagogical snake oil can ply their trade. I wonder if anything of genuine worth can be found there?

There is also another huge factor I see.  We live in a time of severely restricted educational budgets. Money is very much a consideration and an extremely critical one.  My technology of virtual instruction is extraordinarily cost effective and economical. Setting up schools is normally extremely expensive. Yet my school cost less than $20 U.S. to dset up, that includes all materials and technology.  I spend  about $80 a month to rent the 14,000 sqr meters of lightly wooded grassy hill top land where my school is located, about $10 a week for the Sage Math server on RackSpace Cloud, and about $5 a month for the Moodle server I have on Freehostia.  The cost is incredibly minimal for what you are getting!  i suspect that is part of the problem. Our educational system is being handed  over wholesale to private companies whose ONLY true interest is maximizing their profits.  No significant profit can be made out of a system as inexpensive as mine so it is regarded with hostility and suspicion. Attempts by private institutions to do internet instruction on their own seem marked by ineptness and futility. My local school system tries to tutor math online by a system that only amounts to ASCII graphics on a plain white browser pane.  Neither the instructors nor the students have any desire to utilize it. Eforts at math teaching that I have seen on Second Life by virtual extensions of real world educational institutions  have generally been nearly as lame.  In fact, math instruction on Second Life has largely been abandoned as a result of the  lack of vision and imagination of virtual instructional

technologies.  I have tried to contact some of these educational institutions but I have yet to receive any kind of response at all. I feel like the fabled voice crying in the wilderness! 

As things now stand right now, I  am offering any instructor who is interested an individual classroom at my facility in Second Life called the Math Bear Education Initiative. It is in Dalton on the central part of the old Mainland overlooking Linden Village where many of the company emplyees have their in-world offices. Your classroom will be fully furnished and you will be free to add personal items of your own subject to parcel prim restrictions.  I will give you all help in setting it up and showing you how to use everything.  All of this is offered free of any charge.  you can also have a private account on my Sage Math server. All I request in return is that you document what you are doing and share it with me.   For formal institutional purpoises, I have SLOODLE set up at my school, This is a specialized Second Life implementation of  MOODLE with all sorts of interesting virtual goodies and technologies . In the lobby of the second classroom tower, you can see a wide variety of SLOODLE items already rezzed in.  MOODLE is the free and open source alternative to the aging and expensive proprietary BLACKBOARD system for managing schools.  With SLOODLE, you can for example set up an enrollment booth in the lobby of the building you are teaching at and set up a barrier in your classroom that will only allow enrolled students to enter.  It does many other interesting things. I hope somebody out there has the vision and sense of the future to take an interest in what I am doing!

Sincerely Yours,

Math Bear a.k.a. Gerald Smith

---

From: kcrisman <kcri...@gmail.com>
To: sage...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 12:17 PM
Subject: [sage-edu] Computer-Based Math Education Summit

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[Gerald Smith]

The first pic shows me spying on a classroom at the Texas State Teachers College Sim.   The Segway was a freebie I got at a teachers conference on ASecond life.

The second pic shows the left hand classrooom tower as seen from the steps of the stadium.

The third pic shows the penthouse conference room as it used to look.

The fourth pic shows the tops of the classroom towers which are penthouses. It is possible to enter them from the top.

The fifth pic shows the floor of the media sphere floating above my complex. The media system was set to a tv channel showing the olympics, I think ABC. The whole surface is covered in active media screens.  To the right you can see the DJ booth which controls the media and to the left are a few of the seats of the expandable stadium seating ring which automatically expands to add more seats as needed. Another freebieI got at an educational conference. The media sphere can be set up as a dance floor for social occasions as needed. All it  takes is for somebody to volunteer to be D/j and play YouTube music videos to play from thee DJ booth.

[kcrisman]

On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 9:38:18 AM UTC-4, Jon McLoone wrote:

To clarify, this conference is not aiming to address deployment technologies (such as described in JerryBear's comment), but to address the question of how we can redefine the subject of math in an era where so much computation can now be automated, to make it more relevant. As such, I would expect that this community has much to contribute.

There is some money provided by sponsorship to discount or waive some conference fees, so if the cost is prohibitive contact the organizers to ask for some support.

Thanks, Jon.  Especially if someone on this list is already in England it would make sense.  Would future meetings come back to the States on occasion?  A (non-Sage-related) grant I'm on is very interested in talking with more stake holders about exactly that issue of how computation and modeling should fit in college math and we could probably send someone. 

[Jon McLoone]

Moving to the US was considered for this year, so perhaps it will happen next time.

[Jon McLoone]

This year's Computer Based Math Education summit is in New York, Nov 21-22

http://computerbasedmath.org/events/education-summit-newyork-2013/