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Basic math has plenty of room for inspiration, from the Fibonacci series to the combinatorics of counting to the concept of infinity. Sometimes those topics com

by kaitai 13y ago

Basic math has plenty of room for inspiration, from the Fibonacci series to the combinatorics of counting to the concept of infinity. Sometimes those topics come up spontaneously in class with a human teacher -- not nearly often enough, but now and then. Are these cool and interesting topics that aren't on some Common Core standards list ever going to come up if students simply work through a computer program written by a corporate consultant and vetted by a committee?

mathattack 13y ago
Fair enough. Perhaps I'm biased by personal experience. Through an advanced track in high school and a college minor in math, I didn't have one inspiring math teacher. I got more inspiration out of Project Euler than I ever did from formal math teaching. While it would be great to have inspirational math teachers, perhaps I'm jaded when I say, "Why pretend?" And this is coming from someone who believes Math should be appreciate for beauty in addition to practicality. (Enough to put it in my name!)
- kaitai 13y ago
  I'm biased by personal experience too, having taught math on a college/university level for... ten years now. I have wanted to be the inspiring prof. I've done it for maybe 20 students. I feel the failure acutely. I haven't given up yet but people (mathematicians, others) need to start really thinking about what education should be for and how we can achieve that. I love computers, science, (big) data. The folks implementing the current innovations are not mathematicians/chemists/economists, and the people choosing the current innovations are administrators or politicians rather than researchers or practitioners. I am not willing to cede control to these forces without a fight. What are we going to do to make sure that edtech is not just a way to expedite credentialing while making students dumb and efficient machines?
  - mathattack 13y ago
    I appreciate where you are coming from, as you bring much more real experience into this than me. Here's an open question, and I'm going to pull some numbers out of the air to just make a point... Let's say that you have a given math department with 10 faculty charged with education of 4000 students, and your costs are fixed. Which of these scenarios is best? 1) Each of the 10 teachers teaches 4 classes of 50 people per year. Each student gets 2 ((10450)/4000 = 1/2 per year) large courses over 4 years. 2) Each of the 10 teachers supports 1 large online classes of 400 people each, and teaches 3 classes of 33. Each student gets 4 impersonal online classes ((101400)/4000 = 1 per year) and 1 smaller class per year ((10 * 3 * 33)/4000 = 1/4). The #s are made up, but the idea is that with a fixed amount of resources, you can have more small group classes with experts if you're willing to accept very large online classes. Or - you can get a lot more classes for the same cost if you're willing to take them online. Again, this isn't a panacea, and doesn't work for every subject. It also doesn't increase creativity, or encourage research.

by kaitai 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago

Fair enough. Perhaps I'm biased by personal experience. Through an advanced track in high school and a college minor in math, I didn't have one inspiring math teacher. I got more inspiration out of Project Euler than I ever did from formal math teaching. While it would be great to have inspirational math teachers, perhaps I'm jaded when I say, "Why pretend?" And this is coming from someone who believes Math should be appreciate for beauty in addition to practicality. (Enough to put it in my name!)

kaitai 13y ago
I'm biased by personal experience too, having taught math on a college/university level for... ten years now. I have wanted to be the inspiring prof. I've done it for maybe 20 students. I feel the failure acutely. I haven't given up yet but people (mathematicians, others) need to start really thinking about what education should be for and how we can achieve that. I love computers, science, (big) data. The folks implementing the current innovations are not mathematicians/chemists/economists, and the people choosing the current innovations are administrators or politicians rather than researchers or practitioners. I am not willing to cede control to these forces without a fight. What are we going to do to make sure that edtech is not just a way to expedite credentialing while making students dumb and efficient machines?
- mathattack 13y ago
  I appreciate where you are coming from, as you bring much more real experience into this than me. Here's an open question, and I'm going to pull some numbers out of the air to just make a point... Let's say that you have a given math department with 10 faculty charged with education of 4000 students, and your costs are fixed. Which of these scenarios is best? 1) Each of the 10 teachers teaches 4 classes of 50 people per year. Each student gets 2 ((10450)/4000 = 1/2 per year) large courses over 4 years. 2) Each of the 10 teachers supports 1 large online classes of 400 people each, and teaches 3 classes of 33. Each student gets 4 impersonal online classes ((101400)/4000 = 1 per year) and 1 smaller class per year ((10 * 3 * 33)/4000 = 1/4). The #s are made up, but the idea is that with a fixed amount of resources, you can have more small group classes with experts if you're willing to accept very large online classes. Or - you can get a lot more classes for the same cost if you're willing to take them online. Again, this isn't a panacea, and doesn't work for every subject. It also doesn't increase creativity, or encourage research.