I think it’s important as Math
Educators to watch the video of Mr. Conrad Wolfram who’s the Mathematician
himself and the CEO and the Co-founder of the Wolfram group. Mr. Wolfram
believes that the math education around the world has a problem, the Governments think their math is failing in their county,
students think its difficult, teacher’s find it a hug struggle to move the
mathematics of their students forward and people who want mathematics in the
outside world like employers find that they don’t have enough Mathematics.
He believes we are living in a
world that’s ever more quantitative and more mathematical than before however
we have got falling interest in education in Math. He asks, “Why do we have
this chasm between the two math” (math in education and math outside)? He
believes there is one simple answer to this problem: Computers.
Wolfram
points out how the math in the real world is problem solving, modelling, stimulating, thinking out what the questions are and analyzing the results but in education
its doing calculating mostly by hand and if your lucky by calculator, the
problems small and distance from real world. He believes that we should be trying
to bring the two together to engage students.
Mr. Wolfram explains the four steps in doing
math, posing the right question about your situation, turn that from real world in to math formulation and put it in to the specific
math setup to do step 3, calculating. The step 3 is taking it from your setup
to answer from mathematical form. Step 4 is from that mathematical form to real
world and crucially verifying it. He explains how, “Perhaps 80% of doing math
education at school is step 3 by hand and largely not doing steps 1, 2 and 4.”
He believes step 3 is something computers can do better than any human and as he points out we don't want our students to be third rate computers but to
be first world problem solvers.
In conclusion, he recommends an open-ended use of computers and encourage those who argue that computers "dumbs math down" to look in to the real world and see how science and engineerings and other things that depends on math have got much more conceptual. Please watch this video and share your comments as I think he has some great points and suggestions!
I enjoyed the video. The message Mr Wolfram delivers resonates with me. I believe in problem solving and inquiry based learning as it provides for a richer learning environment for our students. As a science and chemistry teacher, I see the value in guiding our students through the problem solving method and working through the steps from questioning to observing, analysing and evaluating. Teaching dimensional analysis in chemistry as a way to calculate and solve problems shows students that as long as they know where the calculation is starting and where they are expected to end up (based on units), they can think their way through the calculation based on conversion factors they know. Once the students see that they can think through the steps based on relationships they know, they realize it is not about memorizing steps. I can ask them a variety of different questions and each one will have a solution that looks slightly different but the approach to the question in term of the logical progression of thought is the same.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting information. I really enjoyed reading that and what's best about your post is how you structured it. With that, you did me a great favor and helped with writing my paper. Professional writers are always able to help you with your writings ^_^
ReplyDelete