Monthly Archives: December 2010
Better testing through “data forensics”?
With standardized testing occupying a more and more prominent place in American academic life, it’s only natural that cottage industries of all sorts should spring up around it. For example, there’s Caveon Test Security, which is the subject of this … Continue reading
Filed under Education, Life in academia, Student culture, Teaching, Technology
Conrad Wolfram’s vision for mathematics education
A partial answer to the questions I brought up in the last post about what authentic mathematics consists of, and how we get students to learn it genuinely, might be found in this TED talk by Conrad Wolfram called “Teaching … Continue reading
Filed under Early education, Education, High school, Higher ed, Math, Teaching, Technology, Wolfram|Alpha
Misunderstanding mathematics
Robert Lewis, a professor at Fordham University, has published this essay entitled “Mathematics: The Most Misunderstood Subject”. The source of the general public’s misunderstandings of math, he writes, is: …the notion that mathematics is about formulas and cranking out computations. … Continue reading
Filed under Education, High school, Higher ed, Liberal arts, Life in academia, Math, Teaching
Coming up in January
Fall Semester 2010 is in the books, and I’m heading into an extended holiday break with the family. Rather than not blog at all for the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting (possibly auto-posting) some short items that take … Continue reading
A problem with “problems”
I have a bone to pick with problems like the following, which is taken from a major university-level calculus textbook. Read it, and see if you can figure out what I mean. This is located in the latter one-fourth of … Continue reading
Filed under Calculus, Critical thinking, Math, Problem Solving, Teaching
Student failure and student humanity
Alice Fenton (a pseudonym) set off a minor firestorm recently with this post to the Chronicle of Higher Education website, titled “The Pleasure of Seeing the Deserving Fail”. The title explains the content; the article is about different kinds of … Continue reading
Filed under Education, Higher ed, Life in academia, Student culture, Teaching
Rebuilding the Antikythera Mechanism out of Lego
Andrew Carol, an engineer at Apple, has rebuilt a model of the ancient Antikythera Mechanism entirely out of Lego blocks. Watch this amazing 3-minute video: A fuller story behind all this is here. I feel like running out and buying out … Continue reading
Filed under Calculators, Math, Technology
Thinking about learning styles
Excellent post today from Derek Bruff, reporting on a talk by Linda Nilson titled “The Truth About Learning Styles”. Linda’s slides are here (PDF), and here’s Derek’s short take (all emphases are Derek’s): Are there learning styles? That’s the question that … Continue reading
In defense of big universities
I’d like to take back something that I said in my post last week on the UCF cheating scandal (my emphasis): [T]he more this situation unfolds, the more unhealthy it makes the whole educational environment surrounding it seem. Class sizes … Continue reading
Filed under Education, Engineering education, Higher ed, Liberal arts, Life in academia, Teaching
“The system has failed you”
Apropos of the UCF cheating scandal, Stephen Ransom tweeted this morning: Here’s the video he linked: Once you get over seeing Uncle Phil as the Kaplan University proponent here, take a moment to think about this. Does the video have … Continue reading
Filed under Academic honesty, Education, Higher ed, Life in academia, Teaching
