#m641: My Grad Class the Modern Way?

Due to the limited number of people who could attend our class on Tuesday night. Our professor decided to hold class on Twitter. I was skeptical at first, but was going to reserve my judgement until the end of the session. We were scheduled to sit down for two to 2.5 hours and discuss topics on Euclid and proofs.

The class started out working with a Google docs answering questions regarding the class and its format. This lasted about a 1/2 hour. Then we jumped to Twitter and the conversation flowed seamlessly. We used the site http://tweetchat.com/ which streamlines our chat into a traditional chat room from the AOL days. So I guess you are wondering why would we use twitter instead of that old chat room. The beauty of twitter is anyone in the world with a twitter account could follow our insightful conversation. I am not an expert and didn't know if a middle schooler from Tokyo was paying attention, but when you approach conversation with the idea that any could observe you, you tend to speak different.

After conversations took place about Euclid, proofs, and Geogebra.org I was very pleased with the amount of knowledge gained from this experience. I believe much of it was gained because our discussion moderator was an expert technician on Twitter. Our professor was able to guide our learning to it's intended goals.

Now I don't believe the future of education is in front of a computer screen. Education is relationships build on trust and respect. From this we can deliver any knowledge to a body of students.

Begin With Play

The article assigned to the MAT 641 class written by Peirre M. van Hiele "Begin with Play," could be renamed "Engagement is the Key to Success." I love how van Hiele's first strategy is to have the students self discover the ideas he is trying to get across. Having the students discover their learning will get "buy in" and they will recall the information much better than direct instruction.

I was very impressed by his stance and I am a firm believer in his argument on the first page. His passion that too often in Math, specifically geometry, we continue education when the student doesn't understand the prerequisite knowledge necessary to be successful for the current class. The funniest line of the article was when van Hiele quotes Piaget "giving no education is better than giving it at the wrong time." 

van Hiele's Levels: Visual - Descriptive - Informal Deduction - Formal/Proof:

Developing geometry must be done on a linear level. We need to think of it as more of a path to full understanding of geometry. With van Hiele's mosaic activity, students with taking a number of independent shapes and using them to achieve different goals. Van Hiele states instruction begins with an inquiry phase in which material leads children to explore shapes. From here educators can start introducing terms and characteristics. 

Van Hiele understands that learning is a process and should be treated as such. His insight on education should be adopted by all subjects not just geometry.