If you want to talk about making something COOL, however, I’ll take a pass. In my 40 years I can say there’s been one constant: people and organizations that try to MAKE something cool inevitably fail. What is cool now is different than when I was a teen but the awkwardness of things failing to be cool is just as unpleasant as it ever was.

Kids may not yet have figured out that getting someone cool to hang out with them won’t make them cool but they can see right through our efforts to make a subject cool just by involving someone famous.

I personally have been not enthused by the various mathematical software that I have reviewed. This year I have been piloting various “math websites.” In the class with students who most persistantly resist learning algebra, they seemed pretty much bored with much of the technology. I have used catchupmath.com for practice, and it’s a little better than drill and kill, but the students don’t really want to do math problems on the computer if they don’t want to do them IRL.
When I mentioned to one student about making a powerpoint, they said, “I hate making powerpoints.” Now, of course, this is out of the mouth of adolescents…so the excitement level will always be affected by their age.

The one technology tool (not software) that has been most engaging this year is my interwrite panel (which an ipad can also do). What I write on my panel writes directly on any projection. Kids can also use the panel to write out problems.

This is why I have been enjoying this blog so much (thanks, Dan!) because it is leading me to the path to find more ways to connect to the kids with math that connects to the real life. I am in the pre-contemplative stage of integrating all of these great ideas in my practice.
Lisa

1. Schools demand that publishers align all curricular software to standards. That means that publishers give them what they ask for – boring software that drills on the basic facts and provides assessment reports that match standards.

2. Most video games these days START at a $5M development budget. There are only about 100,000 schools in the US. Let’s say that 10% of them spent $50 for a game. Your expected sales revenue would only be $500,000. And 10% is a HUGE market share. Expecting a company to spend “a few million” on game development where the best you can do is take in $500,000 doesn’t make sense.

I remember when Halo (I think Halo 3) came out and sold 4 million copies the first week. There are only 4 million teachers in the US. So why would any company spend R&D time and money to reach a tiny market segment? Plus one that has a wide range of needs (12 grades, all subject areas, different standards.)

If there were millions to be made in educational software development, believe me, people would be trying.

The only way to make money is the way the big publishers do it – sell giant systems for tens of thousands of dollars that correlate to standards and produce assessment reports that make superintendents happy.

I would like to see a bit more support for this statement. I suppose that it seems intuitive to a point, but does it conflict with the basic need for patient, persistent problem-solving? How do you develop patience and persistence in a math classroom that thrives on immediacy?

The year was 1998. In health class, we watched a video of the 1980s Lakers “rapping” about not doing drugs. Their shorts were very short and I am quite grateful they were not filmed in HD.

One year later, my econ class watched a video featuring Reggie Jackson showing the usefulness of economics through baseball. However, many were confused about who he was, since he had not played the game in more than a decade. Reggie was pretty distracting from the underlying content.

As soon as you go down this route, you’re constantly rewriting, recasting, and re-filming these videos. And this doesn’t even address whether or not the videos will actually help students learn.