Comments on: This New York Times Article Is The Future Of Math Textbooks

By: Vishakha

Vishakha — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 00:00:41 +0000

@Bradley and @jkerns – check out the work that the Concord Consortium is doing with it’s CODAP project – it is actually an acronym for collaborative data analysis platform ;-)

http://codap.portal.concord.org/

By: Cathy Yenca

Cathy Yenca — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 23:14:05 +0000

@Dan INDEED! :-)

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 21:22:08 +0000

@Cathy, someone else was on your exact frequency.

By: Cathy Yenca

Cathy Yenca — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 15:26:23 +0000

P.S. The graphing tool in the New York Times site passed the “Potato Test” (see comment above). I tried to break it, and I still got pretty precise feedback each time.

By: Cathy Yenca

Cathy Yenca — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 12:59:19 +0000

I’ve also used Nearpod to attempt to provide students with a platform for graphing something on their own, then submitting it digitally to be shared, compared, and affirmed or denied. An example of this was transformations of 2D figures in the coordinate plane. While students knew the transformation vocabulary, transferring these ideas to figures with vertices at specific coordinates was not intuitive.

Once I had all students’ initial work images in Nearpod, I clicked through the graphs quickly using my Smart Board. In doing so, each student’s graph flashed across the screen briefly, creating somewhat of an animation experience. Variations in student work became efficiently apparent. Though the software itself didn’t provide tailored feedback, my students and I took care of that part.

After clicking through student graphs for several cycles, my next “slide” was a [SILENT SOLUTION] animation/video using Keynote that reads like a solution cartoon, showing the correct image occurring from the preimage in motion. As that animation occured, the class erupted, with students either feeling very affirmed in their previously submitted graph, or denied in a discrepant event of, what the heck? (Which is a prime moment for learning!)

Here’s a post that features a bit of this so you can see what I’m saying: http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2015/02/transformations-and-animations/

I find it curious that I also got the exact same feedback from the New York Times graphing experience as Dan… Now I want to break it. How many possible lists of feedback does that graphing tool *really* give? Is it as precise as it seems at first glance, or is it like one of those Facebook things where you type in your first name, and it tells you what your name means… except you get the same name-meaning for your actual first name as you do when you type in “Potato”? (P.S. Yes, I actually typed in Potato to test it.)

By: jkern

jkern — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 14:36:24 +0000

@Bradley, the best tool I had for this in Physics was just whiteboards or papers, so they could compare with each other and draw the “real” graph over their prediction when the demonstration happened.
What I added in was a betting system to get students to be a bit more excited about making predictions. They got 2 meaningless points per question. They could bet 0, 1, or 2, depending on their confidence. So students who were unsure could bet 0 and still end up with 2 points no matter what. Confident students who bet both of their points could end up with 0 or 4, so they really had to assess their confidence levels and understanding if they wanted to “win.” Some liked the 0-bet safety net. Some liked the 2-bet risk. I would usually make them bet on a set of problems, then we would compare, demo, and discuss. Then they would have a chance to bet on another set of problems. This was using the Physics Modeling curriculum from Arizona State, so each problem was a little bit different, keeping it challenging throughout.

By: Bradley

Bradley — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 14:24:49 +0000

I would love to have a tool like this for all the graphing we do in Physics. I can imagine having kids graph where they think a falling object will be after 1 second, 2seconds, 5 seconds… Then comparing and contrasting each other’s graphs could lead to great discussions! I think students could discuss their graphs before seeing the real data. In physics, then, we could actually do the research to come up with the “real” graph, maybe using research from all sections of physics at my school.

By: jkern

jkern — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 12:58:49 +0000

@Zack Miller, thanks for the heads up on Peardeck.
It would be nice if it was set up to compile lines instead of just dots. I’ve seen MathChat as an option for sharing individual resonses for graphs/drawing/writing, but it doesn’t compile student responses for the full feedback about where each student lands in relation to the class, like we see in the Times article. That is the app that we really need. Does it exist anywhere?

By: Xavier

Xavier — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 06:58:37 +0000

Another graph which I think it’s useful for understand economy and students “read” information is [this](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/19/upshot/3d-yield-curve-economic-growth.html?abt=0002&abg=0)

By: Zack Miller

Zack Miller — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 04:04:07 +0000

Peardeck is the best classroom tool I know to do stuff like this. I often use Peardeck to help start math tasks as close to the bottom rung of the ladder of abstraction as possible. It allows me to bring up student work quickly and easily on the projector, or show an aggregate of a class the way the NY Times did. Spending class minutes on activities like this has really paid off in my class (in terms of learning, as well as student engagement and participation)