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The event definitely drew a lot of attention from the startup community and even got some coverage on TechCrunch , the Guidewire blog , and the local news. Judges included Chris Shipley ( Guidewire Group ), Anurag Nigam ( Sandhill Angels ), Katherine B…

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I was going to leave my cynical self in Mt. Pleasant, but I felt compelled to comment here as I read maggie16’s comments about high math performance coming out of the poor, low/no-tech areas of China. I wonder whether we’re not failing to adequately account for the dynamics of broader sociocultural conditions. Here’s my thought–maggie16, please correct me if I’m off-base here–I suspect that in low-end China, instruction is very didactic and there is little tolerance for non-compliance and poor performance within the classroom, which is no more tolerated by the society at large. In the US, our education system is based on a similar, father-knows-best, approach. Unlike the Chinese, however, we seem to lack the appropriate follow-through for this approach. In other words, we don’t have a problem forcing students into classrooms for years on end and subjugating them to standards, but we fail to follow through with the logical extension of this approach, that is, to coerce all students into producing desired performance outcomes through direct behavioral conditioning within a context of societal conditions that reinforce such a system.

We drop the ball at this point not because it slips out of our hands, but because modern western sensibility tells us that coercion is less desirable, and that there’s more to the story of life and learning than what might be achieved through rote memorization. So, we let up and begin to infuse the system with more individualistic and humanistic elements. Unfortunately, we end up simply trying to mash the round pegs of progressive pedagogy into the square holes of the old school. The result is a frame that doesn’t sit well on it’s foundation, and now we’re stuck wishy-washy between oldschool and newschool. In the end, we don’t do oldschool very well, we don’t do mainstream progressive stuff very well, and we don’t even come close to newschool. For those of you who don’t know me, or for those of you who haven’t already surmised, to Michael, newschool = unschooling & free schools. And yes, I did wake up on the cynical side of my bed, this morning ;o)>>>

What stood out the most was the way technology could be integrated in such small doses. Any one of those things could have taken anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes to show. In language arts, I have come across no such thing. Typically, technology comes within a bigger project that goes on for between a few days to a few weeks. This distinction is interesting to me and has gotten me thinking about ways i might integrate technology in smaller chunks…thanks!

As a high school math teacher, I constantly tried to find ways that I could implement these types of activities, but I found that even with some of the most interesting applications or cover stories, some students were still apathetic. Additionally, certain students would engage in the activities, but lacked “mathematical focus”, rather focused on the activity as form of entertainment or as a game. The reason for this apathy or lack of focus could be attributed to several possible causes. First, it was clearly evident that some of the activities that I found online or from other sources were clearly not developed by someone with mathematics content knowledge or teaching experience. Consequently, while the materials where visually appealing or entertaining, the actual content did not address the necessary standards that were to be taught. This example fits in nicely with the TPCK points that Denis brought up. In this instance the creators of the activities has the “T” part down, but lacked the foundation in the “P” or “CK” to build effective technology lessons. At times classroom management issues arose or student engagement was not at a high level. I learned this the hard way my first year of teaching. Another reason is that what might be a genuine, authentic, rich experience for one student, might be completely irrelevant for another. Invariably, each student’s personal interests are going to be different. To try and combat this problem, however, Carnegie Mellon is in the process of creating a morph generator for mathematics word problems. So students can select a topic of their choice such as music, sports, movies, etc. and the problem will automatically generate a cover story more applicable to individual interests.

During my experiences in the classroom I found it difficult to try and cover all of the state standards and at the same time implement fun, authentic technology. However, as a result of Dr. Garafolo’s presentation, coupled with this discussion, I am becoming more optimistic that effective, authentic, technology-based mathematics applications are out there. It is our job now to locate the good ones, and continue to develop technology-based materials that include all aspects of TPCK.