[math4] FourthGradeMath Digest, Vol 2, Issue 18

[Caroline Meeks]

> On Saturday 14 March 2009 08:30:59 pm Caroline Meeks wrote:
> > Greg's point is that if we use the standard process that Shawn used in
> > industry, we'll never get anywhere. Its not scalable, its expensive and
> > isn't crowd sourcing friendly.
>
> I don't agree that it's either unscalable or crowd-source unfriendly.
>  Doing
> it in a room with a whiteboard isn't feasible, but mailing list discussions
> certainly are.
>
> Scaling it up just requires getting plenty of educators on board, and they
> become part of the crowd.  There are a *lot* of great 4th grade teachers
> who
> have decades of experience teaching these concepts to a lot of kids with
> different learning styles.  It sounds to me like we need to recruit some
> and
> get them involved with the discussion.
>
> I'm traveling for a couple of weeks, but when I get back I'm going to start
> talking to some of the teachers in my area.
>
>        Shawn.
>

I think we are in agreement here. The goal is to create a process that uses
the internet to support teams of people working and learning together.

One of the principals I am learning in my class on school reform is to think
symmetrically at every level.  We want the students to be thinking about
their learning and how they can continuously improve.  Similarly we want the
teachers to be thinking about their practice, their learning and how they
can improve.  As designers of instructional materials, we also have to think
critically about our learning and how to create processes that support
continual improvement.

We know collaborative learning is important for students.  It is also
important for teachers. Our best case scenario is that grade level teams of
teachers will work together to implement this in their individual
classrooms.  We hope that together they will be able to work through
unfamiliar issues around using technology and probably also around some of
the math and mathematical thinking. Remember that the average 4th grade
teacher with 10 years of experience may not be a math curriculum or pedagogy
expert.

Symmetrically this process could support collaborative learning by have
individuals, each implementing different activities work together in teams
as the teachers work in grade level teams.  Perhaps 4-8 people, who can
create learning communities to help work through unfamiliar issues
especially around concepts that may not be familiar to any of them, such as
pedagogy.

We can hope that these grade level teams will have some support from techies
and math curriculum specialists.  However, we  face the reality that many of
them will not have these resources.

Symmetrically our teams can hope to recruit teacher and math pedagogy
experts to support them.  You can recruit teachers locally or through the
Internet and such places as Classroom 2.0 Ning community and facebook.  But
Greg has some real legitimate concerns about keeping it simple and making
forward progress. Just as we imagine the isolated teachers moving forward
without "expert" support from their districts, diving in and figuring things
out for themselves, probably the teams here will also need to do that also.

Furthermore, f we think about our teacher teams, this stuff is so new that
some teacher teams may well end up with an "expert" or "coach" that doesn't
know any more then they do. Our goal is to empower the teachers to figure it
out for themselves and to believe that they can work together, learn
together, and experiment  to find ways of making this technology help their
students learn.

I'd love the tech teams here to model a symmetrical attitude even when they
don't have an expert in pedagogy and learning theory.

Thanks,
Caroline


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> End of FourthGradeMath Digest, Vol 2, Issue 18
> **********************************************
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-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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