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Rebecca Patterson

Novato students learn algebra on the job - Marin Independent Journal - 0 views

www.marinij.com/...ci_18655506

students algebra job education math teaching learning news

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Williams' students are participants in the Novato Algebra Academy — a three-week program created by the North Bay Leadership Council and the Novato Unified School District that debuted Aug. 1. Based on a similar program in Santa Rosa, the Algebra Academy helps English language learners from Novato's middle schools master formulas and solve tough equations — and then shows them how businesses, government and athletes use that analytical process on the job.
  • "I met with the owners of each business two months ago to talk about what math they use and to create lesson plans based on that," Griffin said. "Most of it is basic algebra: you create equations, and you solve for different variables."
  • "Algebra is part of the required curriculum everybody must take if they want to be admitted to the CSU or UC systems," Murray said. "But a lot of students don't realize that they needed algebra until they start applying to colleges. Many of these students are not only English language learners, but the first in their family to even get an idea about going to college. So we want to provide them what assistance is out there."
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  • That's particularly true of Williams, who began working as a treatment plant intern while still a teenager. Now 22, Williams has created several YouTube videos on wastewater math. He ended his presentation last week by showing his students one of the questions from the plant operator examination — a complex equation whose answer required at least a page of careful analysis — and assuring them that they had the skills to complete it."All the algebra you've learned? You know all these formulas," Williams said. "And this problem is just one formula stacked on top of another."
    • Rebecca Patterson
      Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11
       
      Know formulas or know concepts?
  • Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11
     
    On the job math training
Rebecca Patterson

Is Grade 8 too early for algebra? - The Daily Breeze - 0 views

www.dailybreeze.com/...ci_18449362

algebra math education learning

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 15 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • More and more eighth-graders in California are taking algebra I or higher, regardless of whether they are ready for it.
  • In just seven years beginning in 2002-03, the statewide percentage of such students has nearly doubled, from 34percent to 62 percent.
  • a third of students who performed poorly in regular seventh-grade math were nonetheless placed into algebra I in eighth grade, "with almost no chance for success."
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  • "Are all kids ready for that level of abstraction and complexity by eighth grade?" district spokeswoman Carolyn Seaton said. "Many (experts) say no."
  • the district three years ago launched an initiative to boost performance in the elementary grades, with an eye toward the ultimate goal: that all eighth-graders not only take algebra I, but also succeed. She said the effort is beginning to pay off: Last year, it produced a class of students so advanced they were able to take algebra in seventh grade.
  • Math problem There were 90 employees in a company last year. This year the number of employees increased by 10 percent. How many employees are in the company this year? A) 9 B) 81 C) 91 D) 99 E) 100 The answer is D. A report by the Brookings Institution found that only 49 percent of eighth-graders taking algebra knew the correct answer.
  • Rebecca Patterson on 15 Jul 11
     
    California school systems.
Rebecca Patterson

In turnabout, teachers give students Apples, hope iPads boost test scores - Wednesday, ... - 0 views

www.lasvegassun.com/...ive-students-apples-hope-ipads

teaching learning education math school algebra mathematics tools

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 17 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • The $49 Fuse application allows users to learn at their own pace, Blumenfeld said. If students miss a class, they can tap into about 400 video tutorials led by textbook author Edward Burger, a math professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. “Videos allow for anywhere, anytime instruction,” Blumenfeld said. “For students who might have missed class or didn’t understand the lesson, you can push a button and have it explained again and again. You have a teacher available anytime, anywhere.”
  • Test scores in Riverside, Calif., jumped 30 percentage points, from 60 percent to 90 percent proficiency in math, he said. A smaller iPad program in some of Chicago’s elementary schools also resulted in improvement, Ebert said.
  • Indeed, Algebra 1 is one of the most-failed courses in the School District, Ebert said. All Nevada 10th graders are tested on the freshman-level math subject before they can graduate. Only half of the students in Clark County passed the math section of the High School Proficiency Exam on their first try last year. A quarter of students won’t pass the math section by their senior year and, as a result, will fail to graduate. This year, the district has identified about 9,000 seniors who haven’t passed the proficiency exam. They are at risk of dropping out, Ebert said.
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  • At the time, the technology we used (in math class) was a graphing calculator,” he said. “Today, these kids have the privilege to learn math in a new, innovative way
  • Only the Fuse algebra application and a few key tools are loaded onto the devices. At school, students are blocked from inappropriate sites via firewalls. The App Store, where iPad users can purchase games and other applications, is locked on the device, but school officials are looking at opening the online store in the future. Freshman Catherine Rodriguez, 14, flashed a big smile as she received her new iPad. Math isn’t her strongest subject; she hopes the new technology will help her, she said. Passing math is a big concern for Rodriguez’s mother, who took three years to pass pre-algebra, she said.
  • Rebecca Patterson on 17 Sep 11
     
    Interesting place to funnel school district money. There should be some good research coming out on this application in the next few years.
Rebecca Patterson

Community Colleges Consider Math Options - US News and World Report - 0 views

www.usnews.com/...colleges-consider-math-options

math education teaching learning Remedial-Math mathematics

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 03 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Statway mixes basic math concepts with statistics, enabling students to pass a college-level statistics class in the second semester. Quantway, which started its first pilot classes this month, teaches students how to "use mathematics and numerical reasoning to make sense of the world around them." After one semester, which includes algebraic skills, it's hoped that students will be able to pass a college math class.
  • If they need to review basic skills or learn an algebra concept, he provides "just in time instruction" on basic skills and algebraic concepts, teaching students information they can use immediately to solve problems.
  • Math is an "overpowering wall" that keeps students from higher education," wrote a Statway student. "Now there is hope ... not only to pursue higher education but to learn something that would really apply to our everyday life."
  • Rebecca Patterson on 03 Feb 12
     
    Nice article on the changes in Community Colleges and their remedial math programs. The Carnegie Institute and the Dana Foundation have teamed up here.
Rebecca Patterson

There's one key difference between kids who excel at math and those who don't - Quartz - 0 views

qz.com/...cel-at-math-and-those-who-dont

math education intelligence psychology algebra

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 28 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Rebecca Patterson on 28 Oct 13
     
    "... you may be helping to perpetuate a pernicious myth that is harming underprivileged children-the myth of inborn genetic math ability." For high school math, inborn talent is just much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence. Convincing students that they could make themselves smarter by hard work led them to work harder and get higher grades. In response to the lackluster high school math performance, some influential voices in American education policy have suggested simply teaching less math-for example, Andrew Hacker has called for algebra to no longer be a requirement. The subtext, of course, is that large numbers of American kids are simply not born with the ability to solve for x. Too many Americans go through life terrified of equations and mathematical symbols. We think what many of them are afraid of is "proving" themselves to be genetically inferior by failing to instantly comprehend the equations (when, of course, in reality, even a math professor would have to read closely). So they recoil from anything that looks like math, protesting: "I'm not a math person." Math education, we believe, is just the most glaring area of a slow and worrying shift. We see our country moving away from a culture of hard work toward a culture of belief in genetic determinism. In the debate between "nature vs. nurture," a critical third element-personal perseverance and effort-seems to have been sidelined. We want to bring it back, and we think that math is the best place to start.
Rebecca Patterson

Texas community colleges reinvent developmental math | Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...es-reinvent-developmental-math

education math research community colleges texas higher ed remediation

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • In Texas, students referred to developmental classes are 50 percent less likely than their peers to earn a credential or transfer to a four-year college. Math is often their biggest hurdle, and students are steered into algebra-based remediation regardless of their majors.
  • Texas appears to be the first state to adopt such a drastic rethinking of remedial math in all its community colleges.
  • Garcia said the first-year cost of the project will be around $2 million, a figure that doesn't include instructor salaries. The Texas Community College Association will contribute $300,000, with donors and individual colleges making up the balance.
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  • Working with the Dana Center, the community college association was able to get all 50 two-year college presidents to sign on.
  • The Texas project is inspired by the Carnegie Foundation’s work, developed with the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin, in which students needing math remediation weren’t all put on a path toward calculus.
  • Kay McClenney is a University of Texas at Austin project director who helped develop a recent report showing the scope of the remediation problem at the state’s community colleges.
Rebecca Patterson

Education Week: Math Educators See the Right Angles for Digital Tools - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...35mm-math.h30.html

math technology education tools teaching adaptive

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 16 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • And just because there’s a lot to choose from doesn’t mean all the programs possess the same ability to teach math on a long-lasting, conceptual level.
  • Although kids are quick to pick [technology] up, they’re not that quick at learning to relate it to a mathematical concept.
  • what you want is for students to realize, ‘I don’t need to memorize a thousand different rules. I’m beginning to observe commonalities.
    • Rebecca Patterson
      Rebecca Patterson on 16 Jun 11
       
      patterns and metapatterns
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  • Some adaptive-learning software, which tailors lessons and exercises to individual student progress, also uses visual representation to demonstrate relationships.
  • online drawing programs that allow students and instructors to draw and manipulate shapes and graphs—like the Geometer’s Sketchpad, made by Emeryville, Calif.-based Key Curriculum Press, or the independently run GeoGebra, which has established dozens of institutes across the globe—immediately give users a sense of the relationships that govern geometry, algebra, and even calculus.
  • While software from Bellevue, Wash.-based DreamBox Learning also uses visual approaches, it differs from MIND’s software because it lets students in grades K-3 choose their own visual representations. After completing a problem one way, students will often be prompted to solve the same problem by choosing a different visualization to reinforce the concept.
  • its ability to import data from thrice-yearly Washington state standardized testing.
  • content services like Learn360, from Woodbury, N.Y.-based AIM Education Inc., offer the ability to combine resources into playlists of media set specifically for the needs of individual students, to help give some of that multidimensional understanding of content.
Rebecca Patterson

Va. Community Colleges Dive Headfirst Into Remedial-Math Redesign - Students - The Chro... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...128430

math education teaching learning mathematics colleges Remedial-Math

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 05 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Mr. DuBois wanted the system to become smarter in how it invested in people, talent, and technology, as well as do a better job of taking advantage of its size and resources.
    • Rebecca Patterson
      Rebecca Patterson on 05 Aug 11
       
      Glenn DuBois, the chancellor
  • One study by the college system found that only 16.4 percent of students sent to developmental-math classes ever managed to pass a college-level math course.
  • Recent high-school graduates are among the most vulnerable. They become frustrated when they learn they can't immediately enroll in credit-bearing classes, and they sometimes leave college even before taking a single course.
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  • Institutions are equally affected. A recent report by the Community College Research Center put the annual cost of remediation at $1.9-billion to $2.3-billion at community colleges and $500-million more at four-year colleges.
  • There is growing recognition that the traditional semester-long course sequence used by many community colleges doesn't work, says Michael Lawrence Collins, associate vice president for postsecondary state policy at Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based nonprofit that studies education and work-force issues. It's inefficient to have students take up to a year and a half in remediation when many need just pieces of what they're being taught.
  • The Virginia system is betting on that promise. Its colleges will soon replace their semester-long developmental-math courses with nine units, which can be taken as one-credit classes or Web-based lessons with variable credit hours that allow students to complete more than one unit in a self-paced computer lab and classroom. The number of units that students are required to complete will depend on their placement-test scores and intended program of study. Students focused on the liberal arts will have to show competence in only five units, for example, mastering basic algebra concepts such as linear equations. Students who plan to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, math, or business administration must complete all nine units.
  • Although he has help from a tutor in the class, it's a lot to juggle, he says. Mr. Wyrick does like how the Web-based class allows him to peek at students' quizzes in real time and track their progress a lot faster than by sorting through homework and test papers himself. "It allows me to intervene even before they ask for help," he says.
  • There is one certainty. The Virginia Community College system is not the only one anticipating the outcome. Equally curious are researchers and other colleges searching for successful ideas. "There is a risk," Mr. Collins says, "but there is also power in being that bold."
  • The Virginia Community College system is poised to find out. Starting in 2012, it will adopt a new systemwide developmental-math curriculum that will allow students to focus only on those math concepts they haven't already mastered rather than taking a series of semester-long math courses.
  • Half of all incoming students in the system need developmental education—and three-fourths of those students fail to graduate or transfer within four years.
  • Rebecca Patterson on 05 Aug 11
     
    Great article on a Community College network taking a chance to revamp its remedial math program. Read on!
Rebecca Patterson

Does not compute: court says only hard math is patentable - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...licated-math-is-patentable.ars

education patents math mathematics

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • the court ruled that you can't patent mental processes—even if they are carried out by a computer program.
  • no-patenting-math rule doesn't apply if the math in question complicated enough that "as a practical matter, the use of a computer is required" to perform the calculations.
  • So you can't patent calculations that could be done with a pencil and paper. And such calculations remain unpatentable even if the steps are encoded in a machine-readable format. But this leads to an obvious question: why is software patentable at all? All software consists of sequences of calculations that could, in principle, be done with a pencil and paper.
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  • Theoretically, you could have performed the calculations with a pencil and paper, but no one actually did so. Yet the Supreme Court still held them to be unpatentable mental processes.
  • The Federal Circuit displays a similar confusion about a more recent case, this one involving an algorithm for digital image half-toning. The court upheld the patent despite the fact that mathematical formulas were "admittedly a significant part" of the patent's claims. In Tuesday's opinion, the court argued that the half-toning patent was different from the fraud-detection patent because the half-toning algorithm "required the manipulation of computer data structures (e.g. the pixels of a digital image and a two-dimensional array known as a mask)."
  • Of course, a "computer data structure" is just a way of organizing numbers and symbols. When I served as a teacher's assistant (TA) for computer science courses in grad school, I would regularly draw diagrams of data structures on the whiteboard and perform example calculations on them. Similarly, many branches of math involve manipulating "data structures" like ordered pairs and matrices—presumably the Federal Circuit doesn't think you can patent new results in linear algebra because "data structures" are involved.
  • Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11
     
    Not quite math stats here, but interesting patent ruling trends. Worth a read, Cooper!!
Rebecca Patterson

California students show moderate gains in English and math - latimes.com - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...cores-20110816,0,5162350.story

education math mathematics news teaching learning testing

shared by Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • 50% scored proficient or better in math, compared with 48% last year. The scores are the highest since the standards-based testing began in 2003.
  • Students who were considered at grade level — or proficient — in English-language arts increased from 41% to 44%. In math, from 39% to 43%.
  • Over the last four years, the total of Reseda students who score at grade level or better in English rose from 39% to 47%; the percentage actually dipped slightly this year. In math over that period, the figure rose from 18% to 22%.
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  • About two-thirds of the school's students are low income and 18% are learning English.
  • Test score gains are highest in elementary schools and drop off precipitously in middle and high school.
  • Across L.A. Unified, fewer than 20% of high school students scored proficient or better in general mathematics, algebra 1 and 2 and geometry. In fourth grade, by contrast, 67% of students tested as proficient or better in math.
    • Rebecca Patterson
      Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11
       
      Oh, my!!!! Here is the connection to the elementary article about losing connection with students!
  • In math, the numbers are 76% for Asians, 61% for whites, 41% for Latinos and 34% for African Americans.
    • Rebecca Patterson
      Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11
       
      Proficient or better scores.
  • Rebecca Patterson on 26 Aug 11
     
    New California Stats.
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