EDUC 571 Hanratty

Math certainly is incomprehensible to many students, but from where I sit, poor teaching is often the reason. Math education is failing many of our students.

I have the utmost respect for people with math degrees who choose to teach in spite of the poor pay and discipline problems, but few people make that choice.

What if medical schools know that calculus is not needed in a doctor’s day-to-day practice, but that the skills she learns when taking it, including perseverance in the face of a difficult subject, make her better at understanding and responding to the flood of information she encounters in her work?

The work could lead to educational tools that identify errors in students' reasoning or evaluate the difficulty of word problems, researchers said.

To teach the system how to perform that mapping, and to produce the equation templates, the researchers used machine learning.

In a series of experiments, the researchers would randomly select 400 of the 500 problems, use those to train their system, and then test it on the remaining 100.

"One of the biggest outcomes from the Washington State Algebra Challenge was the fact that mastery of linear equation-solving was reached in 1.5 hours, not just by higher grades, but even in elementary school," said Zoran Popović, director of the CGS and founder and chief scientist at Engaged Learning, in a prepared statement. "More importantly, this mastery was achieved by practically the entire classroom, as opposed to just a few students. This is shockingly good, but we think we can do even better."

And, as the platform continuously and automatically adapts based on real-time data, it accelerates the potential rate and degree of engagement and mastery in every learning opportunity."

The kids took to it instantly, churning out a storm of interactive content. "We had 75 videos generated in the first week about solving linear equations," Gross says. "The students started forming communities, working together, and highlighting where they were running into problems."

"The kids are able to explain the material, and when they can do that, that's when they really get it," Kliewer says. "Sometimes it doesn't click when I do it." And opportunities for reinforcement are ever present. Students can take the phones home with them, so they're able to ask Kliewer or their classmates questions about math concepts virtually 24/7. "The connectivity has been the critical element," says Gross. "The device allows them to continue to use instructional resources when they're on the school bus or waiting for a parent at work. If they have a specific question, they always have access to an expert, whether it's a student peer or a tutor."

For high-school math, inborn talent is much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence.

Thus, people’s belief that math ability can’t change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

researchers at Oklahoma City who recently found that belief in inborn math ability may be responsible for much of the gender gap in mathematics.

“It allows us to extend the classroom beyond these four walls,” said Larry Reiff, an English teacher at Roslyn who now posts all his course materials online.

“I think this could very well be the biggest thing to hit school technology since the overhead projector,” Mr. Wolfe said.

many of the districts are paying for their iPads through federal and other grants, including money from the federal Race to the Top competitive grant program