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A profile of a teacher in Florida who is using smart pens from LiveScribe to create pencasts of exercises for her HS math classes.

Curious what math teachers in our class think about this. Anyone worked with these methods?

I was talking with Arene about this. He has taught math in middle school and high school in Singapore. When I asked if teaching this in the US would be effective he had some interesting points. You should talk with him to get an accurate account, but one of the questions he raised in our conversation was the following: Does this pedagogy that works in the cultural context of Singapore transfer to the United States?

Using computer games as well as interactive visuals in the classroom, students are taught fractions, equations, comparisons and other math processes. Later, they learn the vocabulary and symbols that go with the subject matter. It's a high-tech version of the paper money and metal coins that instructors have long used to teach about currency.

"Despite popular opinion, the flow of qualified math and science students through the American education pipeline is strong-except among high-achievers, who appear to be defecting to other college majors and fields."

Interesting to see what kind of role educational technology will play in this conversation.

"National statistics show that 68% of eighth graders cannot read at their grade level; American students rank 25th in math and 21st in science compared to 30 other industrialized countries; and most college students are "non-traditional" - spending more than four years in college or enrolling well after high school." ...and they say the industrial school model doesn't need a makeover. Sheesh!

Arizona State University is using data mining to collect information on their students and help guide them to the "most appropriate major". also, in class, using data collection methods, teachers collect information to be used in assessment Ex: "Ms. Galayda can monitor their progress. In her cubicle on a recent Monday, she sees the intimacies of students' study routines - or lack of them - from the last activity they worked on to how many tries they made at each end-of-lesson quiz. For one crammer, the system registers 57 attempts on multiple quizzes in seven days. Pulling back to the big picture, a chart shows 15 students falling behind (in red) and 17 on schedule (in green)."

wow this is kind of bothersome on some levels and kinda amazing on other levels. While I can see the benefit of understanding where and how a student is more likely to succeed, I think there are some potential dangers with such a system. There is the what I would imagine the psychological effect of such a program and I am thinking particularly about STEM fields where women are already way under-represented and often self conscious about their performance, do you really also need a system telling you you shouldn't be majoring in that as well cause you're not performing at that point....or what about a student who really wants to be an engineer but maybe hasn't been fully prepared with the appropriate math courses in high school, would he or she be filtered into another major? I understand using such a system as a means to target help for example if a student could get an assessment of where they currently are, where they want to go and how to get there....