The Real Worlds | The Mathalicious Blog - 0 views
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Nicole Martin on 19 Mar 14Whereas the goal of problem solving activities is for students to use some context to better understand mathematics, the goal with [our] applied activities is the exact opposite: to use mathematics to explore how the world around us - the external world that we often think of as the real, real world - works. Instead of discussing which type of activity - procedural, conceptual, or applied - we should use, a more constructive conversation would be about how often and when. instead of debating which world is the best, we would do better to consider how to best integrate them: how to stop the pendulum from swinging and find its equilibrium (or at least limit the swing to a stabler range). How real-world an activity is first depends on the world in which it exists, and the goal it's intended to serve.
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Great blog to know about. In order to decide whether a particular math activity is "real-world," it's important to first determine the world in which the activity is intended to exist. From our perspective, there are three different worlds that constitute the universe of math instruction: the world of procedural fluency; the world of conceptual understanding/problem solving; and the world of applications. Only once we understand how each world works can we determine whether an activity within it is "real" or not.
