Group items tagged

Tips and tricks for the iPod Touch are needed to assist teachers in making the process easier when using this digital device for teaching and learning. As these digital devices become more widespread in classrooms, the need for more efficient use of these tools is coming to the forefront. This evolutionary course of action is resulting in more efficient and time saving strategies. The purpose of these 10 tips and tricks is to provide teachers, both novice and experienced, with features and applications (apps) designed to make an iPod Touch's functions easier to use. These features and apps offer the ability to customize this device to resolve management issues and integrate efficiently with other digital devices, such as a Mac laptop.

What does it mean to be a successful science or math teacher? The definition of success is an elusive thing and measured in many ways. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines success as - resulting in or gaining a favorable outcome. This, without a doubt, is your and every other teacher's goal for their students.

A programmer/developer reflects on lessons learned in mathematics. His blog is subtitled "algorithms for the heck of it.)

Census at School is an international classroom project that engages students in grades 4-12 in statistical problemsolving. Students complete a brief online survey, analyze their class census results, and compare their class with random samples of students in the United States and other countries.

From the abstract: "This research examined the effects of the objectifying gaze on math performance, interaction motivation, body surveillance, body shame, and body dissatisfaction. In an experiment, undergraduate participants (67 women and 83 men) received an objectifying gaze during an interaction with a trained confederate of the other sex. As hypothesized, the objectifying gaze caused decrements in women'smath performance but notmen's. Interestingly, the objectifying gaze also increased women's, but notmen's,motivation to engage in subsequent interactions with their partner. Finally, the objectifying gaze did not influence body surveillance, body shame, or body dissatisfaction forwomen or men. One explanation for themath performance and interaction motivation findings is stereotype threat. To the degree that the objectifying gaze arouses stereotype threat, math performance may decrease because it conveys that women's looks are valued over their other qualities. Furthermore, interaction motivation may increase because stereotype threat arouses belonging uncertainty or concerns about social connections. As a result, the objectifying gazemay trigger a vicious cycle in which women underperform but continue to interact with the people who led them to underperform in the first place. Implications for long-term consequences of the objectifying gaze and directions for future research are discussed." (Full text available online (.pdf) )for now) ) (Winner of the 2011 Georgia Babladelis Best Paper Award)

Wow, what an amazing study!

Inspired by the work of Magdeline Lampert, interactive problems offer educators a fun tool to help learners think about "mathematical principles" within the familiar context of coinage. We love her idea that playing with combinations and recombinations of denominations promotes engagement with multiplicative thinking, and have produced this as a result.

Movie box office data that is current and very comprehensive. Several different trends are easy to track including exponential, and log functions. Great for using with students to create regression models, making predictions based on the models, checking the results and re-analyzing. Also, when a movie doesn't follow the predictions there are often easy to understand reasons for why the movies behave differently (a holiday weekend may cause the movie to gross more on a given weekend than predicted, etc.)

Active learning has a powerful impact on student learning. How? Student achievement increases through mastery of science and math content as a result of this technique. Students also develop improved problem solving, communication, and higher order thinking skills.

A college institutional researcher reveals some data concerning math placement tests and the pressures impacting students to opt for more difficult math courses without adequate preparation and unsatisfactory results. He writes: "In my mind, this disconnect exemplifies the degree to which incoming students and families don't grasp the difference between going to college to acquire content knowledge and going to college to develop skills and dispositions. ... [I]f students understand that college is about developing skills and dispositions, I think that they might be more likely to appreciate the chance to start at the beginning that is appropriate for them, savoring each experience like a slow cooked, seven course meal because they know that the culmination of college is made exponentially better by the particular ordering and integrating of the flavors that have come before."

Abstract: "This study examined the benefits and challenges associated with implementing RtI [Response to Intervention] in the area of math ematics in an elementary and a middle school in a rural district in the northeastern United States. We sought to document the ways in which two schools approached implementation of RtI and to explore the issues they encountered with respect to instruction , intervention, and assessment. Five themes were identified that described implementation of the RtI framework: Shifting roles and changing structures, increasing opportunities for collaboration and communication, inc reasing instruction al an d assessment su pport for students who struggle in math, increasing knowledge of support strategies for learners who struggle with math, and "spreading the word" and enhancing the use of the model. The results of this study suggest that the RtI model has potential to impr ove how math instruction is approached in elementary and middle schools. "

by Penta, Michael K., M.S., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL, 2011, 83 pages; 1507796 Abstract record for a thesis completed in December 2011, fulltext requires subscription or purchase. A news story on the departmental blog http://blog.uml.edu/cs/2011/12/penta_ms_video_games_for_math_learning.html describes the kinds of games involved, the participants and the results.

Abstract:"Prime Climb is an educational game that provides individual support for learning number factorization skills in the form of hints based on a model of student learning. Previous studies with Prime Climb indicated that students may not always be paying attention to the hints, even when they are justified (i.e. based on a student model's assessment). In this thesis we will discuss the test-bed game, Prime Climb, and our re-implementation of the game which allowed us to modify the game dynamically and will allow for more rapid prototyping in the future. To assist students as they play the game, Prime Climb includes a pedagogical agent which provides individualized support by providing user-adaptive hints. We then move into our work with the eye-tracker to better understand if and how students process the agent's personalized hints. We will conclude with a user study in which we use eyetracking data to capture user attention patterns as impacted by factors related to existing user knowledge, hint types, and attitude towards getting help in general. We plan to leverage these results in the future to make hint delivery more effective."

"Abstract What does it mean to have random numbers? Without understanding where a group of numbers came from, it is impossible to know if they were randomly generated. However, common sense claims that if the process to generate these numbers is truly understood, then the numbers could not be random. Methods that are able to let their internal workings be known without sacrificing random results are what this paper sets out to describe. Beginning with a study of what it really means for something to be random, this paper dives into the topic of random number generators and summarizes the key areas. It covers the two main groups of generators, true-random and pseudo-random, and gives practical examples of both. To make the information more applicable, real life examples of currently used and currently available generators are provided as well. Knowing the how and why of a number sequence without knowing the values that will come is possible, and this thesis explains how it is accomplished."

Abstract: Educational videogames can be designed to provide instructional feedback that is responsive to specific actions. However, existing research indicates that students tend to ignore videogame feedback and subsequently use less effective help-seeking strategies. Research on help-seeking in learning environments has primarily focused on the role of cognitive factors, the nature of the help, or issues of timing and frequency. There is a noticeable gap in understanding regarding how to motivate and increase the use of feedback for improved learning. Using a pre-algebra videogame, this study examined the relationship between an incentive to use feedback and math achievement. A randomized-control design was employed, which compared learning outcomes of students who received the incentive to those who did not. Results indicated that students given the incentive to use feedback had significantly higher normalized change scores on math items (d = .53), with stronger effects for students with low academic intrinsic motivation (d = .88 - 1.17).

Abstract: "How can smartphones apps enrich the learning of mathematics in vocational education? This article examines how mathematics teaching can be enriched by apps using smartphone sensors such as gyroscope, compass, camera, and touch screen in a gaming context. An iterative and participatory design process involving two classes of carpentry students from different vocational colleges resulted in two highly successful and course-relevant games based on trigonometry. Each game consists of quests and missions whose successful completion unlocks more theoretical multiple-choice exercises for the classroom. The combination of competition to unlock exercises, competition for placing on the high-score list, and physical activity proved very motivating for the students and was also approved by their teachers. In this article we describe our design principles, the overall game architecture and the games themselves. We talk about our experience in implementing our design process and subsequently summarize the pros and cons of the application and the smartphone platform and how the app developed contributes to vocational mathematics teaching"

Gaming coin flip probability by bending coins with pliers and analyzing results

"experiment performed by Loukas Balafoutas and Matthias Sutter, released February 2 by Science, involved three methods that provided an initial advantage to women in a math competition. The authors found that, in each case, women entered the competitions more readily, but the aggregate performance of the participants was unaffected, and sometimes even improved."

From the abstract: "The problem addressed by this study is the need to identify practical predictors of success for community college developmental mathematics students in online, hybrid and seated course delivery formats. This study examined two possible predictors of success, mathematics self-efficacy and technology self-efficacy, in the three delivery formats and how they related to performance on a final assessment. The study used a quantitative research design employing binomial logistic regression to determine if the independent variables (math self-efficacy and technology self-efficacy) were significant in predicting the outcome category (score on the final assessment dichotomized about the mean). Next linear regression analysis was used to build a predictor equation for a particular score on the outcome variable. A previously developed survey and an adapted version of another survey were combined to measure the independent variables; demographic factors were also measured for descriptive purposes. Binomial logistic regression analysis showed that math self-efficacy was a valid predictor of success for the developmental math students in this study but technology self-efficacy was not. Regression analysis produced a valid equation to predict standard score from average math selfefficacy score. When separated into groups according to course format, math self-efficacy was only a valid predictor for students in hybrid courses. The implications of these results are discussed and recommendations are made for further research."

Kristine Fowler, mathematics librarian at the University of Minnesota, shares results from a survey of mathematicians concerning how they want to be able to reuse their work, discusses alternatives to standard copyright contracts and urges scholars and institutions to be aware of not only their options but the rights they may cede in entering into publishing agreements.

After an 11-year interval math still tops the overall poll, though results vary by gender, educational attainment and political ideology

today hindi news,today news talmi,hindi news www.killdo.de.gg