In my weekly perusal of education newsletters, I came across a Time magazine article about new attempts to bring AI and machine learning to monitoring student behavior on school devices. While the article focuses on student mental health—suicide prevention in particular—I looked into the companies mentioned therein and discovered that the scope of monitoring efforts is broad and deep. It is a fascinating and discomforting topic, with each company working on a different aspect of student safety with rhetoric to match.
Continue reading “Student Monitoring, Safety, and Privacy”“The Great School Rethink” and Assessing Ideas
Last fall I read The Great School Rethink by Frederick Hess, who works with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. He focuses largely on education policy initiatives, many of which might be familiar: school choice, assessments, funding distribution, and curriculum adoption, among others. While I find these topics and the debates around them interesting, my main takeaway from reading this book was broader. It reminded me that a person is not static, and when we talk with someone we have to focus more on the thoughts they’re presenting and not conflate that with our notions of who the person is when taken as a sum of their parts.
Continue reading ““The Great School Rethink” and Assessing Ideas”Problem-First Thinking
I was in a position to provide some talking points for my company’s upper-level math textbooks. It was written in the aftermath of customer-induced pique regarding how we sell ourselves. While it’s focused on my company, the core idea of a problem-first approach extends beyond what we do in particular.
Continue reading “Problem-First Thinking”Dynamic Content and Curriculum
Textbooks have been the premier mechanism for presenting curriculum for centuries. While the printed word is powerful and, for many people, superior to digital versions, the physicality of textbooks requires that their content remains static. Errors are inevitable, as are changes in relevant topics or pedagogy. New editions are the only tool to fight against the decay of a textbook’s utility.1Let’s not fight over who’s at fault for the prevalence of new textbook editions or their cost. I’m typically quite impressed by the forewords I see in many math textbooks comparing editions, and believe much of the time a new edition is worthwhile. In an educational landscape dominated by digital tools, it’s tempting to have content updated rapidly and frequently. This approach requires a deft hand.
Continue reading “Dynamic Content and Curriculum”- 1Let’s not fight over who’s at fault for the prevalence of new textbook editions or their cost. I’m typically quite impressed by the forewords I see in many math textbooks comparing editions, and believe much of the time a new edition is worthwhile.
Science Museums
Science museums are awesome, and The Exploratorium in San Francisco is particularly fantastic. We went for their Thursday After Dark series, where they stay open from 6 to 10 at night, and you must be at least 18 to get in. They serve drinks and have a different theme each week with various exhibits and presentations among the standard fare. It was a surprisingly vibrant experience!1To be fair, we happened to go when the theme was Sexploration. I have a vague feeling that other theme nights don’t have quite the same turnout, but it still indicated a healthy crowd. When we would go to similar adult nights at the Minnesota Science Museum, it felt like there were a couple dozen people at most.
There are so many opportunities for excitement at a science museum, all stemming from different areas of curiosity and experience. Going to a new museum means new demonstrations and exhibits that I’d never come across. Others are similar to what I’ve seen before, and take me back to my favorite bits of physics classes oh so many years ago now. I get to experience concepts again, sometimes in fresh ways, and marvel at the world we live in. If you have any science museum nearby, give them a visit at least once a year. You won’t regret it.
- 1To be fair, we happened to go when the theme was Sexploration. I have a vague feeling that other theme nights don’t have quite the same turnout, but it still indicated a healthy crowd. When we would go to similar adult nights at the Minnesota Science Museum, it felt like there were a couple dozen people at most.
SEL
The tutoring organization I work with, Step Up, has focused heavily on the social and emotional learning (SEL) of the students in their program. To some extent, this is an expectation of any tutor who is also meant to be a role model. Just as with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, the goal is to improve the student’s outcomes in as many ways as we can; unsurprisingly, helping the student feel better about themselves and their place in the world can be a huge factor in their future success.
Continue reading “SEL”Agonizing Over Engagement
Applying mathematical topics and skills to the real world is an often-discussed tactic to engage students who are otherwise dismissive of, or frustrated with, mathematics as a whole. By connecting the math a student does with real life situations—particularly skills they will “need” in the future, but also more abstracted situations that pertain to real life—some people expect students to gain an appreciation for what mathematics can do, and feel inclined to study it so they can actively participate in these various applications.
Continue reading “Agonizing Over Engagement”Dangers of Mathematical Rules
Do you remember when you first learned how to round numbers? For example, to round 687 to the nearest hundred, we notice it’s between 600 and 700. Since 687 is closer to 700 than it is to 600, we round up to 700. Maybe you even learned a rule: Look at the digit to the right of the one you’re rounding. If it’s 5 or greater, round up. If it’s 4 or less, round down. Rules can be good, but they can also be dangerous.
Continue reading “Dangers of Mathematical Rules”