Friday, April 15, 2011

NCTM Conference - April 15 - Day 3

Ihor Charischak & Keith Devlin
My highlight of the day is connecting with Keith Devlin. He's my newest hero and hope for the future of math education. His Apollo program for math is to create a web-based simulation platform for cool learning objects that motivate students to "wanna do" math by engaging them in mathematical thinking. His session Video Games for Mathematics Education: They Will Soon Get  Better was on Friday and he stopped by the CLIME booth for a photo op with me. I was thrilled. If you missed his talk you can still catch an archived presentation that he hosted on Math 2.0 Live last Monday.
For updates on Keith's project follow this blog via RSS feed and/or Twitter (@climeguy)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

NCSM & NCTM - April 13 - Day 1

I finally got my "office" for the conference set up. It's in a Starbucks* - Marriott Downtown - Indy. Why here? For the Coffee* and Wifi. Starbucks doesn't offer the wifi, but the Marriott does in the lobby. You need a password which you can get from the Starbucks guy.
There's an Internet station at the Convention Center for those of you who are laptopless. (It wraps around.) Location: Convention Center - near room 110.
Speaking of laptops I see many more folks using them.

Also Smartphones! I hope people are taking advantage of the new NCTM conference app. It's great. Anyone want to share how they are using it and how it is helping them? (See comment below.)

Early morning NCTM Research presession. I attended this session hoping to learn more about how this group is planning to scale up quality math teaching. Afterwards I asked the main speaker why technology wasn't even mentioned in his talk. He said it was not something they could do much with within the parameters of the project. My reaction was: WHAT? I walked away very upset. Vanderbilt is a high visibility showcase for excellent research and no technology initiatives? There's got to be more to the story. Apparently there is another group at Vanderbilt that handles the technology end of education. Don't they talk to each other? It didn't seem like from this session.

NCTM Affiliate Group Caucus. In the afternoon I attended the At-large regional Caucus for affiliate groups. Since CLIME is not affiliated with a geographical location it is "at-large." It's a session to prepare for the Delegate Assembly tomorrow. Shared my concern over the lack of sessions on Web 2.0 related topics at NCTM. The discussion got heated as you might expect. I had to leave early (in a bit of a huff) to get to my NCSM session at the Marriot.

CLIME leads a discussion session at NCSM conference. I managed to get there late because I went to the wrong Marriott. Yes, there were 2 Marriotts - downtown and JW. Fortunately, David arrived on time and got the discussion going. I taped most of it and will have some interesting comments in a later blog.

Cathy Fosnot. Before the kickoff of the NCTM conference at the convention center, I was in the exhibit hall getting our booth ready for tomorrow's start. Across from us was the  Heinemann booth where David introduced me to Cathy Fosnot - one of Heinemann's authors. She is being honored for her lifetime achievements at a conference at City College in NYC.
NCTM Conference Kickoff: a 3-D version of a 2-D idea. The keynote was about Flatland: the Movie presented by a visionary group of film makers. The film was fun but most likely will be remembered more for its glitz than its content. Quality, much less expensive math videos that engage children in learning are out there and need to be better promoted in the new Math 2.0 world.

*Not full service - no sandwiches. (I got one at a Subway near by.) Not easy to get a sandwich on the run around here.