CLIME @ NCTM Conference, April, 2010

Ihor proudly shares his vision of Math 2.0 at the
CLIME booth in San Diego.

Maria Droujkova (founder of the Math 2.0 - Mathfuture group) interviewed Ihor after his return from the San Diego NCTM meeting. You can catch the recording and/or read a summary transcript here.

Math 2.0 at NCTM Conference - A recap

May 1, 2010. 12:45 EST.

Hi there. I'm currently writing this as I'm flying home to White Plains, NY via Atlanta, GA. First time for me on a flight using Wifi. Very exciting!

I'm inviting everyone who attended, participated in anyway or is interested in the NCSM and/or the NCTM meeting in San Diego to join our Elluminate session this Wednesday, May 5th, 6:30pm (EST). If you have a written about the conference in any form please share your URL with us - even if you can't make the Wednesday session.

Early returns on where to find comments about the conference.
NCTM Conference Blog. Check that out. I've added a couple of entries myself.
Dan Meyer is blogging about both conferences in great detail. See http://blog.mrmeyer.com/

Tech at the Conference: A View from inside the Exhibitor's booth

To everyone who attended the NCTM conference:

It's over. What a trip. It was my first time exhibiting at the annual meeting. As the president of an affiliate group - Council for Technology in Math Education (CLIME) - I took advantage of an NCTM discount for renting the booth to be there. What wonderful conversations I had with people about the thrill and challenges of teaching math with technology. Here are some of my highlights both in and out the booth.

*Nick Jackiw - chief architect of Geometer's Sketchpad at Key's Sketchpad User's group meeting sharing the magic that Sketchpad 5 can do with its new features inspired by a visit with the developers of Avatar. (Hear his dynamic visualization talk.)

*Bonnie Roskes - sharing Google Sketchup at my booth. What a treat. I made a mathcast of her presentation which I'll post very soon.

*Daryl Stermon - on the local arrangements committee. Meeting him again after 14 years. He is one of the pioneers of Internet use at NCTM meetings. See his original report from the 1996 meeting in San Diego. Daryl and I dream of the day when NCTM will provide Internet/Wifi access at all sessions. (We're lobbying for it.:-)

I got to run now. More later.

Math 2.0 in CLIME Booth #230: What's going on?

Are you San Diego bound for the Math Conferences starting on Monday? Here is a quick update on CLIME's Math 2.0 events. 

NCSM Conference - Wednesday, April 21.

Attend the special interest group session on Math 2.0 at the NCSM conference at 2:45 (till 4) at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Windsor BC room. More details.

In the NCTM Exhibit Hall - Booth #230 - CLIME Connections. April 22-24.

=>Learn about Math 2.0: teaching and learning math dynamically with powerful software tools in a Web 2.0 world.  (First session: Thursday, April 22nd - 11:00am-12noon)

=>Experience Math 2.0 activities. For example, how close are you to being the average traveler to this conference? Find out by participating (at the booth) in a web-based crowdsourcing activity which involves Google Maps & Spreadsheets to do it's algebraic magic. See my blog entry about this activity.

=>Find out more about how Web 2.0 serves as a platform for a new way of learning math (from the “Inside Out.”)

=>Scheduled events will be posted at the booth. For example, meet prominent math educator bloggers who are taking professional development to the next level by collaborating online and transforming their classrooms taking advantage of emerging (and some old) technologies.

=>The CLIME booth will be HQs for all blogging, tweeting and podcasting about the conference.

=>Here are links to a detailed list of all technology sessions at NCSM and NCTM.

 If you are not attending and want to follow this technology strand/theme as it happens, just go to http://clime.org for the most up to date information.

Booth 230 along with the rest of the exhibit area opens at 8:30 on Thursday, April 22. Stop by to say hello. I look forward to meeting there or online.

NCSM Conference SIG session: Math 2.0: New vision for Using Dynamic Math Software

If you are attending the NCSM conference in San Diego on April 21, you can learn more about the new exciting world of Math 2.0 during the Special Interest Session on Wednesday afternoon 2:45-4:00. One of the presenters will be Dan Meyer of Dy/Dan fame. An archive of the event will be available online and  at Booth #230 in the exhibit hall during the NCTM conference.

Agenda: 

• Ihor will bring you up-to-date on Math 2.0 - a grass roots effort to "reform" math teaching & learning from the "inside out". Also, he will describe the event that will be happening in Booth 230 during the NCTM meeting. Then he will introduce Dan Meyer.

• Dan (dy/dan) will be sharing his experience of being a pioneer Math 2.0 kind of teacher who uses current technologies to help him redesign the math curriculum so it encourages and improves students ability to problem solve. Also, he will share a framework with examples for his reinvented curriculum that will help his "impatient problem solvers" become more patient and rigorous in their approach to solving problems.

• Discussion and Q/A will follow.

See list of all tech related sessions at NCTM and NCSM sessions in San Diego next week.

NCTM conference Preview: An endangered technology principle watch?

(click for larger view)

In the “good old days” (post 1980s) NCTM had technology strands and computer lab sessions at their annual conferences. But the strands don’t exist anymore and the labs were gone as of 2007. And to make matters worse the NCTM Board of Directors in 2008 responded to a resolution that would increase opportunities for speakers to have better technology support (that passed unanimously at the Delegate Assembly) by turning it down. (Here’s my blog response.) So it appears to me that the average attendee at this month’s San Diego event will need to make a concerted effort to find examples of how technology is transforming the way we teach and learn math today. This is particularly egregious since the 2000 Standards declared that technology was a principle right up there with teaching, learning, assessing, curriculum and equity. (See link.) Though my optimism that NCTM would promote technology as a platform for the other principles has waned I've found a renewed spirit in realizing that we the people and groups like ours can make that message heard by collectively taking advantage of current and emerging networking technologies. Since CLIME’s focus as an affiliate of NCTM is to champion the vision that these technologies can do to promote math education we should step up and lead the charge towards the kind of reform that builds on the power of Web 2.0 and dynamic math tools to help transform math education. So we’re eager to get the ball rolling once again this year.

Technology sessions at NCTM meeting
For starters we created a website that lists 130* technology related math sessions at the upcoming conference (link.) To determine which sessions made the cut I did a tag frequency analysis of the words used in the titles and descriptions of the talks. I also compared it to last year’s results (See CLIME Blog entry – April, 2009). Here is a spreadsheet graphic of my results.

Tag words - technology related sessions

Download Excel (link); Google Spreadsheet (forthcoming)

Highlights

• Overall the percentage of sessions (134 out of 770) is about 17% which is slightly above the average for the annual meetings over the years. Last year it was 14.5% and in 2008 16%.
• The biggest jump was in the number of times SMART (as in Smartboard) appears.  Smartboards or generically IWB (Interactive White Boards) have grown in popularity. And there is some debate about them as you might expect. (See Bill Feriter’s “Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards” and Henri Picciotto’s blog response.) 
• Very few references to Web 2.0 tools. Not unexpected given the Board's (and program committee's) lack of general support for technology. I’ll have more to say about this in my next blog entry.
• You can download all or parts of the conference program book here.

Will the conference be Web 2.0 friendly? At the Convention Center it will cost you $12.95 per day to connect. If you brought your laptop (or iPad etc.) you can follow CLIME’s shenanigans via Twitter using the hash tags #clime and #math20 and the conference in general with #nctm10.   NCTM has a conference blog going on as well.  I’ll be one of the NCTM’s contributing bloggers sharing the goings on at Booth #230 during our “Unconference within a Conference” Math 2.0** activities at the booth on Thursday and Friday. (And maybe even on Saturday, if we still have a pulse.) More details about the Unconference in my next blog. Also more about our CLIME session #351 at the NCSM conference on Wednesday, April 21.

If you won’t be carrying any device that will connect you to the Internet you can always head over to the CyberCafe to check email etc. While you are there you can also explore their cool collaborative game initiative: Calculation Nation.

*   Updated: 4/11/10
** For more about Math 2.0 see my blog entries:  "In Search of Math 2.0" and "Math 2.0 – Making a Virtual Splash in San Diego?"


Relevant Links:
The 6 principles for School Mathematics (NCTM)

Technology Preview NCTM & NCSM conferences in San Diego, April, 2010

Two major math conferences are coming up soon:  the NCTM annual meeting (April 21-24) and the NCSM math supervisors conference (April 19-21) both happening in San Diego this year. CLIME will be participating in both events again this year. Our interest as it's been since we became affiliated with NCTM 22 years ago is in supporting the effective and creative uses of technology in Math Education and since 2000 how technology as a principle is playing out at these conferences.  The theme for our participation this year is Math 2.0.*

At NCSM I'm leading a special interest discussion session entitled Math 2.0: A New Vision for Using Dynamic Math Software with Web 2.0 Tools on Wednesday 2:45-4:00 in the BC Windsor room at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel. Let me know if you would  like to participate in this and share the work you are involved in.
At the NCTM meeting CLIME will be in the exhibit hall (Booth #230) highlighting how Math 2.0 is transforming how learning and teaching math is happening in this amazing Web 2.0 world. We are planning to do an "unconference" using the booth as a home base. We will be using Web 2.0 tools to share what's going on in the exhibit hall, talking to/interviewing conference attendees and holding impromptu sessions in the booth. I'm inviting math educators who have been immersed in this new world of Web 2.0 to participate in our 2-day event. Details will be blogged, tweeted, and broadcast in real (or very close to real) time. It should be a fun outing.

If you are planning to be at conference please stop by and say hello, volunteer some time, share an expertise you have, etc. All will be recorded for posterity - or not - assuming of course everything works. If you are not planning to attend you will be able to follow us on Twitter #math20 and NCTM conference goings at #nctm10. If you haven't done Twitter before you might want to try it out at this time. It's a great way to find out what people are thinking and doing while they are attending the conference.

More details about technology, math, the NCTM/NCSM conference are coming soon as CLIME prepares for the event. Please let me know if you are interested in helping our grass roots initiative in promoting Math 2.0 in San Diego. I would love to hear from you.

I'm currently putting together the preview of the technology sessions at both conferences. Will have it for you in my next post.

*For more about Math 2.0 see my blog entries:  "In Search of Math 2.0" and "Math 2.0 – Making a Virtual Splash in San Diego?"