CLIME Friendly Vendors @ NCTM Conference & Beyond

Vendor Area in Philly - a Dynamic View

Click on image to visit the area

CLIME will once again be parked in the Exhbit Hall's NCTM Affiliate Row (1300) and will be sharing about Technology's role in creating the Math 2.0 vision for math education. You can see a complete view of the exhibit hall by clicking on the image (to the left.)

Also you can download the NCTM App that has all the sessions and vendors listed. (Info here.)

Right around the corner from CLIME is the new NCTM BuzzHub.

Click above

The NCTM BuzzHub
is an open Wifi area and much more. There is no Wifi available in the conference rooms so the 'Hub is a good place to take advantage of it. Only other places where Wifi is available is in the concourses and the overlook area. While in the 'Hub you can take advantage of other NCTM offerings described here.

The Math Forum
is hosting the Math Pop Forums in Booth 220 in the Exhibit Hall. Feel free to stop by, pick up some popcorn, listen to the short presentations and engage in conversations!

Click on image to visit the area

Key Curriculum Press is now Key Curriculum

Visit us at booth #902 in the Exhibitor Hall to check in with us and see what's new! You can play with Sketchpad, Fathom, TinkerPlots, browse activities, and ask questions in the booth, or we can direct you to excellent presentations on Sketchpad, Fathom, and TinkerPlots.

Don't miss our annual Technology User Group meeting on Thursday evening! Join us in Salon H at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown for drinks, snacks, and eye-opening presentations from your peers. Finally, you can learn more about the Dynamic Number project and KCP Technologies’ other NSF-funded project, Data Games.

Mind Institute - Booth 728

Keith Devlin writes: "The designers at MIND put symbolic representations to one side and develop new, native representations of basic math skills so their young learners can "play" with the mathematical concepts themselves. Only after a child has demonstrated mastery of working with the concept is she or he presented with the symbolic representation for the same operation." Video tour of ST Math

Booth 448

For more about their participation at NCSM and NCTM click here.

Booth #1217

Audrey Weeks, author of Calculus In Motion^TM and Algebra In Motion^TM will be exhibiting in #1217

Exhibit Booth # 1228

Get the “Good Stuff!”  Drop by and say hi and let us show you around! Visit our booth and get a personal tour of Mathlanding. Come with curiosity and questions, and leave with experience and answers.

mathalicious.org

Though Karim Ani will not have a tent set up in the exhibit hall you will find him speaking/participating at these venues: 
NCSM Sessions
213: Real-World Mathematics with Mathalicious (Tue 8:45 107)

345: Math Learning 2.0: New Opportunities for Collaborative Teaching and Learning with Internet-Based Tools (Wed 2:45 113C)

364: Ignite! Speakers (10) Enlighten the Room with Fresh Ideas in Mathematics (Wed 4:00 105)

NCTM Session

582: Real-World Mathematics with Mathalicious (Fri 3:00 108B)

Booth 1206

Wowzers combines adaptive math instruction with engaging, game-based collaboration using the Cloud. As a free trial user, you have full access to all content for grades 3, 4, and 5 until May 10, 2012. This includes lessons, practices, games, quests, quizzes, homework, and other printable materials. Come visit at our booth #1206

More to be added. Let me know if I leave you out. 

Thoughts about Alternatives to the "Royal Road" to Calculus

Continued from previous blog: Math Awareness month begins... what I would like to focus on is the third point NCTM made in the quote above: Technology as a tool should [..] influence what mathematics is taught. What mathematics should be taught in the 21st century? Should some of our sacred cows topics take a back seat? My take is that the math topics don't matter as much as long as they are embedded in interesting contexts that engage students in learning; mostly through well crafted projects. This will prepare students to effectively deal with the challenges of 21st century life. Can we collaboratively build towards this vision? cc blog 96

The NCTM president Michael Schaughnessy wrote this message to lead off this month's NCTM Summing Up newsletter:

Some Thoughts on Calculus and a Thank You!
Calculus is often viewed as the entry path to college mathematics. However, a high school calculus course should not be the be-all and end-all of mathematics, nor should it be the only transition path from high school to college mathematics. High school mathematics should prepare students not just for further, specialized study in mathematics but also for the variety of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers and other professions that will be open to them in the future. Recently NCTM and the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) crafted a new joint position statement on the role of calculus in the transition from high school to postsecondary mathematics. 
[...]

Both NCTM and the MAA have found evidence that there are a number of strong mathematics students who successfully finish calculus before or in college and then happily announce that they “never have to take another math course!” As a result, we are losing large numbers of highly qualified mathematics students very early in their college careers. Many of these students are strong candidates for possible STEM careers—some of our best students, in fact. Also, we may be turning a number of potential mathematics students off by pushing them through years of a repetitive and overly narrow, algebra-focused mathematics curriculum, which doesn’t give students sufficient opportunities to broaden their horizons in other areas of mathematics, such as in various geometries, discrete mathematics, statistics, or linear algebra (February 2011 President’s Message, “Endless Algebra,” also discussed this pitfall). Read the entire message.

From "Endless Algebra" (Michael Schaughnessy, 2011):

[...]The Common Core State Standards provide us with an opportunity to rethink the sequence of school mathematics, as well as a challenge to provide exciting new pathways and transitions from high school to college mathematics. We need to offer students alternative pathways as they make their transition from secondary school and into colleges. The mathematics paths that we provide for our students need to prepare them for existing fields that are changing rapidly, as well as for emerging fields—and for fields that don’t yet exist. In my view, the current deadly sequence of ever-repetitive and out-of- touch experiences in algebra—the sequence intended to lead students to a single variable calculus course—will not accomplish this goal. It is time that we replace the eternal algebra transition from high school to college with some viable and exciting 21st century mathematics alternatives.[...] 

For me this change is long overdue. What are your thoughts?

cc blog 105

Celebrating Math Awareness Month - NCTM's technology themed annual conference

CLIME Connections continues to chronicle the road to the Final Four days of the 2011-2012 NCTM's Technology themed conferences culminating in Philadelphia this month. It all started last fall with the regional conference in Atlantic City where CLIME exhibited, followed by events in St. Louis and Albuquerque where attendees participated in a one day Learn/Reflect strand of technology themed sessions. Four guiding questions were posted and were used as talking points at a debriefing session held later that same afternoon. This will be repeated in Philadelphia on Thursday, April 26th starting at 9:30am with a kickoff presentation given by Thomas Dick and followed by 24 sessions from which you can choose to attend. Though it's only possible to participate in few of these sessions, collectively we hope to gain from the "wisdom of the crowd" as folks will meet up later in the day for the debriefing session at 3:30. I hope you attend and let us know how it went. (See list of all 26 sessions.) If you are one of the speakers (of any technology themed sessions) and would like to update the listing let me know and I'll update it immediately.

Dan Meyer heads up a list of highlighted speakers in Philadelphia
There are plenty of other technology related sessions. Some of them were highlighted by NCTM. Here's CLIME's list of technology Linchpins who will be speaking out about effective ways to use technology that are changing the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Recent talk

Dan Meyer shared with me that "it would be great to recruit bloggers to attend each of those talks, write a review, take a photo, grab supplemental resources, etc. Something that will add value after the conference." I hope you can help with this. Let me know if you will be blogging about the conference sessions in Philly.
For those of you who haven't seen Dan in action, here's a recent presentation. His NCTM talk #474 on Friday is "Why Students Hate Word Problems."

My biggest disappointment about the upcoming NCTM conference is that there are no sessions (including mine which I just corrected on the CLIME listing) on how math blogging is changing the landscape of math teacher's professional collaboration. I definitely will bring it up at my session. Mike Thayer (session 153) has posted his thoughts about the upcoming conference here.

Conference highlights rewind from previous blog entries

• See Conference online Program book. Unfortunately, the final physical program book won't be available until the conference starts. But you can get a listing of all the sessions from NCTM search page or if it's technology sessions you are interested in here's the full list. 
• Speakers can upload handouts on the NCTM speaker site. Instructions are here. As of today only 9 speakers have posted. I hope NCTM will contact the speakers again about this before the conference begins.
• What kind of technologies are showcased at the conference. Check out the stats at Blog 100.
• Technology theme discussion blog 96.

Here's the comment/reply I just posted at blog 96:

Math Awareness month begins... what I would like to focus on is the third point NCTM made: Technology as a tool should [..] influence what mathematics is taught. So what mathematics should be taught in the 21st century? Should some of our "sacred cow" topics take a back seat? My take is that the math topics don't matter as much as long as they are embedded in interesting contexts that engage students in learning; mostly through well crafted projects. This will prepare students to effectively deal with the challenges of 21st century living. Can we collaboratively build towards this vision? Other opinions? Please reply.

cc blog 104

More About the Upcoming NCTM Conference

Open flipbook

This flipbook previews the upcoming NCTM conference, the actual program book is not out yet and won't be available till you arrive in Philadelphia. NCTM has stopped mailing out program books in advance but you can preview all the sessions using the the NCTM search tool which now also includes links of handouts submitted by the speakers - not very many included so far. If you are a speaker and wish to post your handout go to NCTM's Speaker Page and click on Login to the speaker's corner.

See all tech sessions

All the technology related sessions are listed on this site. If you are speaking on a technology theme you can update this site with your latest information. Just let me know what you want me to include by sending me that information.



While you are in Philadelphia look for the China cups sculpture in the convention hall. John Scammell wrote a blog entry and activity about it when he attended a conference there last June.

China Wedge - Blog by John Scammell

He's got a quite a bit of information about it including some cool video and photos. (Click on photo.)

Vendors at NCTM Conference

New! The speakers documents/handouts are now being posted on the NCTM site. Look for the folder or document icon next to the number of the session.

Speakers: If you are doing a technology related session, you can draw more attention to your session by updating your listing on our CLIME (technology sessions) website. Send me an email with what you like to include. Here's an example of an updated listing. (Click on image to see it on the web.)

Vendor Area - a Dynamic View

Click on image to visit the area

Can't make it to Philly?

For those of you that were hoping to present at the conference but either forgot to submit a proposal or were not accepted, there will be an online technology & math event on April 23rd sponsored by CLIME. Gary Stager will be one of the highlight presenter/discussant. You can join us at this time (exact time still to be determined) and share your ideas via electronic poster with the group. For more details contact Ihor at ihor@clime.org

CLIME Connections #102

Explore Dynamic Math Software at NCTM Conference

Cool Flipbook

In the last blog Karen Greenhaus commented: "Thanks for mentioning the Sketchpad Explorer for the iPad! There are a lot of folks from Key Curriculum and KCP Tech doing presentations (Nick Jackiw, Scott Steketee, Daniel Scher, Bill Finzer, Cliff Konold, myself) with Sketchpad, TinkerPlots and Fathom. As always, focused on dynamic mathematics and using technology appropriately to engage students in learning math."

NCTM agrees. They highlighted these two presentations that Karen suggested:

• Nick Jackiw, 
Key Curriculum Press Technologies, Inc.
 "Euclid’s Elements: An Interactive Geometry Perspective" - more
• Cliff Konold, 
University of Massachusetts Amherst.
 "Breathing Life into Data and Chance with Tinkerplots 2.0" - more

Here's the other three mentioned by Karen (including hers):

• Scott Steketee, 
Key Curriculum Press Technologies, Inc. has two sessions:

• "A Dynamic Number Approach to Mulitiplication" - more
• "Function Composition without Confusion: A Geometric Approach with Sketchpad® 5" - more
• Daniel Scher, 
Key Curriculum Press Technologies, Inc.
 "Dynamic Fractions in the Elementary School Classroom" - more
• Bill Finzer, Key Curriculum Press Technologies, Inc. "Data Games: Learn Math Achieve Victory through Data Analysis" -more
• Karen Greenhaus, "Using Appropriate Tools in Elementary Math: From Physical to Virtual" - more

CLIME is working on a dynamic list of the technology sessions that you can update by contacting the CLIME office. It will updated almost immediately!

Karen also points out that (in addition to the BuzzHub, and our CLIME Booth in the exhibit hall): "...Key will be doing a lot [in their booth], so [I] just wanted to pass that along so folks can come by and play with math and technology...we will have iPads and computers to explore." 

Sounds good. The exhibit hall will be a good place to discover vendors who are promoting this dynamic vision of exploration tools. I'll spotlight some of them in the next issue of this CLIME Connections blog.

For more details on the conference, check out NCTM's cool Online Preview flipbook.
The hastag for following comments about the conference on Twitter is #nctm12
  CLIME Connections #101

NCTM Conference Preview - Part 2

I’ve been going through the Philadelphia conference session descriptions and have some good news to report. Of the 745 sessions listed in the NCTM's online program 268 have a technology theme. That's almost 38% which is almost double the number of such sessions that were at last year’s conference in Indianapolis. Of course, it helps that technology is the NCTM’s 2011-2012 annual conference "theme of the year.”

A session is included if the title or description
contains a technology key word. 

Here's the list of keywords (in no particular order.)

Below is the frequency chart and a wordle of these terms. (Click on image for larger view.)

Click on figure for larger image.

This frequency listing gives clues as to what the NCTM math community thinks is important to discuss regarding technology. Here are some highlights:

1. As expected the “umbrella” word technology appears 225 times in 200 sessions.
2. Software is mentioned in 31 sessions. This includes a wide variety of types from web/cloud-based applets, Geogebra, Google Earth, etc. to those that have to reside on your computer which includes the long time favorite - Geometer’s Sketchpad.*
3. Next comes the TI-Nspire calculator with 30 sessions. There are also 10 sessions on using the TI-Navigator network.
4. In addition to calculators hardware (mostly in the form of Smartboards) is the attention grabber for many sessions. Also, and for the first time, there are several sessions about the "new wave" of handhelds (i.e. iPads) in the mix.
5. To see CLIME's full listing of tech related sessions (first draft) click here. 

If you are a speaker and would like to update your session description which is the same as the one you sent in last May to NCTM, I can update it for you on our site. Go to CLIME technology-themed sessions and review your listing there. Then let me know (by email) if you want to change anything, share more info or add some reference links. I will make the changes for you immediately.

One last thought: What's missing from the program?
A glaring omission for me is that there is no overt reference to the blogging that  math teachers are doing something that Dan Meyer** and others have popularized and what I consider to be the most important contribution to math education in recent years. Math bloggers (and tweeters) are changing the landscape of how we are learning about math teaching and learning. (More about this in my next blog entry.)

CLIME Connections #100

*There is now a sketch player (Sketchpad Explorer) available for the Apple iPad.
**Dan is speaking at NCTM (See his listing - session #474.)
See also the the 25 sessions in the Learn<->Reflect Technology Strand.