NCTM 09 Conference Reflections

I'm putting together a website with some podcasts of sessions I was involved at the NCTM and NCSM meetings in Washington last month. I've finished the first one which highlights one of the new 3C* discussion sessions "Emerging Technology" which premiered this year. To learn more about this session click here. *Come, Connect, Communicate

Blogging, Tweeting and Web 2.0

Blogging became real for the first time at the NCTM meeting in Washington. After a limited trial balloon last year in Salt Lake City, NCTM created a Blogger site specifically intended for conference attendees to give some first hand information as to what what was going on at NCTM as close to real time as possible. Even closer to real time were a few tweets (See http://twitter.com/nctm and http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23nctm09) that informed followers of what others were experiencing at the conference.That is, of course, if they were able to find some available Wifi which was a challenge if you weren't willing to pay the $25 daily fee. There actually was a free Wifi area at the convention center near the Mt. Vernon/7th St. entrance. Not well publicized. I took a photo but forgot to post it so it obviously helped no one. Dave Powers set up a Ning group site for folks to share what they were learning and presenting at NCTM 09. I'm thinking about continuing to use the forum for CLIME updates and other issues related to math and technology teaching and learning. Here are some of the posts at this site.

The NCTM Conference ends in grand style

If you were in Washington last week and you had to leave early or for some reason missed this session, you can catch the closing session online via Windows Media Player. The dynamic duo of Arne Duncan and Ron Clark closed the conference in grand style. Ron Clark is not to be missed. In this streaming video Arne is up first followed by Ron.

CORRECTION - NO Ron Clark on the video, only Arne. A major disappointment. Arne was good, but Ron stole the show. I hope NCTM will post it. In the meantime you can check out the video that he showed at the outset of his talk at his website (http://www.ronclarkacademy.com). Once the main page comes up, click on the image that "Watch Now" points to (like in the image below.)

See also Scott Steketee's review of Arnie's half hour presentation.

What’s up with technology at the NCTM Conference – a preview

This year's annual NCTM conference theme is Equity which certainly is well deserved not only because it's important, but also because it is one of NCTM's six foundational Principles. The other time honored ones include: teaching, learning, asssessing, and curriculum (which are always well represented at these conferences) and the “newest” principle on the block: technology. Since I've been a member of CLIME I'm always on the look out at these meetings for examples of events, activities, resources and strategies that support the spirit of NCTM's commitment to the technology principle.

The first thing I do every year (as I prep for this conference) is to try to get a sense of the technology presence from the session titles and descriptions. This year in Washington there are 828 general sessions* of which I identified 120 as technology related (14.5%**). If you search for the technology sessions using the online planner you will come up with only 56 sessions. Of course, there is always wiggle room for the actual number of these sessions since technology in many(?) cases is implied (e.g. data analysis and probability sessions) since they don't include the tag names that would give it away. (See the tag cloud*** which shows visually the frequency of the tech tag words in the 120 tech-related sessions I identified.)

Here's the list of all the technology sessions. Online version: PDF Download: PDF or Word

Sketchpad leads the way. I wasn't surprised to see that Geometer's Sketchpad was the leading software mentioned. (Key Curriculum is introducing a new version of Sketchpad at the conference.) Other software mentioned: Fathom, Excel, Geogebra, Geometry Expressions, Google Sketchup, Cabri, Stella and Maple. TI-Nspire took the calculator honors with 26 mentions. (See the rest of list by clicking on the image on the left.)

Web 2.0 is just beginning to make inroads into conference agenda with 4 sessions. I hope to get to each of them and will be sharing my thoughts via this blog during the course of the conference.

Something new at the conference this year are the 3C (Come, Connect, Communicate) sessions.

I’ll be leading the Emerging Technologies one on Thursday at 2:00-3:00 in meeting room 2 at the Rennaisance.

I will also be blogging at this site and on NCTM's new blog site throughout the conference. If you use Twitter you can follow me there as well. Hopefully I'll find a convenient place to write them. As I mentioned in the previous blog the convention center rate for Wifi is now $24.95 a day. I'm still upset about the charge going up from 8.95 to 24.95 as of April 1st. I guess they figure they will take advantage of all the rich math teachers that will be there.

More later. -Ihor

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*plus 54 special exhibitor sessions.

**Last year in Salt Lake City there were also 120 technology sessions, but only out of 740 sessions for a slightly better than a 16% rate. The spike was probably due to the fact that the theme was “Becoming Certain about Uncertainty” a topic that lends itself more to using calculators and computers in the classroom or at least it should.

***What is a tag cloud? Here's a more dynamic version of the tag cloud above. I also made a tag cloud removing the dominating word "technology" to get a better perspective on the specific technologies discussed this year. You can make your own cloud at: http://Wordle.net

The entire program book is on the web in PDF form at
http://www.nctm.org/conferences/content.aspx?id=2147483853

This is Outrageous!

I just found out that the convention center in Washington DC raised their wifi access price from $8.95 to $24.95. This is terrible. Especially since NCTM is encouraging attendees to blog and tweet at the conference. More about the conference in my next blog.

CLIME 2009 - Goals & Highlights

Last summer while attending the NCTM affiliates meeting in Philly I sent myself this post-dated “reminder” so I wouldn’t forget the goals that I wrote down at that time. Well the reminder worked because here I am writing my latest blog after taking a much longer break than expected. First I want to say that CLIME is an independent affiliate of NCTM which means that there isn't anyone knocking on my email door reminding me to help crank up the NCTM membership though I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you joined. They even provided CLIME with a bit of financial support in that some of you endorsed CLIME when you signed up for NCTM membership and as a result we got a small "royalty". For the first time in years I’ve been able to use outside funds to (almost) pay for our annual affiliate dues ($90). So much for the business part of this entry. Onward to the goals part. One the things that CLIME does is to act as a lobbying group to encourage NCTM to continue to promote the effective use of technology in math education. As some of you may know that despite a CLIME initiated technology resolution approved at the Delegate Assembly last April, the NCTM board declined to upgrade technology use at the annual meetings saying it is too expensive. (See report.) This whole issue might have been overlooked if NCTM had not decided to drop computer workshops from their annual conferences and not replace them with anything as substantive that showcases and acknowledges that technology is not just a trivial luxury but one of NCTM’s principles. We also know that when the NCTM “powers that be” decides to do something that shows their interest in promoting technology they do it extremely well. Two cases in point: (1) the Illuminations site is one of the best of its kind and continues to grow. Most recently new additions were added to their fine collection after NCTM ran an Institute at their Headquarters in Reston last summer where invited math educators developed new activities and lessons. Another such institute is planned for this summer. (2) Another excellent resource is the ON-Math e-Journal which explores what’s possible with electronic media and so far has done an admirable job. Also on the Web 2.0 front NCTM chose to have a very limited, trial Blog presence on the NCTM website during the Salt Lake City meeting. But it looks like they will use Facebook instead for open discussion of NCTM issues and activities including feedback on their Illuminations activities. They're even on Twitter! “What’s Twitter?” you ask. David Pogue writes about in a New York Times piece. The Facebook site has seen very little traffic so far. So I encourage you to support their effort though I think it would have more traffic if they ran it on the NCTM site. Help put CLIME on the Map That’s all encouraging news. But with success can come the complacency that large conservative organizations can suffer from especially when important implementation of ideas are seen as way too expensive and thus undermine the vision that technology can offer. I encourage you to help me remind the NCTM board and leaders to not lose site of the vision that technology offers. One easy and fun way to do this is to support CLIME’s initiatives by putting CLIME on the map (literally) with your stamp of support by adding your "footprint" on the CLIME Google map. 

If you don't have a google account you can use your own email address to access google maps. Here's a good entry point for first time users. For more info about using Google Maps for collaboration go to this link. (If all else fails let me know and I can help you.)

Add your location to the CLIME map Here’s what you do. Click on this link and add to the map: 1) your location (school, home, business, or whatever you are comfortable with) on the CLIME Google Map that I've set up. (2) include a short message indicating your support.

I guess you can call this a Web 2.0 approach to signing a petition. So please take a few minutes and let me and the CLIME world know that technology is indeed worthy of its principle status and should be championed as such. NCTM Conference 09 Update The NCTM 09 Washington Conference sessions have been posted. I’ll take a closer look at the technology sessions in my next blog.

Capturing the Teaching Moment: Predicting Election Results – part 2

I was recently watching a pre-election podcast of the CBS McLaughlin Group show (clip below) in which John McLaughlin asked Pat Buchanan to predict the outcome of the presidential election.
 He said: "The outlook is [a] probable Obama victory." I paused the podcast at that point and thought that what Pat said was not exactly a hard call to make given the multimedia rendition of data that I just watched. I wondered at that point what he would have said if he was also asked to predict the margin of victory in percentage points. (I found out the answer later in the show but I didn’t know that at this point.) Here’s a summary of the show's pollsters' predictions. The point spread ranges from a low of 3 to a high of 15. I've added an additional pollster "pundit" which I affectionately call "Kid" Average and include this numerical wonder as a candidate for the best estimate prize as well. A question for you. If we could turn back clock to before the election results were known, which polster would you have bet on to have made the best projection (i.e. came closest to the final outcome based on the polls provided by McLaughlin?) I would have bet my money on "Kid" Average who as I found out later did reasonably well. (See spreadsheet below.) According to today's (11/10/08) CNN website Obama won by 6.6 percentage points. I used a simple average of the polls to come up with my prediction. The pollsters not only use averages but also more sophisticated regression methods to make their projections. Here's what is written in the FAQ page at pollsters.com: "In most cases, the numbers are not an "average" but rather regression based trendlines. The specific methodology depends on the number of polls available.

• If we have at least 8 public polls, we fit a trend line to the dots represented by each poll using a "Loess" iterative locally weighted least squares regression.
• If we have between 4 and 7 polls, we fit a linear regression trend line (a straight line) to best fit the points.
• If we have 3 polls or fewer, we calculate a simple average of the available surveys.

So it's possible for students to see real applications of these techniques as they learn about statistical methods. Plenty of math here for students to sink their teeth into where the technology is integral to the discussion. Oh, yes. What prediction did Pat make in term of points? Check it out in this next clip. It sounds like John and some of the others could use a math tuneup or two. If you are one of those "i can't get enough of this" folks, the drama of the election is still playing out in some corners especially the race for the Senate in Minnesota. Currently Norm Coleman leads Al Franken by 206 votes! See http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/more-minnesota-madness.html for the latest details.