I’ve finally posted my EuroPLoP’08 paper on telearn.
One of the most successful activities of the WebLabs project was the Guess my Robot game. This game served as a model for several other activities, and eventually gave rise to a set of design patterns for learning mathematics through construction, communication and collaboration. As often happens, I was too busy with other projects to properly publish the results. I mean, I’ve published a few papers which referred to the game or its descendants, but the patterns themselves have always remained informal creatures.
The first attempt I made at collating these patterns for publication was at EuroPLoP 2008. The feedback I received there are invaluable, and encouraged me to rewrite the paper dramatically for the proceedings. Since then, the patterns have made their way into my thesis and in the process changed again. So there are some things about the proceedings version which I obviously wish I had done differently. But there’s no end to that. It will take some time until my thesis gets processed to publications.
“publish early, publish often”, right? so here it is:
Mor, Y. (forthcoming), Guess my X and other patterns for teaching and learning mathematics, in Till Schümmer & Allan Kelly, ed., ‘Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (EuroPLoP 2008)’ .
Most people see learning mathematics as a demanding, even threatening, endeavour. Consequently, creating technology-enhanced environments and activities for learning mathematics is a challenging domain. It requires a synergism of several dimensions of design knowledge: usability, software design, pedagogical design and subject matter. This paper presents a set of patterns derived from a study on designing collaborative learning activities in mathematics for children aged 10-14, and a set of tools to support them.
Mor, Y. & Noss, R. (2008), ‘Programming as Mathematical Narrative’, International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning (IJCEELL) 18 (2) , 214-233 .
Mor, Y.; Tholander, J. & Holmberg, J. (2006), Designing for cross-cultural web-based knowledge building, in Timothy Koschmann; Daniel D. Suthers & Tak-Wai Chan, ed., ‘The 10th Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) conference (2005)’ , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Taipei, Taiwan , pp. 450 – 459 .
Mor, Y.; Noss, R.; Hoyles, C.; Kahn, K. & Simpson, G. (2006), ‘Designing to see and share structure in number sequences’, the International Journal for Technology in Mathematics Education 13 (2) , 65-78 .
Matos, J. F.; Mor, Y.; Noss, R. & Santos, M. (2005), Sustaining Interaction in a Mathematical Community of Practice, in ‘Fourth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME-4)’ .
I’m hosting Professor Avi Berman for a talk at the LKL next week:
Avi Berman: Attempts of a Mathematician to do Research in Maths Education
Thursday 5 February 2009, 12:30pm – 2:00pm
LKL large seminar hall
The effects of teaching linear algebra involving technology-enabled feedback on pedagogical development of lecturers and on conceptual understanding of their students.
Because of logistic constraints and a long-term tradition, large-group frontal lecturing is the main form of teaching undergraduate mathematics. Unfortunately, the traditional lecture, as inspirational as it might be, does not allow many opportunities for developing students’ conceptual understanding through active learning, and supplies lecturers with limited feedback on how effective their teaching is. What the students actually learn when attending lectures remains chiefly a black box for contemporary research and little is known about the pedagogical development of university professors through lecturing. The talk will describe an effort to address this lacuna in the context of a university linear algebra course.
Avi Berman holds the Israel Pollak Academic Chair at the Technion, where he is a Professor of Mathematics and Head of the Department of Education of Technology and Science. He also heads the Israeli Society for Promotion of and Research on Giftedness. His research interests in Mathematics are Nonnegative Matrices and Spectral Graph Theory and in Education – Mathematical Giftedness and University Teaching.
Entry is free, but we would appreciate your registration for administrative purposes:
Last week I gave a talk on, basically, the corrections I need to do for my thesis.
Anna Sfard commented that (if I understood her correctly) “if that’s your model of narrative, then you should be able to find linguistic markers for it in student texts”
I thought yeah. And then the ol’ computer scientist in me thinks, in that case I should be able to write a parser to do it for me. i.e., instead of parsing text for Chomskian grammar, parse it for narrative structure. Then use that to determine stuff like voice, semantic sequencing, genre. Spotting shifts in these paramaters (e.g from imaginative to paradigmatic) could help identify critical learning points.