Nigel Nisbet's approach to teaching changed when he figured what could make math relevant to every student in his class: chocolate.
He shifted gears after years of teaching the way he had been trained to – by writing equations on the board and asking students to complete questions in their books.
"I was telling the kids everything yet they were learning practically nothing," he said.
Nisbet shared his transformation from struggling high school math teacher to high-tech creator of interactive math puzzles during the 2nd TEDx Orange Conference in Costa Mesa on Wednesday. The event was a locally organized version of the internationally known TED conference, which brings together thought leaders and innovators for talks that last less than 20 minutes. All TED talks share the general theme of "ideas worth spreading," while the TEDx event at Segerstrom Hall featured more than 20 speakers focused on "Redefining Relevance."
For Nisbet, the goal is to figure out new ways to help students "speak" math. He first turned to chocolate after seeing candy bars at a checkout counter and then deciding to build a lesson around them. He asked his geometry students: Why make a chocolate bar in the shape of a triangular prism?
"What do you mean why," Nisbet said his students asked. "They weren't used to being asked to think, especially not in math. I wanted them to struggle. I wanted them to figure it out for themselves."
He said that by investigating the geometry of the chocolate bars, the students learned that a manufacturer could save money by using a specific shape to deliver the smallest amount of chocolate in the largest-looking bar.
"Now my kids realized they were paying more but getting less. That got their attention. The best bit: I hadn't told them how to find the answer. I hadn't even told them how to figure it out," he said.
Nisbet became a math specialist for Los Angeles Unified School District in 2006. After seeing students engaged in electronic math puzzles made by the Mind Research Institute in Santa Ana, he contacted the company's chief technology officer and asked for a job.
Now he works as director of content creation for the nonprofit, which is building hundreds of games with thousands of puzzles that help children learn math. The institute has curriculum for grades K-5 and is working on Algebra 1, and has expanded from 50 employees three years ago to 130 today. The company is moving near UC Irvine in 2013. Roughly 500,000 students this year will be going through the school-based program, which stars a penguin named JiJi, who helps children learn about spatial transformation and multi-step thinking.
"The kids who can speak that language," Nisbet said, "are gong to define the 21st century."
For the Mind Research Institue, TEDx served as a platform to let people know about their work finding new ways to help children grasp math concepts. Last year Matthew Peterson, the CTO and co-founder of the institute, spoke at TEDx. In the months afterward people watched the video of his speech online and contacted him looking to work for the company.
Nisbet joined an array of speakers covering such diverse topics as the transformation of a heartbeat into music by way of sensors and cell phones, how algorithms dictate various aspects of our lives today and efforts to provide wheelchairs for the disabled poor in the developing world.
Contact the writer: IHamilton@ocregister.com or 949-229-2426