Hi, I'm new to the list, having only heard about Ubuntu last week. I'm in the process of developing a math curriculum/course/textbook for U.S. college students planning to be elementary teachers. I hope to publish this commercially, but I think making some of the activities available for any students/teachers to use is a good idea. Here's the philosophy. 1. Students need to start mathematics by working with physical objects, lots of measurement. There is a Russian curriculum founded by Elkonin and Davydov that implements this theory from 1st through 8th grades. (I don't think it involves much, if any, software.) U.S. schools tend to teach mostly algorithms without context, and to turn interesting problems and activities into algorithms--see the results of the various TIMSS studies. 2. With a good base of understanding of what math is about, software can be useful. Some research shows that work with tables (e.g. Open Office spreadsheet) is a good way of making the transition from arithmetic to algebra. My book does this. I also use dynamic geometry software (Geometer's Sketchpad, Cabri). I also recently discovered GeoGebra; I assume it will run under ubuntu. My curriculum is not ready to just give to a teacher or student, by any means. But I'd be interested in having someone try to use some of it with middle grades students (say age 10 and up.) On Feb 27, 2006, at 1:42 PM, Mauricio Hernandez Z. wrote:
Susan Addington Math Department, California State University, San Bernardino (USA) |
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