http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-YFwwl-DIU&feature=youtu.be
This lecture relates to the discussion we had in class on Friday following Mohammed's presentation and his comments on how he succeeded in math. Thank you to Ileana for bringing this video to my attention.
Here's my question for you to comment on: What does this lecture teach you, not about math, but about teaching?
I think the main idea of the lecture is more ambitious than explain how do people be success in math during their scholar life. The bottom line has an impact on people about how important is helps students to connect their brain with their study subjects because the issue is not confined to math; it is part of a whole educational tenor.
ReplyDeleteBefore I had heard the lecture, I believed that practicing reinforced a habit in students, and then they developed an open minded way to face mathematics. But after had listen it I comprehended that this is just a small area of the problem. Complexity is more than that. The point is trying to figure out how do the policy and the complete structure of the educational and teaching system could change, this is the big puzzle.
According to Faulkner experience, the problem is a cultural issue. She explains that the most important goal teachers have to reach is that students understand that good memory and procedures could help to solve numerical problems, but nothing happened if they do not internalize why and how create a true relationship of understanding to these areas. Pedagogy and creativity are also factors that makes classes easy to understand and instill passion in student to continue learning.
Everything you say is 100% correct. When I learned math as a kid, I don't remember any teachers really explaining to me what concepts meant so that I could actually understand and, as you say, internalize them. Unfortunately, the math I learned was very procedural. For instance, I never understood the concept of square roots until watching this video!
DeleteThis is an excellent response to the video.
I think this lecture is mainly talking about connecting math to the brain,it means that we are not only memorizing the precedures, but also understand what's underneath the number. As she says,we are weaker of math, because we think of math as a series of precedures. We have memorized the precedures, maybe we don't understand what the real meaning is, so we don't know how to use the presedures.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion,I'm agree with her. When I study math, firstly, my teacher always explain the meaning of the formula, they explain step by step and tell us how can we get this formula. I think it's good teaching style, because we understand the formula, so we don't need the great effort to memorize the formula and we can't forget it.
I don't remember having to memorize formulas, but I'm certain that I didn't truly understand those formulas. I was able to do the procedure, but I never knew what the numbers MEANT. Maybe its an American problem, as Faulkner suggests.
DeleteIn this lecture, Faulkner is trying to convince the maths teachers that they should not teach students with the symbolic expression. Instead, they should guide students to understand maths through connection. She did mention about to understand the underneath of maths. In this way, student will be able to learn and connect the knowledge to apply in maths. She also gave an example of her performance in junior high school. She did not do well in algebra 2, but after she came to the point of understand and connect those understanding to each other, maths became easier for her.
ReplyDeleteWith her point of view, I totally agree with this strategy to teach maths to students. Since there are many complicated stuffs in maths subject, this method will help students to connect the knowledge and understanding in maths to apply in some advance concept of maths, which all the major require to study. I think that with this way, students will be able to apply their own understanding rather than memorize all the formulas in maths.
Nice. Now we just have to train the teachers to think differently!
DeleteStyle of teaching mathematics has a great impact on success in math. Under success in math is a national problem which resulted from cultural attitude against it. Students have been though to memorized number and due with mathematic problems as doing a procedure. However, they will not even understand the meaning under those numbers or the principles. Students use memory to solve math problems. Unfortunately, only memory is not enough in learning math because higher level math need understanding. There for, understanding what is the meaning of number or symbol in math are a good foundation to process math.
ReplyDeleteThe way to teach math as the speaker call connection - manipulate symbol or analog number to process to the brain instead of teaching it as a complicate procedure is the significant input for preparing students to the higher steps. Connection helps the brain to conceptualize the mathematic symbol by relating it to the property, space, quantity, and also link to the memory. The method sounds difference from memorizing the numbers or doing mathematic procedures as we ever learn. Students are not only learning math but also have fun. Even though I am an adult, I can feel how fun it is when learn the synonym of three from 3, cat, and 9. So, teaching math in the different way can help student achieve in learning math.
Introducing the new concept of teaching to educational system needs the cooperation from diverse sectors. It will involve policy, teacher and school systems, parents, as well as students. The new methods can implement in all level of educations from elementary school to university. The connection’s concept will appropriate for the primary level. In the higher level such as in the university are needed to change in the congruent ways. When I took the statistic course, the Khanacademy (http://www.khanacademy.org/) website is very helpful to understand the complicated concepts of mathematic. I think this is the innovation of teaching math for adult learner.
In conclusion, the harder mathematic is, the more innovation of teaching is needed.
This lecture talks about teaching maths and in what ways that matter. According to this lecture, teaching maths by contexts is just not enough and students have to be taught the meanings underneath the contexts. In other words, teachers have to teach students how things really work out.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, this lecture teaches us more than just teaching math. I believe that we can adapt this procedure to assimilate new things more sufficiently. In my belief, we can only fully understand a new thing by first understand its essence and relate it to what we have already known, to make connections with our previous knowledge. Just like the hard multiplication example (7*8), to understand it, first we must have to understand the nature of multiplication, which is related to adding space, then use our imagination to relate it to what we have known (7*8=(2+5)*8) (she had already shown the results of 8*2 and 8*5).
In conclusion, I think that the process of learning and memorizing are related to each others, as well as this lecture and the last one. In both process, we all have to understand and relate. And that's the way how we learn or memorize things better.
this lecture is talking about math education problems , and why the US is underachieving in comparison with other countries . It was clear that she find the causes of these problem is the way of how teach and understand the math . I think we can apply her theory on any material not just the math . Students face problems in some material because they connected in a wrong way to their brain . They are just memorize the information instead of understanding what underneath that information . As the instructor said about math "understanding what underneath the digits " . Even if it takes longer steps , it will be easier if we receive the information in conceptual way connects it to our brain . I think if every teacher knows how to make students use the correct concrete picture of the material and make what i can call it " gradual ladder " to reach the information step by step , most of the students won't face big problems in any material .
ReplyDeleteI hope that we have a special system to teach every teacher how to teach in our country , specially the primary grades because they are the basics .
Valerie Faulker believed that cultural aspects cause the problems of learning mathematics in the Unites States. Many Americans think that the success in Math depends on students’ talent rather than effort. However, that may not be true. She pointed out that students can learn mathematics more efficiently if they understand the root of Math solutions and make a connection to the brain reasonably.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this method can help students, but only at the fundamental level. I have still believed that, in higher level of mathematics, solely understanding the root of problems may not be enough. For example, I used to study the mathematics course called Differential Equation (DE). With this course, I bet that more than ninety percent of engineering students need to memorize the ways to solve problems because each solution is so complicated and hardly understandable. I think that students should practice a number of exercises, try to get accustomed to the problems, and never give up so that they can learn mathematics efficiently and successfully.
the speaker talked about what we think it is a talnt can be improved and enhanced when we find a way to make it easy to process in our brain. Also, she said the problem in reciving information or knowledge is not because of the teacher, a problem in students talent, or perants but the environment play an important role in this. In addition to that, she think connect what we want to learn or memorize with somthing will make learning more easier and will enhance us.
ReplyDeleteIn fact it is little hard to comment in what this lucture teache me because still there are a lot of things influnce my belives, but I can say she wanted to give people a message that they do not have to think that learning only a talnt or trait they can improve them selves by finding the proprate methods that thier brain can work or process the information with very fast.
In the end, I would like that I beleive it is hard to find a specific way in teaching or to learn that can work with all students some ways will work with the mejority and some of the methods will work with few of the students because each one has different weak point and and each one his or her brain work in different way for example the ways that she used make the math very hard for me ecxapt the last method which is a^2 + b^2 = C^2, even using this way that she explain is a talnt not all people can connect thing with something or have the ability to find a related to remamber the rules.
Valerie Faulkner is talking about connection between math and the brain. She said that we are taught mathematics through numbers and symbols (procedure) but we need to notice what is underlying the word and the symbols in more organized way that is connected to the brain (connection.)
ReplyDeleteIn order to know what is underneath the digit, we have to think with analog process, estimating through conception. To explain, If we face with the problem, (x+y)*(x+y). When you solve this with distributive way like (x*x)+(x*y)+(y*x)+(y*y), you are solving with procedure. On the other hand, when you try to resolve it by drawing square devided propotionally with variables and fill the square with multiplication of variables, that is connection that she emphasizes in teacing mathematics.
The lecturer is telling us that we have to learn mathematics not the way we have been taught (superficial math) but the way the mathematics really means to be.
In my opinion, this is a great way to learn math more easily and more logically. Like she said in the lecture, we consider math as an effort that we can achieve with good memory. However, mathematics is different to memorizing vocabulary. It has to be taught with logical and understandable way, not with memorizing all the mathematic formula which is actually happening these days.
Teaching is much more than repeating, children need to understand the bases in order to learn. In adoration, when they truly understand, learning is easier and abstracts or more complicated concepts are less difficult to assimilate.
ReplyDeleteWe, as special education teachers, try to make teaching and learning better, there are a lot of different techniques and methods for making the difference in both subjects. The most important is to make the children understand what comes before, the basis of more complicated learnings and to cover all those learning gaps that teachers in "normal" education didn't covered before because of the tradition of learning by memory instead that learning by understanding.
This lecture reaffirm that in my professional field, I am following the right path, and I am glad about that!
Excellent. Maybe the "regular education" teachers need to take some lessons from the "special education" teachers.
DeleteAs Faulkner says: educate is more than teaching just formulas or procedures. Is to teach to the students go deep inside the problems, understand what is behind the numbers and get used to apply this technique in all areas related with math. This is going to make easier the entire process of learning numbers, and even more efective to the students.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, this is an issue of both parts of the equation: teachers and students. Because, sometimes we have the best teachers, but as students, we know that just learning math methods, we can solved some problems, so many students, just memorize what they need to the exams.
The idea for an effective education is to have great teachers who encourage their students to use their brains to understand how the numbers works and why, moreover, make ourselves students with consciousness about the meaning of each procedure or formula learned and get used to practice them, in order to get real knowledge about math.
I agree with everything you say here.
DeleteTell me, do you think the same ideas should apply to the teaching of language, which, like math, is totally symbolic?
This lecture talk about the connect between math and brain. She think the culture issue is the most effect reason. When children are young, they don't push a lot to learn math; as a result, they are not good as other children in other countries in same age. She also maintains a great way what is use the base system to solve some problems.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, math is not difficult because my education system decides us to use do and practice a lot. Therefore, I agree her idea culture cause the math problem. The only thing people can do is make the math more and more difficult to push people to learn it. Otherwise, this problem could delay for a long time. She and I are on the same page about the method to solve a complex math problem. There is special way to do that, but we still can do it with our base way which is the function of every special way.
At the front of the lecture, she told about the reason why most of the American people are not good at math. She believes that it's not teacher or student's problem, but cultural problem. In my opinion, I think it's global problem. Nowadays, people more focus on what is the effective way of teaching and learning, so they are tending to ignore what is real inside the knowledge. Teachers started to ask students to memorize the formulas and throw the numbers into formulas without telling students why and what is it for. Therefor, students probably will forget all the things that they have learnt after the test. I agree about what the professor said in the lecture that we can't just learn things, we have to understand what is deep inside the knowledge, so that we will be able to use it in our daily life.
ReplyDeleteFaulkner's lecture talked about the education problem in math in the U.S. Her opinion is when teachers are teaching math, they should connect math to students' brain, which means teachers have no need to teach digits, instead, they need to teach students number, what's underneath the number.
ReplyDeleteOn my opinion, those education problems not only happened in the U.S.,but also happened in every other countries. As far as I'm considered, Chinese students as we are, can always get higher grades in a test than the students who come from other countries, nomatter how hard the test is. According to that, we were considered as we are really good at math, at least in the test. However, the fact is that we were trained to solve all kinds of extremely hard math problems from our primary school. That's the reason why Chinese students always can get good grade, but are lack of creativities. We are accustomed to remember things instead of knowing the under meaning. This kind of memory is always short-lived, however if we connect the knowledge to the brain, which will be easy to make the memory last for a long time even more.
the lecture is about problems in teaching math in the united states. she said that the teacher should not just give the students digits or numbers. instead, the teacher should connect the subject to the student's brain.
ReplyDeletedepending on my high school experience with math i realized that it depends on the teachers technique in delivering the information.for example,my maths teacher in the school didn't have the technique to make all the students understand the lesson. his methods were so confusing and was only understood by the student's that had the ability to catch the information from the first time.but my tutor used Faulkner's method. so i understood every thing.