Engaging New Resources for the K12 Math, Science Teachers: Exploring Computational Thinking

As we all know, U.S. students score pretty low on international math tests -- 24th out of 29 industrialized countries. What can we do to get kids really excited about math? One thing is to make it relevant to the world today. How about learning to program your cell phone, for example, just to start?

Many groups have been working to improve teacher effectiveness and student engagement in math. There are lots of resources on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics website as well as on Math Forum for math teachers website.

A wonderful new resource for math and science teachers and for parents just appeared last week on Google called Exploring Computational Thinking. The goal of these resources is make the study of computational thinking, math, computer science, science, and social science more exciting for K-12 students and more applicable to today's world.

These resources were developed by math and science teachers in cooperation with Google engineers

It involves a set of problem-solving skills and techniques that software engineers use to write programs that underlay the computer applications you use such as search, email, and maps. Specific techniques include: problem decomposition, pattern recognition, pattern generalization to define abstractions or models, algorithm design, and data analysis and visualization.

If you are not a math teacher or a K12 teacher, you might want to share this link with a math or science teacher. We all need to work together to help students everywhere be better mathematicians and scientists.

 

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Comments

[Live4literacy]

03:15 PM on 10/26/2010

There is no room for this type of teaching and learning in a curriculum that focuses solely on a standardized test score. Period. End of story. teachers are blazing through algorithms so that kids will pass a bubble in test. There is no problem solving theory or constructivist theory. Please, take a look at the program being used here in Florida called GO MATH. It's being proclaimed the best curriculum yet and yet, it's high standards are really inappropriate standards...not sure how having kids round to the millionth in 3rd grade is appropriate or relevant or solving for variables in fifth grade in appropriate or relevant. Pushing the curriculum down is not the answer and worksheet after worksheet is not teaching understanding but that's what NCLB has done to education and I lay that at Jeb and George Bush, Kennedy, and our Union's feet. But the destruction of p[ublic education was the goal all along.

[maninal]

12:56 PM on 10/26/2010

Maybe math and science are over valued in education. We've lost history, humanities, the arts and civic while striving to force more students into math and science. Say the push is a success. What then as math and science careers are being outsourced while the soft sciences remain unfilled?

[cschools]

10:43 AM on 10/26/2010

A great way to increase student interest in math is to make it relevant. Students are constantly asking, "when am I ever going to use this?". Citizen Schools recruits 'Citizen Teachers', or volunteers to teach 10-week apprenticeships to middle schoolers. We have had Google employees teach how to program a game onto the new Droid, we've had rocket science and solar car apprenticeships. But, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to teach something you're passionate about. Are you passionate about math or science? Have an engaging hobby, career or message that will get kids interested? Visit http://wearethesuperheroes.com to teach your own apprenticeship. Get involved and give kids learning opportunities they've never dreamed of!

[Ayla87]

10:16 AM on 10/26/2010

Here's a novel idea: Teach it correctly. We teach math ass backwards in this country. If you don't believe me then look at our textbooks. There is no order to the subjects covered, and no discussion within chapters on how different mathematical concepts relate to one another. There's also no explination to the logic behind the math. They train you on how to solve the problem without understanding why it works that way. Which is assinine. Math is a language. If you don't know what your saying then you'll never remember how to say it outside of the classroom.

[JerryJH]

09:48 PM on 10/25/2010

How about moving the US to the internationally accepted SI system of measurement so our students don't spend the better part of their young lives being indoctrinated in an outdated system that hobbles them on the international stage?

[Hiyall]

01:22 PM on 10/25/2010

IMO teachers are not the problem with American schools, for the most part. Unfortunately finding bad teachers and using them as an easy scapegoat is typical to find a quick answer without any difficult choices made. Laying all of our education issues at the feet of teachers is like blaming entire classrooms for the bad behavior of one or two students, blaming all parents for the slacking of a few. If I understand no child left behind, the standards do just that, punishing all students for the shortcomings of a few.

God forbid this country goes for charter schools instead of retooling and improving public education, making profit centers of our kids the way banks did it with our mortgages. A poisonous easy fix. Right now charter schools look great and turn out great numbers because they can turn down anyone, unlike public schools who are required to accept any child - gifted,average or low inteligence, stable home or homeless, learning disabled, physically disabled, native english speaker or doesn't speak a word of english. Charter schools are sometimes well intentioned, and can sometimes offer insight into new ways of learning, but they have no obligations other than to remain profitable and turn out good test scores to keep the government funding comming - yes, another private enterprise using large amounts of government money. Reminds me of Blackwater, Halliburton, Bank of America, AIG,,

[Hiyall]

01:21 PM on 10/25/2010

I never hear about this so maybe it's a non issue, but why don't we use the metric system in America? You don't need metrics to study economics or finance, but wouldn't that make our students better prepared to compete globally?

Also, from my own experience with my kids in grade school, no child left behind is a sorry and wasteful replacement for classroom instruction. Much time is spent testing and then applying immediate remedial measures for kids who are within a range for normal learning. They are taken out of the classroom for "special instruction" which means teaching test taking, and then the kids are out of synch witht the rest of the class when they are returned to a normal schedule, it is thoroughly disruptive . Teachers are frustrated, students are frustrated and tons of time is wasted.

[DonJeff]

11:53 AM on 10/25/2010

Wake up folks. You can discuss any educational methodology you wish, but the 'law of the land' is the insidious 'No Child Left Behind'. If you are paying attention at all, primary education has changed from the concept of teaching children in small groups in reading and math, to allow for differences in developmental pace, to a concept of all children in a grade being on the same page of the same textbook on the same school day. The 'standard' for each grade that all children are expected to meet is at the high end for that grade, rather than what would be expected from an 'average' student. 'The purpose of this is to establish a standardized base to measure standardized test results. In other words, our children are nothing but high-speed industrial widgets being trained to take standardized tests. In Math they expose young children to a wide breadth of curriculum each year, rather than focusing on mastering skills in a logical sequence. We have so dehumanized our children that a substantial percentage of young children believe they are failures, even if they are able to read and perform math functions at a level that historically would put them within the range of their age group. Educational professionals and teachers, collectively through their unions, have sold out our children, simp;ly because they know better.

[Michael Gerety]

12:53 PM on 10/25/2010

We will reap the harvest.

[Klaus Nordmeyer]

03:38 PM on 10/25/2010

I would think that teacher's are as much a victim of all this as the kids, especially as they are now being subjected to "value-added" evaluations based on test scores.

Most teacher's I know enthusiastically supported Obama in 2008 in the belief that he was going to alleviate the NCLB testing regime. Unfortunately, he has been working in just the opposite direction.

[xtiangodloki]

11:16 AM on 10/25/2010

Math and Science are simply not all that sexy for most students because they can't find practical applications for anything more advanced than geometry until much later. For example, if you are good at writing you can share your work with other students for fun. If you are good at sports you can become popular with other students. What good would it do for you if you are good at math? You can help do other people's math problems for them.

I am not sure how this problem can be solved. Maybe students should read works like Freakonomics early on so they can see how calculus can be used to explain and tell a good story.

[Michael Gerety]

12:55 PM on 10/25/2010

Maybe we should show them?

[philko]

03:38 PM on 10/25/2010

So you provide tools for students that let them tell a story *better* using math. Start them creating hypertext storyboards using something like PowerPoint and then show them how they can animate using math. Provide tools like Scratch and Alice so that students can create animated, interactive stories, games and even class assignments.

With not too much begging, I've persuaded my local school district's IT department to install Scratch on all netbooks that are being given to students this year. Next step is to start getting word out to the kids that Scratch can be used for games (don't tell anyone, okay?).

Math and science won't ever be as sexy as sports or fashion. But if you can get students to ride the line between math/sci and writing (animated stories) or between math/sci and mechanical tinkering (robotics), you will have come a long way toward showing kids that there's a practical use for the stuff.

Check out the popularity and phenominal growth of FIRST as an example of what *can* be done.

[inmyhumbleopinion]

10:52 AM on 10/25/2010

Hands-on learning is by far much more engaging and interesting than text-book only learning. My son's a bright kid who was really lukewarm about school through the eighth grade. When he got to high school, he joined the school's FIRST robotics team, and suddenly the light bulb went on over his head. This program is the epitome of hands on science and math learning with competition baked in to make it even more exciting.

Now a junior, he plans to study engineering which is directly attributable to this experience. Now, how do we make this kind of learning available in day to day classroom teaching and not just in extracurricular activities?

[philko]

03:41 PM on 10/25/2010

That's an easy one. Just develop a mandatory standardized test for robotics. Then *every* school would do it day in and day out. ;-)

Seriously, though, getting FIRST into the classroom is only going to happen infrequently (private, magnet and charter schools mostly). But stuff like Scratch and Alice, being inherently presentation-oriented stand a much better chance of being integrated into "normal" lesson plans.