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Making Science and Math Kid Friendly?
mtspim asks: "I work for a non-profit organization that creates interactive math and science curriculum materials for kids and their instructors. Even though we have seen kids learn difficult topic more easily by using a computational approach to learning, most instructors are reluctant to introduce these new ways of thinking into their curriculum. What do Slashdot users think are the best ways to help revitalize math and science programs in our schools, or should we stick to the old conventional methods to learning?"
I teach Math and Science to ESE students. I find with my students that the problem is holding their attention long enough to transfer meaningful information. Typically I try to use manipulatives and audio-visual aids. This allows them to process the information on several different levels. Honestly, I think the "old" ways that were used were inferior to what we use today. The problem with kids learning today aren't the methods though, but the tremendous amount of distractions. Also, and I hate to state such an obvious fact, parents MUST be involved.
Teachers in public schools teach because they care about kids, not because of the money. Many elementary teachers spend alot of their salary on buying things for the classroom that the state and/or local school district won't/can't pay for. Anyone suggesting that teachers are pretending to care in order to make money is not even remotely connected to teachers in the US.
Wow, that's a pretty heavy opinion. Of course, you make this statement based on exactly what experience you've had with science teachers? Having a couple bad experiences does not entitle you to denounce science teachers as a whole.
Let me give you a flip-side example. I am a science teacher, and I have been for six years now. My dad was a science teacher (now retiring), and I've worked with some really great science teachers at our high school. These are the kind of people that really make a difference in the lives of students, that stay after school to help students make up labs or work on problems they didn't understand. We have a science computer lab with loads and loads of exploratory and remedial software, and we bring in two extra science teachers twice a year to help tutor our students who haven't passed the science portion of the Ohio 9th Grade Proficiency Test. One of our chemistry teachers who retired last year had a 100% passing rate over nearly 20 years for her students who took the Chemistry AP exam. You can't achieve that sort of thing without dedication and trust, and certainly not if your students feel you are "vicious and sadistic".
While there is no question that there are bad science teachers out there, just as there are bad teachers in every subject, I can't accept a statement that most science teachers are not kid-friendly when I see our science department busting their asses to stay current, relevant, interesting and enthusiastic. Sorry, but I just have to call bullshit on you.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
this does not mean our brains are not fully capable of learning math instinctively
But it does. Math is fundamentally unlike language in this respect. Children are hardwired to acquire language (see for instance, The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker), and they can do so from a very young age with minimal profesional help. This is not the case with algebra. We have no math instinct in the way that we have a language instinct.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I Suppose you mean "differentiate" rather than "derive"... Why do so many people mistake derivation with differentitation? I know when you differentiate a function you get its derivative and that sounds kind of like deriving... but I mean SERIOUSLY, they're two completely different things!!