Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Math, meet Spanish; Spanish, meet Math...

A reader picks up on the recent math conversation with an interesting comment:
Just as math and science teachers need to incorporate the arts in their instruction, those of us in the humanities must support math and science learning. For example, do creative writing and word problems need to be mutually exclusive? (Maybe students would be more engaged with word problems that are personalized and not about two trains!) Another expample: my Spanish students learn numbers in my class but will do so by practicing greater than/less than and negative numbers, skills a math colleague said many lack.

Maybe part of the trick in using elements of Web 2.0 in the math classroom is to approach it from the cross-curricular perspective.

Architecture is the perfect example of a field that effortlessly blends art, history, and math. I'm sure you all can come up with many others.

I love the idea of using a foreign language to teach math. Back in college, my elementary Greek teacher was also my first statistics teacher. He approached teaching math as if he were teaching a foreign language.

Today, a math teacher using this approach could easily incorporate much of the paperless procedures and tech integrated pedagogies that foreign language teachers are already using.

Again, this isn't really about saving scratch paper in math class. It's about finding ways to make math class just as connected to digital technology and social media as the best tech integrated English class.

Keep coming with the ideas and comments, folks. This is quickly turning into Math Week at TeachPaperless!

1 comment:

  1. Everyone should check out http://staweb.sta.cathedral.org/departments/math/mhansen/public_html/start.htm if you want to view mathematics using digital tools. Incredible site.

    Disclaimer: Michael Hansen is personal friend of mine and I taught at St. Albans for 7 years.

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