Another great round of talks this week everyone! If I had to pick a favorite though, it would probably have to be Ben’s talk on teaching topology to middle schoolers. I have always been very disappointed in the way math and science is taught in schools and I’m strongly in favor of showing students the cool and creative side of these subjects as early as possible. It’s a daunting task to try and find activities for kids to do on these advanced topics that are accessible and show them that there is more to the subject than the facts they are told they have to regurgitate. I think the activities Ben came up with have a lot of promise, and I’d really like to see what else he manages to come up with in the future.
April 22, 2018
FP Week 2
6 Comments
gljohns3
April 23, 2018 — 17:10
I remember stumbling across groups and rings in high school. I can’t remember how I got there, but I do remember thinking “who cares?” I want to say it was functions or rotations I was looking at, but either way material like that is bound to be very hard to introduce in a meaningful lasting way because it is easily dismissed. I’d like to hear other’s thoughts on that aspect.
brwendt
April 23, 2018 — 01:41
Thanks a lot! I am glad you enjoyed it! I hope to continue to fix up and work on my lessons and add new possible topics. I think that there are a lot of different directions that it could be taken and I do hope to talk with some middle school teachers and hear their suggestions too.
Although I will be teaching High School, I think that I will be able to use what I do here in my future classroom.
Thanks again!
jhmuelle
April 22, 2018 — 21:38
Ben’s was presentation great. It is cool to see an up and coming teacher who wants to make sure the youth understand the idea of proofs. Hopefully his lesson plans work well!
hduan2
April 22, 2018 — 17:40
I have learned from my TA experience that teaching is way much more complicated than present knowledge to students. It is more important that you can get active responses from students. Ben does come up with a course plan for middle school students, this is already a success but the real good course should be tested on in real courses. Hope he can find a chance to modify his plan by actually teaching a group of middle school students topology.
Philipp
April 22, 2018 — 15:19
I enjoyed Ben’s talk and motivations a lot too. It is very hard to come up with an efficient way to present higher mathematical concepts to middle schoolers and I think Ben did a great job at presenting some options on how this can be done. I think that the education system could make use of curriculums designed to make an effort in creating an interest in children towards the proof-based parts of Mathematics, rather than presenting the field as a pure bland memorization, as I feel it is, for the most part, presented as right now.
caroyse
April 22, 2018 — 14:40
Yeah it hurts seeing the indoctrination side of education, or at least our educational system (though its become cliche to bash on that, even if fair). Cool to see somebody try to introduce some ideas which attempt to bring forth abstract concepts rather than impose them.