EDCP 342 Leo

 "You must be smart" is something I hear all the time whenever I tell people I'm doing a math undergrad. This relation between doing math and being intelligent is so deeply woven into societal views. Therefore, someone who cannot do math would think that they're less intelligent and just quit math as it is not for them. Just as highlighted in the article, a lot of my high school math teachers weren't even experts in the math field but just science teachers filling in the role of a math teacher and just teaching us how to get by without a deeper understanding of the topics. I firmly believe that, math at a high school and even at a university level isn't about learning mathematical concepts and solving mathematical problems, but about learning how to solve problems mathematically. Whether the problem is within your everyday life, or even something more involved with math. Math teaches you how to systematically solve problems in a step by step basis which can on...

  EDCP 342 Group Project Group members: Pla Sey, Leo Lee, Jarrad Fjelstad. The art piece is Little Wire Quadrics by Amanda Taylor Lipnicki. We first needed to figure out what materials we needed. Rebuilding the pieces using a wire base felt obvious, but instead of copper wire, we used aluminum wire as we thought it would be easier to manipulate and solidify. To connect pieces together, we used magnets and silicon tape. It still took some time to get used to the materials: Pla thought of interesting ways to spin and form the wire: Leo eventually managed to create a hyperboloid: Then we quickly followed that with a paraboloid and cone: We had to pay close attention to the orientation and position of the magnets:   Though small, the magnets were powerful, and it was a challenge keeping them separated for use: Taping tiny magnets to wire was tedious and often ineffective, so we abandoned them and decided to try just using the tape: The tape was sticky enough for the pieces to han...

 Curriculum is something I heard all the time in school, teachers always talking about curriculum this, curriculum that. I've never searched up a true definition of this word, but to me, curriculum has always meant a list of the actual material you need to know. Something measurable like addition or multiplication, not something abstract like mathematical thinking. Upon reading this article I completely agree that schools have a "hidden" curriculum as well and also have things that schools don't teach but need to teach thus the article calling this the null curriculum. What stood out to me was the argument that schools taught compliant behaviour. Thinking back to my entire time in schools, I realized I didn't succeed in school because I was the smartest, or studied hard. I just realized very early on that success wasn't achieved by studying the hardest, but by knowing the subtle biases of your teacher and adapting to it. For example, in my math classes, I'...

Drawing the first couple examples we can think through the scenario to see if we can find a pattern. First we notice that when a locker number has multiple divisors it'll be opened and closed that many times. So numbers with even divisors will start closed since student 1 closes all lockers we can start from closed which tells us that odd divisor number lockers will be closed and even number divisor lockers will be open. And the first locker each student interacts with will never be touched by another following student. So this means all prime numbers will be opened. So that gives us 168 open lockers. Adding on to that point, we also know that every number has an even number of divisors as to be divisible by something means a divisor has to have a "match", but perfect squares are the only exception as they have a number multiplied by itself making it an odd number of divisors. From 1 to 1000 there are 31 perfect squares including 1 so there should only be 31 closed locker...

 My favourite math teacher was one I had in my last year of high school. To me, what made them a great teacher wasn't their way of teaching math, nor how much math I learned from them, but it was their attitude towards teaching that bled into the classroom every time I was there. I've always liked math so I definitely cannot speak for students that hate math regardless, but this teacher stood out to me because they very obviously wanted to be there. The teacher never gave up on any students no matter how bad their attitude was towards math; constantly putting in effort to try to get her students to have fun yet learn math at the same time. They always encouraged students to participate in activities never giving up on those that were more quiet in the back of the class. This never give up attitude and the balance between strictness and leniency was what really stuck with me and made me want to be like them.  My least favourite teacher was one that was completely opposite. They...

Skemp's article touches upon a topic that I struggle with to this very day, yet it doesn't provide a sure answer. For as long as I taught and wanted to teach, there was always a divide between relational and instrumental teaching (even though I did not know it by these names). Do I just teach the student the most optimal and efficient way to solve a problem in the shortest time possible? Or do I go through the gritty process of having them understand the concept behind the solution to a problem? There are clear benefits to both ways of learning, and I agree with Skemp's point that the goals of the teacher and student are important when considering this, but in a school setting with so many students, how would one decide what approach to take? The article mentions that difficulty in assessing relational learning contributes to why teachers might prefer instrumental understanding for a particular subject. This brings up the question of how one would actually assess relational...

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