Ryan Boots:I’ve been something of a cheerleader on the use of new media in the classroom, principally in the form of digital textbooks.  But similar to what we’ve already seen with the calculator, such technology has the potential to inflict…

The calculator is a Big Black Box With Buttons to anyone who doesn’t understand the mathematics behind it. Lessons like the one Mr. Flener describes only serve to reinforce that misperception. If you already know about compound interest, then a lesson like that one will definitely deepen your understanding. But if you don’t already know about compound interest, all it is is an exercise in button-punching that only serves to make numbers go up and down. What I am decrying is the outright _substitution_ of lessons like that one for lessons that would lay the foundation for that one.

Because we no longer teach the underpinnings of concepts like compound interest, mathematical knowledge is actually being LOST. If you don’t believe me, look up “conic sections” in any current Algebra 2 textbook. In most of them, you won’t find it, even though the properties of conic sections underly our communication technology, as well as lay the groundwork for future calculus coursework. There are no longer any teachers who understand it well enough to implement it in a curriculum, let alone enrich the experience of our future mathematicians and scientists, because the current generation of teachers has been raised solely on the thin gruel of “applications” that Mr. Flener seems to think constitutes a full enough meal. Meanwhile, a feast of real mathematics rots on the banquet tables.

Condorcet said, “[We want] to insure that in the future all citizens can be self-sufficient in all calculations related to their interests; without which they can be neither really equal in rights… nor really free.” Emphasis on the word ALL. All calculations, not just the few Mr. Flener thinks are interesting enough to hold his attention. If Mr. Flener thinks fractions and algebra are not useful, I can only imagine it must be because he does not know these topics well enough to get any use out of them himself. I know I use them every time I sew, cook, or shop for groceries.

Within a 45 minute lesson, the kids have learned about compound interest, how the amount of intitial investment affects the amount at the end of 10 years, they can even add an amount, say $100 at the end of each year, etc. They can have a much deeper understand than most adults have about compound interest.

Furthermore, they are engaged in a rich exploration of algebraic concepts. What does it take for a teacher to engage his/her kids in such a lesson? It takes a pretty good understanding of the mathematics and the technology. If Sarah thinks that these kids are losing out because they can’t add 3/7 + 5/11, she is quite wrong. If she ever saw the movie “Peggy Sue got married,” she might remember the line in which Peggy Sue ends returning to her high school days and is sitting in her Algebra class. Her comment is classic, and in a sense reflects the world that Sarah wants to maintain. “I never realized when I was here (in her algebra class) how useless this subject is.”

Much of Sarah world is useless, not because we don’t need to know what rational numbers are, but because we can do so much, much more with technology. Sarah’s view is highly limiting.

Sarah Natividad:Recently Utah schools have been given an F for technology use in the classroom (or lack thereof). This is one area I hope Utah continues to fail in. Technology has been touted as a fabulous tool for teaching math…