We are in a time of dramatic, some would say, revolutionary change in education, “challenging” as Sir Ken Robinson says, “what we take for granted.” His How Schools Kill Creativity, the most watched Ted Talk of all time, shows we hunger for learning as a creative experience. Yet we continue to treat learning math as a mechanical process focused on fluency in paper-based algorithms that demands monotonous practice. This curriculum with its ladder of “basic” skills from place value through solving quadratic equations was defined by Leonardo of Pisa in the year 1202 for traders, merchants, and lenders. It is obsolete! Machines run our algorithms and solve our equations. 

The math of business today is spreadsheet math based on functions and functional thinking building models, collecting and organizing data, to ask, “What if…” Today, spreadsheets have become the ubiquitous transformative tool, the mathematics technology tool used in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and even the arts both at work and at home. What if Math brings spreadsheets, functions, and functional thinking to math education enabling students to learn math as a creative experience. Students work on Labs, not problems or exercises, using spreadsheets as laboratories to see patterns, build models, collect data, visualize, and ask What if…. What if Math has more than 100 Labs as models for a reinvention of the math curriculum. And we are adding new ones all the time. Labs range from foundational concepts like place value through algebraic functions. Labs include case studies for practicing problem solving on topics from sports to financial reasoning emphasizing out-of-the-box thinking and intuitive reasoning. Labs are experiments that students at all levels can use to learn math, to gain spreadsheet skills, to gain programming skills, and to develop out-of-the-box problem solving 21st century thinking. We seek to make learning a creative experience.

A little over 20 years ago the Harvard Calculus Consortium sought to remake the calculus curriculum. “We believe that the calculus curriculum needs to be completely re-thought,” began the text by Andrew Gleason and Deborah Hughes Hallett, both of Harvard University. They sought to get “our students to think.” In doing so they proposed “The Rule of Three.” “Our project is based on our belief that these three aspects of calculus—graphical, numerical, analytical—should all be emphasized throughout.” The Rule of Three, today often known today as The Rule of Four with the now addition of verbal, rests at the heart of math education. While the Calculus Consortium’s book may no longer own major market share, it has had a remarkable influence on all Calculus textbooks and indeed on all math textbooks in both K-12 and college. It is a widely shared belief that such multiple-linked representations must be central to 21^st century pedagogy. It is clear that students learn in different ways. It is certain that they need to see mathematics from different perspectives.

Spreadsheets are Rule of Four platforms. They are function machines which naturally represent mathematics graphically, numerically, analytically, and verbally. They show a function as a graph, as a table, as a formula, and we can describe them with text and visuals. They did not start out that way. The first spreadsheet, VisiCalc invented by Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin was designed to be a visual calculator to automate the accountants’ worksheets. Three years after VisiCalc’s debut in 1979, Mitch Kapor added graphs and tables to create Lotus 123 which brought the IBM PC into every business. And Excel from Microsoft came out for the new Macintosh 2 years later not only simplifying the interface but adding beautiful texts and visuals to spreadsheets. Today, the mature spreadsheet technology is the standard quantitative tool for business worldwide. It is not only available on every major platform, but its format and design are the basis for displaying and interacting with quantity on the Web.

In a spreadsheet we can write a formula, use that formula to create a table of values, and use that table of values to make a wide variety of different graphs and charts. Change the formula and the table and graph changes automatically. Change the table and the graph changes automatically. Spreadsheets are dynamic and highly interactive. They even let you embed variable quantities in text to add units to quantities our dynamic values to verbal descriptions. Once a student builds a model in a spreadsheet, it is naturally a multiple-linked representation that can played with and explored. Spreadsheet models designed with functional thinking as multiple-linked representations are therefore simulations of which students can ask “What if…”

If you use Link Sheets in your classroom, if you believe that every student has a learning style, if you like to have students explore different representations, if you want to get your “students to think” then try using our What if Math spreadsheets or develop your own built on the Rule of Four.

Small changes, seemingly inconsequential acts, can have momentous repercussions. Dead birds set off the environmental movement. An assassin’s bullet protesting an exhausted empire started a world war that brought down the ruling monarchies of Europe. A tax on tea turned into a revolution. Such a small change occurred in America’s classrooms a little over a half century ago. School desks were unscrewed from the floor. That seemingly small change, which on its surface seemed to be just about furniture, precipitated a major reduction in class size and a revolution in expectations of good teaching. Desks bolted to the floor, locking students in straight rows facing a teacher in the front of the classroom, optimized the use of space.
My 5^th grade Chicago classroom with fixed desks held 51 students in 6 rows with 8 desks per row and three portables. It also defined Miss O’Hearn’s teaching style. My 6^th grade suburban classroom with moving desks had 25 students. Desks could be rearranged, students could interact with each other, learning in groups was enabled, and teachers could give students individual attention toward student-centered learning. Small changes can have great effects even in education.

We have the opportunity to make such a small, seemingly inconsequential change that could profoundly transform our schools by allowing students to use the internet on their Common Core Math tests.

We need only change the wording in the test’s directions to allow and not prevent student use of a computer/tablet/smart phone. The tests are designed to be given online already. They give the students digital tools to use to solve some of the problems. What if we simply extended that existing open technology requirement to every question and enable students to use most any available program or website? What if they could use Google search to solve an arithmetic problem, or open Excel, Sheets, Numbers, Wolfram Alpha, Khan Academy, Wikipedia or any website they wanted to find an answer? What if, as the PARCC initials stand for, we are serious about the tests assessing “college and career readiness?” A realistic 21^st century college or career problem would quite naturally expect the solver to have internet access. College tests are generally open book and every online course must, by its very nature, allow internet access. So why not really prepare our students for college and career?

The consequences of such a minor change in the assessment directions would be far reaching and revolutionary. Teachers would stop teaching the algorithms and stop giving students arithmetic and algebra algorithm worksheets. Why teach long division if the tests don’t require it? Why spend all of that classroom and homework time on operations on fractions if students won’t be tested on it? Why teach students to factor equations using paper and pencil algorithms if they can get the answer online? This mechanical symbol manipulation that today makes up the bulk of student practice time would simply vanish. Creative experiences using technology to solve math problems would naturally replace it, for those will be the “basic skills” required by the tests. Spreadsheets and other quantitative technologies would replace pencil and paper. Mathematics would become more interesting to students for they would no longer need to ask, “Why am I learning this stuff for when I can solve this problem on my old phone or calculator?” Math classrooms could be filled with creative “What if…” experiences.

Not only would there be more time for authentic problem solving in math, but there would be more time for the other STEM subjects, and more time for the arts, for physical education, for history, for the manual arts, for project and performance oriented activities. So many of us dream of an educational system that is rich and creative, but we are overwhelmed by a system seemingly sluggish to innovate, overwhelming in complexity, and demanding in tradition that it seems to make substantial change all but impossible. Yet there are times and circumstances when small, seemingly inconsequential acts can have monumental impacts. Allowing students to use the Web when they take their Common Core math assessments could well be as revolutionary for students today as unscrewing the desks were in the 1950’s.