What if I could give you a magic wand to wave over our educational system and make it fulfill our dreams for our children? What would you have it do? I find this question stumps most people. We all know education in America is far from what we either want or need it to be. …
Mastering the quadratic formula has long been the culmination of the high school algebra courses, the capstone of “Algebra I and Algebra 2”. We endeavor to prepare our students for it by teaching them arithmetic to do its operations, and algebra to solve linear equations, graph linear functions, factor special quadratic equations, and cap off …
I have long loved Maxwell’s Equations as the epitome of beauty in physics and as the source of inspiration for my teaching. But though the equations are beautiful and even familiar, very few people understand them. So, when I came across this paper by the great physicist Freeman Dyson called “Why is Maxwell’s Theory too …
I like to hang out in the Harvard Graduate School of Education library. It has a good vibe, is usually full of students focused on my favorite topic, and is set up to enable technology as you well might expect. Every student has their own laptop. Lots of tables have power. The Web is open …
One hundred years ago my father at age 9 entered America. He had traveled from his birthplace in a town in what is now Ukraine across the vast expanse of Siberia on the Trans-Siberian railroad to its eastern extreme at Vladivostok, from there by ship to Kyoto, Japan and then 6 weeks on a tramp …
Our education model is broken. Despite the economic promise of and documented need for a bachelor’s degree: graduation rates are stagnant, achievement gaps are widening, and costs are bankrupting our kids. While Digital-technology has transformed work, our schools retain their 19th century form and function defined by medieval paper-technology. The problems confronting our schools are …
I built a Lab for you to play with the Syracuse Problem and to learn to use spreadsheets to play with like problems in fun and interesting ways. The Syracuse Problem is a simple one. Pick a number, any whole number. If it is even divide it by 2, if it is odd multiply it …
Recently, in a history of physics magazine, I came across this picture and a short story on Harvard Project Physics, and I thought about the effect that this project, and these three people in particular, have had on my view of education. We all have mentors and I have the great good fortune to have …
Empathy is an odd idea to discuss in math or even in STEM/STEAM education. It is usually thought of as an issue in psychology or sociology, perhaps in the humanities, a topic for English or history classes to consider in school. Yet, it is the first step in the Design Learning process where Stanford’s D …
Three years ago I read a wonderful book by Keith Devlin called The Man of Numbers. It told the story of Leonardo of Pisa who was the first to convert Arabic arithmetic and algebra for European use. Devlin told Leonardo’s story and he described the process by which Leonardo’s book Liber abbaci (The Book of Calculation) became the …
