Oregon Mathematics-OCTM





This page contains a sequence of slightly edited email messages sent by David Moursund to the Oregon Council of Teachers of Mathematics. OCTM is an active and successful influence on math education in Oregon. The purpose of this IAE-pedia page to to help facilitate discussion and other sharing among OCTM members and other math educators throughout the world.

Readers who are OCTM members can post to the OCTM mailing list, thus sharing their ideas with their fellow OCTM members. All readers of this page can post to the discussion page provided they have logged in. Finally, readers are interested in contributing materials and ideas to the IAE-pedia should feel free to [mailto:moursund@uoregon.edu contact me via email.]

Email About Free Books
Hi, OCTM members:

Some of you know me from my work with the Math Learning Center, the International Society for Technology in Education, and/or the University of Oregon.

I am now retired from the UO, and I am spending a lot of time writing and making my writings available free on the Web.

A number of my most recent books are available (free) as pdf and Microsoft Word files at http://i-a-e.org/eBooks.html.

Some of the titles that might interest you include:

Moursund, D.G. (October 2007). Introduction to problem solving in the Information Age.

Moursund, D.G. (June 2006). Computational Thinking and Math Maturity: Improving Math Education in K-8 Schools.

Moursund, D.G. (August 2006). Parents' Guide to Computers in Education: A Guide for Teachers and Parents.

Moursund, D.G. (June 2006). Introduction to Using Games in Education.

Moursund, D.G. (2006). Computers in Education for Talented and Gifted Students: A Book for Elementary and Middle School Teacher.

Moursund, D.G. (2005, 2006). Brief Introduction to Educational Implications of Artificial Intelligence.

If you find one of these books useful to yourself and/or your students, I would appreciate hearing from you. In addition, feel free to publicize these and other free books that are available on the http://i-a-e.org/eBooks.html Website.

Email About the Math Wars
Hi, OCTM members:

I recently spent quite a bit of time reading about the "math wars" and then summarizing what I read in a document:

http://iae-pedia.org/Math_Education_Wars

The issue is traditional math education versus reform math education.

I wonder if you have heard about the Math Wars, or whether this topic his slowly fading away? If you are aware of this controversy in math education, how has it affected you and your professional colleagues?

From my point of view, the math education community needs to increase its focus on a new "front" that is slowly opening up in this "war." It is the role of computers in the content, teaching processes, and assessment throughout the entire math curriculum.

Email About Good Math Lesson Plans
Hi, OCTM members:

There are many many thousands of free lesson plans available on the Web. Moreover, probably whatever math book(s) you are teaching from include relatively detailed lesson plans.

About ten years ago Dr. Irene Smith and I did a major writing project for Intel Corporation. We wrote student and teacher materials to accompany a kit of electronic components designed for grades 4-9 students to learn more about what goes on inside a computer. Well over a hundred thousand copies of the book and materials were distributed free by Intel.

In addition to providing "the usual, traditional" lesson plans, each of the lesson plans we wrote included:

1. Material specifically designed to help the teachers learn the content. (The typical teacher using the materials had little knowledge of hands on electronics focusing on computer components. Thus, "learn on your owe, just in time" inservice was part of each lesson.

2. Each lesson included material to be read by students. The focus was on learning by reading and learning by doing hands-on activities.

From this experience, I now believe that every math lesson plan that people write for teachers should include a mini inservice for the teacher and it should include content reading material for the student.

Thus, I hope that many of you reading this email will share with me your thoughts on whether these two ideas are important aspects of what constitutes a good math lesson plan.

In addition, I would like to hear your thoughts on other features that you look for in deciding the quality of a lesson plan that you find online, in math publications, or obtain from your colleagues. Tell me what (in your mind) makes a math lesson plan good. Your input will help me in developing an article to go into the IAE-pedia. Or, if this is a topic that really interests you, I would be happy to help you write your own article on the topic and help you put onto the IAE-pedia site.

Email About Learning to Read Math
Hi, OCTM members:

One of my current projects focuses on the idea of students learning how to read math so that they can learn math through use of their reading skills.

This is related to but quite a bit different than helping students learn to read word problems (story problems) so that they can solve such problems.

I would like to hear from you about what you are doing to help your students get better at reading math. What math materials do you have them read? How do you assess whether your students have done the reading and understand what they have read? I am interested in examples from all grade levels and from college level courses.

The little bits of information I have been able to gain in this area suggest that at the precollege level, most students are not gaining much knowledge or skill in reading math content materials. The reading that is stressed in math courses tends to focus on reading word problems as part of the process of solving such problems.

If you are interested in my initial exploration of this area, see: http://iae-pedia.org/Communicating_in_the_Language_of_Mathematics

Any input, discussion, examples of success and failure, and so on will be much appreciated.

Author or Authors
This page was developed by David Moursund. Because it contains copies of email messages (some that have been edited since their first distribution) written by David Moursund, it has been protected against changes by readers.