As always, A LOT TO SAY...spreadsheets, my history with them

I remember being introduced to Microsoft Excel some 17 years ago. I was shown the application [in Excel] of using “linear regression” to calculate the concentrations of analytes, mostly heavy metals, in effluent water and/or industrial waste produced by the manufacturing of heat exchange products.

I was a lowly worker in a laboratory, with the title, “Chem Lab Tech 1”. It was the lowest rung on the ladder in the quest to forge a career, and make a little money in the meantime. I never realized where my life’s journey would take me from there…

Up to the point where I began to see where statistics truly has a purpose, I hated it. (In this regard, I can relate to those students who I am charged with teaching some specific topics that they hate.) The reason I hated it so much is that I didn’t understand it. What do you mean once I get an answer, I can only be 95% sure of its accuracy? And it lies within a window of this accuracy? That answer is an “outlier”! What? I don’t get it! As far as stats was concerned, I wanted to be the outlier!

Excel was enchanting to me; it took the data that I was generating from some expensive piece of analytical equipment and magically changed those numbers into useful answers (in a matter of microseconds, instead of hours of me punching the numbers into my calculator – God forbid, if I would have had to “crunch the numbers” by hand). It told me whether or not to tell the environmental engineer in charge of the plant, to keep the lines running or shut them down. Ah, what power I had (at least, in my own mind)! It was there that I finally understood the concepts of confidence intervals, variance, degrees of freedom, correlation coefficients and outliers, etc. I was finally an “inlier”! I had arrived.

I need to find ways to excite my students, energizing their motivation to become as passionate and enthusiastic about mathematics as I am. In this manner, I wish to show them applications involving computer and other technologies as the springboard. Utilizing spreadsheets was a turning point for me.

I have already used spreadsheets to show students the amortization of a bank loan, the maximization of the volume of a cylinder and right rectangular prism with the amount of surface area being held constant, the generation of the number pi by adding sides, ad infinitum, to a regular polygon and calculating the perimeter to pseudo-diameter ratio, graphing polynomials, in particular, parabolas to find the “zeros/solutions” and vertices, etc. all by using Microsoft Excel. Every time I have used these lessons, I have gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback from my students. I need to create/find more resources for these type of activities.

1st Blog of 515

Having read only the first chapter in the book, I have to get accustomed to some of its nuances (and in my initial opinion, faux pas) in order to acquire what is really being said. In other words, I had big problems, at first, with some of the ideas being stated. In particular on page 16 entitled, “Teacher’s Role” – focus is now on student learning, instead of teacher teaching (Huh? What kind of psychobabble am I reading?) I thought for something to be taught, something has to be learned. But after much contemplation, I have to agree with the book. Most of the time I spend planning for instruction, I am focused on what actions I will perform and statements I will make, rather than, how the students will respond and demonstrate their understanding. I could do my thing in an empty classroom and call it teaching, but no one is learning. I have more and more empathy with each passing year of what my students must be thinking when what comes out of my mouth sounds like some of the things I read earlier without time to reflect, critique, analyze and process.

I took the true/false quiz before reading the first chapter to see what I knew or thought I knew prior. I was shocked when I found the answer being sought for number 7, “According to this text, learning occurs best when it is technology driven”, was false. (“Technology has not been shown overall to be effective at increasing student achievement”, pg 13) Although, the text does throw a few disclaimers out there to justify itself and seemingly contradicts itself in the 4^th line of Figure 1.6 pg 16 (“Technology can help make learning more effective by providing a great wealth of resources and allowing students choices). I guess it depends on the definitions of the words “overall” and “help”.

I really got a kick out of the heading “What is Learning?” on pg 9. Upon reading something like this, I believe most of us would formulate a quick definition, then read further, to see if we were right or maybe close. The book never defines learning in its following lines of text. It just makes mention of two theories of what it is and that is given in Figure 1.2. It does, however, say it will be addressed in chapter 2. What a teaser!!! (I think I focused on this since I gave a definition in class and wanted to see if I was close or way off.)

These examples and some others will definitely impact my job, in that, I will be more aware of giving time for students to reflect, critique, analyze and process information that I present. I have been guilty in the past of not giving enough “lag time”. I also need to concentrate more on asking a student or student(s) to “play back” what was just proffered by me and articulate to the class the information (I attempted to convey) and its usage (so that I can assess understanding or any misunderstanding).

Post Script – The answer I gave for #7 true/false was supposed to be “true” after all. I found out when I submitted my answers to be corrected. I don’t agree.