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Revolutionizing Math and possibly other subjects in education

G

Gannon

Senior member
I wasn't sure where to place this (forum wise), but I know there are a lot of smart people around here, but I think many smart people have missed the obvious greatness of the internets potential in regards to education with certain subjects.

Well here's my idea:

Right now I'm thinking about developing a Wikipedia like (editable) open source math/curriculum textbook software available via the web (for free to students and everyone that wants to improve their math skills), although securing the funding to maintain such a project I have not figured out yet, but I think it would be feasible through community fundraising possibly?

People (students, teachers and professionals) would be able to register, login, and look at the curriculum, rate explanations, the questions, their difficulty, etc and edit it in real time, teachers and professionals from industry would be able to add/edit and make sure explanations for things are cogent and understandable, there names would be attached to their work/edits, so that there would be *accountability* and so students could rate their communication skills, one thing I notice about textbooks in particular is that they may be edited by smart people but they cannot get real-time feedback on the quality of their explanations, Einstein said, (paraphrasing loosely) if you cannot take concepts and break it down and teach it to anyone you are not an effective communicator or teacher.

Also everyone could rate the lessons and comment on them for improvement, I think this would be a *Great idea*, and companies like Intel and Microsoft could not piss and moan about the "state of education", with their own workers able to edit and review curriculum in real time, because at this time they are not really *doing much about it themselves*.

In my opinion this would work insanely well for math because much math is based on understanding and drilling / practicing as many questions under the sections you are doing as possible.

I'd love to get into contact with some people that could help me start a project like this. One of the biggest things I'd want to nail down though is the quality of the user interface, and have the software be able to re-organize, copy and 'rethread' subjects, so that professionals could work on specializing or customizing curriculum for different areas of industry knowing where the emphasis is. Many "math packages" by textbook companies are very cumbersome and just plain suck, and I believe stuff like a sound mathematics education is paramount to the future well being of everyone.

Thoughts? Has anyone done anything like this yet?
 
sounds great. that's one thing i hate about most math/science/engineering books. they do a problem, but don't explain why they do something in a specific step or summerize general problem solving strategy in a way understandable to people who don't already know it. I'd be willing to help on a page/forum
 
I am the google master. Math help

But aside from this, I would contact wikipedia and propose this. Wikipedia was created to get all the world's information readily available in one location, and they might hear you out, and incorporate a section just for help. If not, then you could start a site solely based on help forums and tutorials- from building a computer, changing brake fluid, and getting good deals on the web, to tutorials on everything from basic algebra to calculus, and earth science to theoretical physics. This could be one massive site.

btw- I can find any info or links you need if you get this started. Just pm me.
 
It sounds like a good idea, but here are some problems to contend with:

1. Curriculum is determined by the states. (This is why so many textbooks suck - rather than go into any depth on any subject, textbooks are written so they are "good enough" to cover the curriculum of multiple states.)

2. Teachers are VERY slow to adapt to electronic texts. In fact, the majority of the population is slow to adapt to electronic texts. Sure, they may be available online, but the vast majority of people print out the text they're interested in before working with it.

There are a large number of electronic texts available for mathematics. Why haven't you heard of them? Because no one uses them. Of course, your suggestion is somewhat unique. However, here is where your suggestion is going to lead to chaos:

Who determines the "correct" method for solving a problem?
For a simple example, let's look at division of fractions.
First, students learn to understand division. What is 23 divided by 5. This can be thought of in several ways, such as how many piles of 5 can be made from 23 items? 4 and 3/5 of a pile.

4/5 divided by 2/7
How many piles of 2/7 can be made from 4/5 of an item?
In the U.S., the algorithm used to solve this is to invert the second fraction and multiply.
4/5 times 7/2
Then multiply across the top and across the bottom.
Answer is 28/10 which is 2 4/5

Just for sh!ts and giggles, ask a 4th or 5th grade teacher *why* you flip and multiply.

Have you ever seen division of fractions done by using a common denominator?

4/5 divided by 2/7 becomes
28/35 divided by 10/35
how many times does 28 thirtyfifths go into 10 thirtyfifths? 28/10's times.

Oddly, this latter algorithm for dividing fractions is used in more countries than the algorithm most commonly used in the United States.

Now, who gets to vote on the best way? Or, are you going to provide every possible way to solve a problem?? If you decide to provide all the algorithms that are commonly used, then you're going to cause problems. Sure, most of the people in this forum are smart enough to handle multiple methods of solving problems. However, that isn't the case with about 1/3 or more of math students. I think that ultimately, because of the increased depth that you could go into on any topic, and the various methods that could be used to solve any particular problem that such an endeavor would become unwieldy to use.

That said,
I say, "go for it!"
I would hope that my points fail to materialize as causing problems, or that you can think of a clever way to avoid such problems.
 
P.S. I was considering writing a math textbook, possibly over this coming summer, that deals exclusively with the math curriculum in NY. Don't put me out of business! The NYS math curriculum is undergoing some major changes. Even to this day, after the last change, there are no textbooks that we have found to be entirely satisfactory.
 
Plausible idea, but including teachers as instructors is a bad idea. Those who chose `Education? as a major generally achieve low SAT scores; just marginally better then the `poly-sci? students. In the US, our worst students become part of the government bureaucracy while the next worse students become teachers. Of course this is a general statement as there are excellent teachers. Dr Pizza who often posts in these forums is, I?m sure, one of the latter.


See page 12 of this report:

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downlo.../yr2005/2005-college-bound-seniors.pdf

 
Geniere, I hear you, there is the old adage "Those who can do, and those who can't teach" but if many industries are anything to go by, theres just as many bad genius's out there who don't know how to run a business despite their amazing technical or other superior ability. There is global intelligence sure, but still in the end there is only 24 hours in a day and even genius's only have so much time.

Well then there has to be some sort of community feedback with the experts / professionals in industry who volunteer / maintain it, because the whole point of opening it up is that many minds are greater then even a collection of genius minds. There is only so much storage capacity and "CPU power" in an individual human mind or a small collection of them.

I agree that many teachers are not good, but I don't think someones marks are the be all and end all of who is intelligent or who is not, there are many intelligent people who struggle with other issues while growing up besides just school that's hidden behind the veil of not-so-excellent academic records. Take Braham Cohen for instance (of bit-torrent fame), he wasn't the most amazing academic and look at the kind of things he thought of that no one else did.

I know a lot of intelligent people who wouldn't bother investing in those that struggle, IMHO those people despite their genius aren't very intelligent in that regard. They should be wanting to maximize the potential that every person has rather then watch them decay. There should be a desire in real intellectuals to work on methods of maximizing everyones abilities. i.e. we all do better, when we all do better, right? heh.
 
There was a point when I found the adage "those who can do, and those who can't, teach" to be very insulting.

Quite honestly, almost all of the teachers I know are people whom I would consider "above average" or "well above average" in intelligence and ability. Most of them teach because they genuinely care about students.

However, I'm taking some online grad classes, which exposes me to teachers in other parts of the country. I showed one of my students the responses this week to a discussion question. At first, she was shocked to see such horrible grammar and the number of words spelled wrong. Then I pointed out that there was a button that can be clicked to check the spelling - these people were too lazy to even use that! When I told her that every one of the people taking that course had a bachelor's degree and the course was at the master's level, she was amazed. Then, I told her that the other people in the class were teachers from other states. Her response, "I'm glad I go to school here."
 
Just make sure you never use the word "obviously" in an example problem. . . .

If it were obvious, why would I be looking at this book?
 
Originally posted by: JfBrshie56
Just make sure you never use the word "obviously" in an example problem. . . .

If it were obvious, why would I be looking at this book?
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Exactly, I think the key thing is to recognize just because you have a PHD doesn't mean your some all knowing being who's opinions or views are somehow better then millions of students who aren't 'getting what you're telling them'.
 
Originally posted by: Einstein Element
I am the google master. Math help

But aside from this, I would contact wikipedia and propose this. Wikipedia was created to get all the world's information readily available in one location, and they might hear you out, and incorporate a section just for help. If not, then you could start a site solely based on help forums and tutorials- from building a computer, changing brake fluid, and getting good deals on the web, to tutorials on everything from basic algebra to calculus, and earth science to theoretical physics. This could be one massive site.

btw- I can find any info or links you need if you get this started. Just pm me.
Click to expand...


But who to contact? How? (as in whats the best method?), And would they listen? heh.
 
Originally posted by: Gannon
Originally posted by: Einstein Element
I am the google master. Math help

But aside from this, I would contact wikipedia and propose this. Wikipedia was created to get all the world's information readily available in one location, and they might hear you out, and incorporate a section just for help. If not, then you could start a site solely based on help forums and tutorials- from building a computer, changing brake fluid, and getting good deals on the web, to tutorials on everything from basic algebra to calculus, and earth science to theoretical physics. This could be one massive site.

btw- I can find any info or links you need if you get this started. Just pm me.
Click to expand...


But who to contact? How? (as in whats the best method?), And would they listen? heh.
Click to expand...



I would help as much as i could.(1-2 hours a week..... lol) But this would be a great idea. Wikipedia would really help, they have the info, they just need people to put it into guides, and make forums for questions. It would be massive, (but then again wikipedia is already fairly large...)
 
Okay few things to note about this topic... I'm from the UK so I think I have some pretty different views on this. A Wiki would seem like a very odd choice to base a syllabus on?. Anyone can add their comments, even (and I apologise for this) Americans? I definitely wouldn?t want my child basing their education on the ramblings of just anyone, and definitely not on those of a country where 1/6th of the population doesn?t know where Iraq is. (Again I apologise for this comment ? from reading other threads I realise most of you on this forum are very intelligent - but sadly the national statistics say otherwise. Famously a video was recently featured on one of our popular shows asking 1000 people in the streets of 5 US cities to pinpoint Iraq and N/S Korea on a fake world map?. 1/6th didn?t realise that Korea was in fact not Australia/New Zealand! And most who got it wrong couldn?t locate the UK! Funny, but sad.)

A common syllabus is admirable, but there is a great gap in teaching standard across the US. Lets take that point further?. Across the pond? I know that by the time I was in 2nd year University (doing physics) a friend who went to the US on exchange went in at your 4th year (we only have 3) ? and found it horribly easy compared. While there he mentioned that the first 3 years were spent getting to a useful standard in maths/key concepts (like our 36hrs a week lessons/9hrs a week coursework 1st year). When he came back he said that it was due to you guys having to take many broad subjects in lower detail for longer?. E.g. by the time I was 14 I was only taking 9 subjects, and by 16 I was only doing 4 subjects (Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Biology) by choice ? eliminating the subjects I would be unlikely to use in my chosen path. Thus at age 17 my syllabus would be vastly different from the average American.

Oddly enough I?ve heard that the pupils dubbed your most gifted students often go on to do law/engineering with teaching/sciences being looked down on?. 100% the opposite here?. Engineering is for those who can?t hack maths/physics and law is for people who don?t know what to do! Teachers here have to do a full degree in their chosen subject, and then a PGCE for a year, leaving them reasonably well respected.

What is the correct method for solving something? The one that gives the right answer is often a good start, but learning all techniques is always a good idea:

?Have you ever seen division of fractions done by using a common denominator?
... ?
Oddly, this latter algorithm for dividing fractions is used in more countries than the algorithm most commonly used in the United States.?

In the UK we are taught both methods (?/? being the inverse operator of ?.? ? or ?*?, ?x? ? whatever you guys use for multiply), mainly because there are times when both are useful especially when simplifying complex equations?

This thread interests me particularly as my girlfriend and I have recently noticed the trend that our educational system here needs a helping hand (particularly for the less gifted students) and have set up an online tutoring service (see link below) to try and make it more socially acceptable, and make the industry here more transparent. In this respect we are far behind the US.

During my personal experience as a tutor I have found the people who need the help are not the students who would benefit from this type of Wiki system. They are usually either lazy or have missed a key concept a long time ago and have been slowly drowning in their subject matter. What they need is a facility to ask without feeling embarrassed, and to be placed in a situation where someone can help them at their own pace. From my own experience a library is best followed by resources such as http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ (which is fantastic, if lacking some of the more basic stuff), but students just aren?t willing to read to find the answer ? if they were we wouldn?t need schools at all!

So there you have it, the counter argument? feel free to correct me on any/all these points ? most is just second hand information, but reflects my views on the subject.

Finally I apologise if this post came off as insulting ? it was not intended as such, merely written to hammer home a point ? I actually miss my American housemate?. Great fun in pubs ? 4 pints and he was the life of the party!
 
Originally posted by: ppyupdn1...So there you have it, the counter argument? feel free to correct me on any/all these points ? most is just second hand information, but reflects my views on the subject...
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You?re living in a dream world. The education system in the UK is famous for its lack of qualified teachers and poor results. Why do you think Blair is trying to privatize it?

In higher education the US is the world leader by every standard of measurement in every field.

Why not stay on topic and spare us your fantasies.
 
ppyupdn1,

As the standards in your country are so much higher in maths, could you explain where your country gets the morons it has on game shows such as Dog Eat Dog? I've only watched the show a few times, but my impression from that show is that either someone hand picks the biggest morons (similar to the way US shows apparently gather contestants from trailer parks) or your maths education is realllllly poor in the UK. But, it's got to be really hard to find people who have difficulty with such arithmetic as 25 times 8, or 37 - 8. (To be fair, the contestant I observed got the second question correct and was quite proud of herself - after counting on her fingers.)

Geniere, unfortunately, we're not a world leader in mathematics education. 🙁
Then again, England is far behind us at the college level, and similar to us in high school performance.



 
In higher education the US is the world leader by every standard of measurement in every field.
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Don't make me laugh! I spent half of last year doing my housemates MSc Maths coursework, and I was doing MSc IS .... and he had an 87% average by your standards - which is not comparable to marks here - and got a standard pass - 5X% here (70%+ needed for a distinction).

I'm sorry, but world lists e.g. http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2005/ARWU2005_Top100.htm look oddly made up to me.... Harvard has a perfect score for gods sake! - you honestly believe an impartial person put this list together, or any of the ones like it! Over 26% better than Cambridge! - which has some of the finest teachers/researchers in the world! I dont think it's me who is dreaming....

I went to a private school and we had Americans there at A-level (16-18 yrs old), and they struggled - the standard of work here was far higher, and concentrated into only 3 or 4 subjects. The only foreigners who didn't have any trouble were the Chinese - who are (in my opinion) amazing, especially at Maths!

"Dog Eat Dog" is not a UK show... I've never heard of it, but I agree "trailer park" (not that we have those) people often give a country a bad name. A game show is also a bad example as they are hard for other reasons - you stand up in front of a large audience and get simple stuff wrong consistantly due to pressure of cameras on you....

Then again, England is far behind us at the college level, and similar to us in high school performance.
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I can assure you the two are not comparable at high school - the US has a broad regime of lessons, which we do not. College level is presumably 16-18yrs old - where I have had US classmates who struggle. The US catches up in Further education (using a 4-5 year course where we only have 3 years) and then the US "whoops ass" is in further higher education (MSc and Up).... If I were to do a PhD now I would make an effort to head your way as we simply dont have the funding you do.

My main point (which no one has commented on was the flaw with the Wiki system.... I'm not 100% on how they work, but I have come across several articles that were utter rubbish, and wouldn't want to flat learn these in school without some form of proof reading.

The education system in the UK is famous for its lack of qualified teachers and poor results. Why do you think Blair is trying to privatize it?
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Um he isn't.... quite the opposite actually.... and can you show me an article pointing to the UK's terrible teachers? - The lack of teachers is caused by poor salaries - £25k a year, which is pretty poor for a 1st year graduate, let alone someone as skilled as a teacher...
 
A common syllabus is admirable, but there is a great gap in teaching standard across the US. Lets take that point further?. Across the pond?
Click to expand...

But this is the whole point, you can make corrections and edits in real-time and propogate them *immediately* to millions of users, you can't do that with tradtional textbooks and non-electronic teaching methods. IMHO we want the best educational standards but be able to take the best information and propogate it and repeat it to everyone. The fact that anyone with the free time (i.e. teachers, professionals and other PHD's and other genius's in math) can edit it, I really doubt with a worldwide community (and those with a vested interest/special interest in education, i.e. teachers, engineers, scientists, and other professionals) that vandalism or 'badness' would creep into it.

With a wikipedia like revert system it would be fairly immune to vandalism because you could revert to the last best edit/edits. Remember this is just an idea the whole "how it's edited and by whom" would be in a wikipedia like fashion and teachers/ professionals in industry from around the world could also edit it. Not to mention if the right software was made you could elect authorities to decide what stays in and what gets trashed. Wikipedia seems to be doing fine even though anyone can edit the articles. A lot of math is made out to be more difficult then it actually is, what kids and teens need is time and well written explanations and different ways of thinking about math.

Even I can see the problems in many curriculums because many of these PHD's and so called genius's are speaking about math as if the were speaking to their peers and not teaching someone from *nothing* from the ground up, the key is or the goal should be enabling everyone to grasp what is being taught and anyone can do it with dedication, time, effort and effective examples. Sure some people will take longer then others, but that's why they can do it at their own pace and not the 'forced pace' you get in the school system. Many people have this mentality that people that take longer should give up at some point, I don?t believe anyone should ever give up on anything the want to learn IMHO.

I don't buy that people are "too stupid" to learn, they either need 1) More time to digest it or 2) Better and more helpful explanations to help them 'connect the dots' and make those realizations. 3) Exposing their strengths and weaknesses in how they process and think and strategically go about making calculations.

Really education is about thinking, problem solving, memorization and realization. All these things take time and there are many autodidacts out there that would love to have something like that available for all the great minds on the planet. Not to mention genius is not restricted to those of the highest IQ or academic accomplishments. I believe a lot of good and bright ideas are distributed throughout the populace, the process of many minds examining and recombining and thinking about what they see you'll end up with a lot of good stuff IMHO.
 
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