User talk:Huntertechcomp321

Keynote Address: Globalizing our Classrooms, Deborah J. Hughes Hallett Lecturer This lecture focused on how we, as Math teachers could successful ly utilize the internet in our classrooms and Mathematical courses. The basic premise of the lecturer is that we should try to add sense and meaning to what we teach, and that the Internet is a good way to link mathematics into real world occurrences, thus increasing awareness and interest of our students in Mathematics.

Several points were made by the lecturer: 1.	Images can help students to understand a concept or topic. Images can be manipulated, rotated, so students can see them from different angles. This can help students to understand different concepts. 2.	Mathematics can be related to a student’s everyday life. The lessons can refer to time-related data, such as the changing stock market, the annual rainfall of a region, the unemployment rate, or even the migration of whales. 3.	The lesson can be made to require real time data collection, and analyzing data or building databases. Students can conduct research using large and geographically varied samples. They learn to analyze trends, correlations, and causality. With real-time data so readily accessible today, students have the ability to see the relationship between their studies and the real world.

Her belief is that by incorporating globalization and use of the internet into the classroom, we have a great tool to solve daily and that mathematics can incorporate and support student cooperation and collaboration. It can further facilitate student learning in problem solving, math research, and virtual hands-on activities. We looked at several online topics which were then opened up for discussion. These included looking at surveys to see how many people thought we should invade Ukraine, and comparing the relative sizes of each state in the US to a foreign country. We looked at statistical charts analyzing which countries had the most domain names, the distribution of police officers per capita of 100,000 population across countries, education trends in India based on classes and economic background, and we looked at how logarithms factored into airport noise pollution.

The internet basically expands the resources available and decreases the time and location dependencies that can be limiting factors in schools. It offers powerful and varied ways for students and teachers to interact manipulate data and conduct research. Also, we are living in an era with substantial budget cuts across many schools. City University of New York and in particular, Hunter College is no exception to this. Non-Internet resources that have been normally used such as libraries, video, film strips, and CDs, to name a few, are becoming increasingly scarce. There are documents, artifacts, and books that students in a typical school will never be able to access. In addition, many schools are working with outdated textbooks and materials. The internet and global approach to Math education expands the resources available and decreases the time and location dependencies that can be limiting factors in schools.

The Internet eliminates the need to be in the same place and the same time as the person or resource you are interacting with. There are technical requirements including having a computer with an Internet connection, but the world is at your door. This is not to say that the interaction and dynamic of a classroom are going away, rather they are growing. Away from schools, students can ask questions by sending e-mails to friends, teachers or counter experts, they can research materials at various web sites and they can submit their homework for review from anywhere at any time.

In summary, she indicated we need to show what math can do. We need to teach math in ways that might not be obviously relevant to the student. She invites Math teachers to choose examples with purpose, and where the context is important in its own right. She admitted that this would be easier in some Math courses than others.