I am happily co-leading the first section of COETAIL at YIS with Kim Cofino. COETAIL (Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy) is a professional development certification program designed specifically for international school educators in conjunction with SUNY. Kim developed the course along with Jeff Utecht at ISB. Kim joined YIS in 2010 and brought the course with her to offer in the greater Tokyo area.
As part of the first session we read an article entitled “World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others. How to teach when learning is everywhere”. Every time I read about collaborative technology, I remember the only reason I got through high school was because of a good friend who happened to be placed in the same math class with me. Without my friend Jon’s additional instructions, I would still probably believe that a “numerator” was most likely the person at the podium orchestrating the proceedings in the US House of Representatives with a “denominator” some corrupt scoundrel who either offered or witheld support depending on the influence of the political lobbying organizations. I wonder if I can still track down my guidance counselor to thank her for that stroke of timetable genius.
We had a big test coming up and I had a lot of difficulty understanding the concepts and the steps to solving the equations. I worked like a dog to understand what was going on and Jon worked even harder trying to help me. When the day of the test arrived, I felt confident that my level of understanding would see me safely through into the 85% range but would have needed another week to memorize the necessary formulae.
My argument against rote memorization had always been, “if I ever need this I can just look it up”. Little did I know back in 1988 how easy it would actually become to “just look it up”. Because I hadn’t been able to memorize the required formulae, I went into that exam already defeated and my mark following did nothing to remedy the situation. I wonder now how my own relationship with math might be different if we had had the graphing calculators students carry with them now that store the formulae ready to be applied to the right problems. Maybe I would have even enjoyed math rather than seen it as 45 minutes of mandatory hell for some infraction (another math term, no doubt) that I had unknowingly committed.
In this week’s COETAIL article, we are reminded that “we must find our own teachers, and they must find us.” I didn’t do well in mathematics according to the old model of rote memorization void of meaningful context. At the time, I am sure my teacher thought he was helping me “discover” how to solve for x. I wish I had been able to see what role discovering for x might have played in a more meaningful task that I was actually invested in. Something tells me with the flexibility to find my own best learning experience, the concepts would have more quickly fallen into place and maybe, just maybe, one or two formulae would have become second nature. – AC
Posted On: Friday, September 2nd, 2011
Posted In: COETAIL, Technology
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