Good Day Bloggers!
Objective:
For this week, it is my objective for this blog post to present my responses to questions, ideas and information presented this week in the course EDBE 8P54 at Brock University! As this was our first week of Year 2 Mathematics, we went through the course objectives, were introduced to webinars, created Self-Introductions on Sakai, and went through the many misconceptions in the educational field of mathematics!
Card Tricks = Mathematics?
In our class, we utilized cards to illustrate how mathematical concepts are used in magic tricks. Believe it or not, there are many areas of mathematics that contribute to a successful magic trick! In this case, we were shown a 'simple' card trick. For those of us who had little to no knowledge in regards to the use of playing cards in a magic trick, (myself) I was fascinated with how the trick followed through. The teacher demonstrated the trick with the cards: shuffle the cards, split the cards into four piles, move the cards around in a methodical manner (3 cards per pile) and come up with a Queen on top of all four piles of cards. We as a class then attempted to perform the card trick, trying to identify the mathematical concept that was utilized, and learned from one another to do the trick ourselves.
Welcome to the Forum Posts!
As this was the first week of our course, we were introduced to the essential concepts: webinar presentations, the mandatory forum posts, and how to respond to others when they posted a forum post. We as individuals in the class were responsible for completing two forum posts in Math Mindset Module 1, and to react to other forum posts made by our fellow Teacher Candidates. The topics of these forums were: Attitudes Toward Math, Math Myths, Brain Growth, Smashing Stereotypes, and Online 1 Recap. I personally thought the messages from Attitudes Toward Math and Smashing Stereotypes to be interesting, as it is not always clear why many individuals look at math with displeasure. When watching the Attitudes Toward Math video, I realized that many of these misconceptions are in many of Hollywood movies. The message in many of these short clips depicted that if you were good at Math, then your character is categorized in a negative way. Individuals see these movies, and they connect with their characters, and often people relate to the characters that they idolize, and assume that they are not 'good' at math themselves.
Reflection:
I thought this first day (as well as the forum posts and other reading material provided) to be very interesting, as it allows for us as Teacher Candidates to connect mathematics to something fun (such as magic) and allows us to probe the reasons why many of us feel that we are not 'good' at math. This can very likely be due to the misconceptions of Hollywood films, but I think this is also due to our every day influences such as: Parents, Teachers, and our fellow peers. As future teachers, we can do our part to eliminate these misconceptions, and demonstrate in a fun and positive classroom that math can be fun, and is often directly linked to real life application.
Thats all for now Fellow Bloggers! Until next week :)
Welcome back to the blogosphere Jacob!
ReplyDeleteI too, thought that kicking off our math course with a magic trick was a great hook to get our minds thinking. This magic trick challenged us all to observe patterns, count, divide and problem solve. What could be more "mathy" than that? I also found that the "Hollywood Hates Math" video was a great eyeopener to show audiences, the power that the film and television industry has on young minds. I agree with your point, that misconceptions are being perpetuated by Hollywood films to cast "math people" in a negative light. These characters are described as "math geeks," "math nerds," "dweebs," and "losers." While the main characters that are "idolized" (as you stated) are seen bashing the subject and making it "cool" to hate math.
We can all learn a thing or two from our math loving peers, and I agree that as teachers we need to do our part in making math fun and cool again!