Where should we start?

Stephen Weimar (steve@forum.swarthmore.edu)
Mon, 17 Mar 1997 15:22:53 -0500 

Hello,

I've been asked to help facilitate this conversation and will be working
with Suzanne Alejandre, one of the teachers working closely with the Math
=46orum (http://forum.swarthmore.edu/).

As a brief reminder, here's what we've been given as conference goals and
topics for our group, Educational Content and Resources:

"Explore the balance between educational research and classroom practice.

"Goals of the conference will be to:
      identify successful strategies
      pinpoint problem areas
      inform ongoing and future research initiatives

"Issues to discuss:
            Using the Internet for research
            Constructivist learning
            Standards of quality
            Prospects for ongoing support
            Migration to commercial products
            Collaboration between researchers and practitioners
            Tools for school reform "

Here's something to react to. Feel free to offer your own starting point
for conversation.

In our case we are exploring use of the Internet in math education. We have
worked closely with practitioners from the beginning. Much of what happens
and is available at the Math Forum originated with and is often sustained
by classroom teachers, professional mathematicians, etc. Many of our
experiments went very quickly into classroom use and became expected
services, such is life on the Web.

Nonetheless, one of the big questions still appears to be what are the
benefits brought by this technology to the classroom that are unique and
needed?

Perhaps, at least from our perspective, the question should be reframed as
what opportunities does this technology open up? For one thing, I hope we
soon hear less about uses of the Internet in the classroom and more about
changes in learning environments that benefit from the existence of
Internet resources and projects, perhaps a subtle change, but I don't
assume optimal use of the technology means big chunks of classroom time in
front of computers. This, however, is more about the future where Internet
competence is more common and access is easy in and out of the school.

Access and competence with the technology continues to be a major hurdle to
actually working effectively with teachers on use of Internet math
resources. In this sense, our research is still removed from practices in
many classrooms. How does this delivery and professional development hurdle
compare with commonly attributed causes for the gap between research and
classroom practice?

In turn there's a kind of hole in our research since we are focused on
teacher participation in the development Internet resources and their use
in the classroom.

Sound familiar? Reactions?

Thoughts about how this conversation ought to be structured?

The archives are available at:
http://www.info-ren.org/projects/conference/archive/content/


-- steve

Stephen Weimar      |  steve@forum.swarthmore.edu
Math Forum          |  http://forum.swarthmore.edu/
Swarthmore College  |  610-328-8377