AMC 10 Sample Question

Three children have a foot race in which the leader after 1 minute is declared the winner. Each child runs at a constant speed. At the end of the minute, Alicia has run 720 feet. Ben, who started 40 feet in front of Alicia, has run 600 feet from his starting point. Cheryl, who started 40 feet in front of Ben, has run 400 feet from her starting point. For how many seconds during the race was Ben in the lead?

A) 8
B) 10
C) 12
D) 15
E) 20


How would you tackle this using rote knowledge or memorization? What conceptual understanding is enough to solve this problem? Draw a picture? Work backwards? If you could solve this problem in the allocated 3 minutes rather than 20, what would that mean? What do you do to get to the point where you can solve virtually any D=RT problem quickly? Is that done with some sort of better conceptual understanding? Is speed meaningless? At what point, if ever, does it become meaningless? What happens when you practice? Is that just about speed? Is experience just about speed? When you see a new problem for the first time, will you be as slow as the first time you solved a DRT problem?

I think it would be hard to argue that experience and practice just mean speed; that they are not transferable to new problem types. We are told, however, that some sort of vague conceptual understanding is all that you need, even if it takes a long time to solve a problem. So what happens with practice and experience? What is that called? Drill and kill? Either practice matters or it doesn't.

A view from computer science college professors

I hear from a friend who teaches college computer science that many CS educators agree on the following:

1. There is too much emphasis on calculus, and more focus should be placed on discrete mathematics (graph theory, logic, automata theory, etc) and statistics.
2. K-12 education places too much emphasis on memorization at the expense of conceptual understanding.  This leaves college students ill-prepared for their computer science course work.

Interesting.

Cross posted at Education Quick Takes

"Silos"?

"Call for Papers
Integrated STEM Education Conference 2011 (ISEC 2011)
Best Practices in Integrated STEM Instruction
We are soliciting papers for the inaugural meeting of ISEC 2011, co-located with the
Trenton Computer Festival (TCF; www.tcf-nj.org) at the College of New Jersey (TCNJ),
on Saturday, April 2, 2011."

"Our goals for ISEC 2011 are to have thought-provoking discussions on how the “silos”
separating instruction in and, ultimately, comprehension among STEM fields can be
removed and, subsequently, on the various ways “integrated STEM methods” take shape
in K-16 classrooms. To this end, we invite you to submit original papers on best
practices in integrated STEM instruction that provide descriptions and assessment of
innovative integrated STEM instructional modules. Papers detailing initiatives that use computers to support programmatic initiatives are especially welcome."


I just got an email from IEEE with this call for papers. Can anyone translate the sentence that talks about goals? No wonder my dues are so high.

Graphic organizers "cheat sheet"

After my post on the middle school character cluster assignment, I thought I would follow up with an introduction to graphic organizers (aka concept maps).  This might be helpful to parents or others unfamiliar with these commonly used teaching tools.

Internet Savvy ? Not.

Kids Aren't As Internet Savvy As They Think

If you read it to the end -- I promise a website worth the click.

Students Talking About Student Life

Over at The Atlantic a guest blogger brought up for discussion a study showing students don't really learn anything their first two years at college, then he posted for further discussion some of the replies he received Student Life: Still More Views. All of it was interesting, but these two three comments really caught my attention.

There were many students that were thoughtful, interested, and hardworking. They did assigned readings, asked good questions in class, were ready to debate and argue, etc. THE MAJORITY WERE NOT. My friend and I would complain. We always thought that, yeah, you have to put up with people who aren't really interested in learning in high school, but then they get weeded out in college. Not the case, at least not at [my university]. My friend has since gone on to law school at a top 40 program. He thought that by graduate studies, those TRULY uninterested would have gone another way. Yet he still finds himself, at times, sitting next to students who have no intellectual curiosity or even a strong work ethic. I had one political science professor, who in a moment of candor during office hours, noted that when he taught at Princeton, he taught the same identical class (intro to political philosophy) and in the identical way. It was no harder at Princeton, and he was no different. The only difference he noted was the caliber of the students. Whereas at [the state university] there was a bell-curve distribution of a few As, some Bs, and lots of Cs and Ds, at Princeton, there were hardly any slacker students.

A different commenter said:

I went to a private, top 20 liberal arts school in New England for undergrad. I now attend a large state university as a grad student, and what I have to say about the quality of undergraduate education between the two institutions is this: state schools suck.

A professor's point of view:

As a tenured professor with a 22-year career teaching history at a "comprehensive public university," here are my reactions to Mr. Tierney's interesting musings on Contemporary Student Life....Most of the negative changes I have seen in college education began in the period when college aid, which tended to be dependent on performance in school, but which did not burden students with heavy debts upon graduation, was converted to loans, which are not usually as closely linked to getting good grades, but do burden students with debts. Result? Students want to get through school as quickly and efficiently as possible, to minimize their debt, and they are less concerned about grades. So they put more time into work, to try to work their way through, or overload their schedules, to get more units for each semester's loan money, and less time into study. (He/she also mentioned two other possible reasons)

Is this true?

Middle School Assignments and Kindergarten Ages

Two new posts at some favorite blogs:

Grace describes a middle school assignment that would have benefited from some proof-reading and attention to detail here: How to Confuse a Middle Schooler

And Connecticut considers whether to raise the age when Students can start kindergarten here:
Kindergarten Age Change Supported by Governor Malloy

Barry Garelick at Jay Greene

The Educationist View of Math Education

off-topic - wonderful blog

Hi everyone -

I'm back in IL, hanging out in the Highland Park Hospital ICU.

Since I'm not, at the moment, able to focus on the basal ganglia, I'm been scrounging the web, looking for things to read.

Struck gold an hour ago:

My Mother-in-Law is Still Sitting Between Us

The blog starts here, and I'm reading from the beginning.

Qualfying for high school honors classes

Many Most* high schools establish criteria for admission to honors and/or AP classes.  Here's a window into how one school does it.


Qualifying for high school honors classes - Education Quick Takes


*  UPDATE:  I've corrected this because I don't have data to back up my statement that "most" schools have admission criteria, and gassstationwithoutpumps pointed out in the comments section that in his experience many do not.

Memory and Cognition Lab

The three articles in the Chronicle are especially good.

Sciences Po joins College Board

at the New York Times

I don't know what it means for a university to be a "member" of College Board, but there you have it.

Sciences Po is one of the two four elite universities in France.

onward and upward

11:35pm

ME: Hey! What did M. say about the SAT?

C: He said it wasn't that bad!

ME: Really?

C: Yeah!

ME: That's great! D. said it wasn't that bad, either!

C. Yeah, he said it wasn't too hard. He skipped the whole last section.

dumbest thing I ever said

Dumbest thing I ever said: "Is there a political movement against charter schools for suburban kids?

On the front page in today's New York Times: On Upper West Side, Hurdles for Charter School

Parents, Acorn and the unions organizing against a charter school.

The grounds?

A charter school would be bad for the public schools.

It's never about the kids.


at least I got this one right

On August 20:

I keep thinking the politics of choice will be affected by the economy. Charter schools (and vouchers) are cheaper than public schools, and parents are happier (or at least spend fewer years of their lives being unhappy - pdf file).

Same academic outcomes for less money, with less stress on the family: put it that way, some of us are going to take that deal.

Looks like Eva Moskowitz had the same idea:

The guests sipped wine and nibbled sushi, guacamole and Gruyère — lawyers, bankers, preschool teachers, managers and consultants of various kinds, bound by the anxious decision they must confront in the months ahead: where their 4-year-olds will go to school in the fall.

Downstairs, a flier by the doorman’s desk had greeted them with a provocative question: “Why should you have to spend college tuition on kindergarten?” Back upstairs, in the stylish apartment on West 99th Street, Eva S. Moskowitz, a former City Council member who runs a network of charter schools in Harlem and the Bronx, delivered a tantalizing sales talk.

“Middle-class families need options too,” she said.

sorry, Johnny

little sister

QUESTION: Your method may work with children with a native high IQ—but demanding that kind of excellence from less intelligent children seems unfair and a fool's errand. Demanding hard work and a great effort from children is the best middle ground we can reach philosophically, isn't it? Your thoughts?

Jokes about A+s and gold medals aside (much of my book is tongue-in-cheek, making fun of myself), I don't believe that grades or achievement is ultimately what Chinese parenting (at least as I practice it) is really about. I think it's about helping your children be the best they can be—which is usually better than they think! It's about believing in your child more than anyone else—even more than they believe in themselves. And this principle can be applied to any child, of any level of ability. My youngest sister, Cindy, has Down syndrome, and I remember my mother spending hours and hours with her, teaching her to tie her shoelaces on her own, drilling multiplication tables with Cindy, practicing piano every day with her. No one expected Cindy to get a Ph.D.! But my mom wanted her to be the best she could be, within her limits. Today, my sister works at Wal-Mart, has a boyfriend and still plays piano—one of her favorite things is performing for her friends. She and my mom have a wonderful relationship, and we all love her for who she is.

Tiger Mother Talks Back
January 15, 2011

the myth of regurgitation

Educators rely heavily on learning activities that encourage elaborative studying, while activities that require students to practice retrieving and reconstructing knowledge are used less frequently. Here, we show that practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. The advantage of retrieval practice generalized across texts identical to those commonly found in science education. The advantage of retrieval practice was observed with test questions that assessed comprehension and required students to make inferences. The advantage of retrieval practice occurred even when the criterial test involved creating concept maps. Our findings support the theory that retrieval practice enhances learning by retrieval-specific mechanisms rather than by elaborative study processes. Retrieval practice is an effective tool to promote conceptual learning about science.

Most thought on human learning is guided by a few tacit assumptions. One assumption is that learning happens primarily when people encode knowledge and experiences. A
related assumption is that retrieval—the active, cue-driven process of reconstructing knowledge—only measures the products of a prior learning experience but does not itself produce learning. Just as we assume that the act of measuring a physical object would not change the size, shape, or weight of the object, so too people often assume that the act of measuring memory does not change memory (1, 2). Thus most educational research and practice has focused on enhancing the processing that occurs when students encode knowledge – that is, getting knowledge "in memory". Far less attention has been paid to the potential importance of retrieval to the process of learning. Indeed, recent National Research Council books about how students learn in educational settings (3–5) contain no mention of retrieval processes.

It is beyond question that activities that promote effective encoding, known as elaborative study tasks, are important for learning (6). However, research in cognitive science has challenged the assumption that retrieval is neutral and
uninfluential in the learning process (7–11). Not only does retrieval produce learning, but a retrieval event may actually represent a more powerful learning activity than an encoding event. This research suggests a conceptualization of mind and learning that is different from one in which encoding places knowledge in memory and retrieval simply accesses that stored knowledge. Because each act of retrieval changes memory, the act of reconstructing knowledge must be considered essential to the process of learning. Most prior research on retrieval practice has been conducted in the verbal learning tradition of memory research (12). The materials used have often not reflected the complex information students learn in actual educational settings (13).

Most prior research has not used assessments thought to measure meaningful learning, which refers to students' abilities to make inferences and exhibit deep understanding of concepts (14, 15).

[snip]

[B]oth elaborative concept mapping and retrieval practice are active learning tasks, and our results make it clear that whether a task is considered "active" is not diagnostic of how much learning the task will produce.

The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning
Jeffrey D. Karpicke* and Janell R. Blunt
Sciencexpress Report
www.sciencexpress.org / 20 January 2011 / Page 1 / 10.1126/science.1199327

Although I read the research that came out a couple of years ago on learning-via-testing, I hadn't absorbed the idea that testing is a form of studying.

Years ago, I learned the distinction between recall (remembering an actor's name, say) and recognition (recognizing an actor's name when you hear it). Recall is harder.

I thought the learning-testing effect was a simple matter of working on recall as opposed to recognition.

Looks like it's not. Remembering always means reconstructing.


news flash: There's no such thing as regurgitating facts.

daily quizzes beat concept maps

an oldie but goodie: the Gambill method

a concept map

Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping

"Test-taking cements knowledge" at Education Quick Takes

daughter of Chinese mom

Dear Tiger Mom,

You’ve been criticized a lot since you published your memoir, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” One problem is that some people don’t get your humor. They think you’re serious about all this, and they assume Lulu and I are oppressed by our evil mother. That is so not true. Every other Thursday, you take off our chains and let us play math games in the basement.

But for real, it’s not their fault. No outsider can know what our family is really like. They don’t hear us cracking up over each other’s jokes. They don’t see us eating our hamburgers with fried rice. They don’t know how much fun we have when the six of us — dogs included — squeeze into one bed and argue about what movies to download from Netflix.

I admit it: Having you as a mother was no tea party. There were some play dates I wish I’d gone to and some piano camps I wish I’d skipped. But now that I’m 18 and about to leave the tiger den, I’m glad you and Daddy raised me the way you did. Here’s why.

A lot of people have accused you of producing robot kids who can’t think for themselves. Well, that’s funny, because I think those people are . . . oh well, it doesn’t matter. At any rate, I was thinking about this, and I came to the opposite conclusion: I think your strict parenting forced me to be more independent. Early on, I decided to be an easy child to raise. Maybe I got it from Daddy — he taught me not to care what people think and to make my own choices — but I also decided to be who I want to be. I didn’t rebel, but I didn’t suffer all the slings and arrows of a Tiger Mom, either. I pretty much do my own thing these days — like building greenhouses downtown, blasting Daft Punk in the car with Lulu and forcing my boyfriend to watch “Lord of the Rings” with me over and over — as long as I get my piano done first.

Everybody’s talking about the birthday cards we once made for you, which you rejected because they weren’t good enough. Funny how some people are convinced that Lulu and I are scarred for life. Maybe if I had poured my heart into it, I would have been upset. But let’s face it: The card was feeble, and I was busted. It took me 30 seconds; I didn’t even sharpen the pencil. That’s why, when you rejected it, I didn’t feel you were rejecting me. If I actually tried my best at something, you’d never throw it back in my face.

I remember walking on stage for a piano competition. I was so nervous, and you whispered, “Soso, you worked as hard as you could. It doesn’t matter how you do.”

[snip]

Another criticism I keep hearing is that you’re somehow promoting tunnel vision, but you and Daddy taught me to pursue knowledge for its own sake. In junior year, I signed myself up for a military-history elective (yes, you let me take lots of classes besides math and physics). One of our assignments was to interview someone who had experienced war. I knew I could get a good grade interviewing my grandparents, whose childhood stories about World War II I’d heard a thousand times. I mentioned it to you, and you said, “Sophia, this is an opportunity to learn something new. You’re taking the easy way out.” You were right, Tiger Mom. In the end, I interviewed a terrifying Israeli paratrooper whose story changed my outlook on life. I owe that experience to you.

There’s one more thing: I think the desire to live a meaningful life is universal. To some people, it’s working toward a goal. To others, it’s enjoying every minute of every day. So what does it really mean to live life to the fullest? Maybe striving to win a Nobel Prize and going skydiving are just two sides of the same coin. To me, it’s not about achievement or self-gratification. It’s about knowing that you’ve pushed yourself, body and mind, to the limits of your own potential. You feel it when you’re sprinting, and when the piano piece you’ve practiced for hours finally comes to life beneath your fingertips. You feel it when you encounter a life-changing idea, and when you do something on your own that you never thought you could. If I died tomorrow, I would die feeling I’ve lived my whole life at 110 percent.

And for that, Tiger Mom, thank you.

Why I Love My Strict Chinese Mom
By SOPHIA CHUA-RUBENFELD
New York Post

baby videos

Just came across this study - passing it along ---

Do Babies Learn From Baby Media?