mathematics
Joe Muskin and Adam Poetzel will show us how to create a coordinate path that a laser will follow to generate a design. This simple apparatus uses mirrors and a laser that projects the image on fluorescent paper.
In this session, Dr. Cheng-Yao Lin and Dr. Jerry Becker will discuss weaknesses they have found in preservice teacher’s computational skills and understanding. To assess students’ computational skills, they administered pretests the first day of class on the basic addition facts, multiplication facts and computational facility on the whole numbers, fractions, decimals and integers. The results they found were astonishing and worse than ever before, and they have found that they get worse each succeeding semester.
Theodore Brown is a Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and a former Provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His support was instrumental in starting the MSTE Office in 1993.
From 2003 to 2012, the Bradley Bourbonnais Community High School (BBCHS) worked with the MSTE Office in the College of Education to improve mathematics and science instruction and integrate technology into classroom teachings. This panel discussion will look particularly at the intervention in the mathematics classes as BBCHS, lessons learned and lessons lost.
Helen Boehrnsen was the Curriculum Director at BBCHS during this time
Renee Williams is the Mathematics Department Head at BBCHS and continues in this role today.
In a glass case in the hallway of Altgeld Hall on the University of Illinois campus lies an all-but-forgotten machine -- a Harmonic Analyzer designed by Albert Michelson to perform Fourier Analysis. This presentation will describe the year long effort to memorialize this machine via the creation of a series of videos and production of posters and a coffee table book. No specialized knowledge will be necessary to appreciate this wondrous machine.
A fascinating look at numbers in music through the use of golden section proportions, ancient Chinese magic squares, and feng shui in music by James Brown, Phil Collins, Eminem, Peter Maxwell Davies, Claude Debussy and Zack Browning. The lecture will include a discussion of Browning’s “Network Slammer” for flute and computer-generated sounds which is based on the Magic Square of the Sun, and String Quartet which is based on the Lo Shu Square as it appears in period eight of the Flying Star System of feng shui.
After almost twenty years in education, Amar Patel has found that all of the repeated efforts to overcome deficits in American education (No Child Left Behind, UCSMP, Common Core, etc.) all fail to overcome the singular issue that haunts teachers and school systems in America: You can’t learn math without spending time doing it. Amar will present what he thinks can be done about it, to those who could do something to help.
Getting students to embrace computational thinking and creative problem solving is not easy. But if done successfully, it can bring great benefits to the students now, and in the future. In this talk, Hon-Wai will discuss how he uses fun problems and activities to get students to unconsciously think about computational thinking. Some of these examples include MatheMagic, solving problems with graph coloring, CS UnPlugged activities (sorting networks, parity-based-puzzles, etc), creative use of induction, zero-knowledge proofs, pancake flipping problems.
In response to the launching of Sputnik almost 60 years ago, the US has struggled to reform school mathematics. We've spent large sums of money on new curricula, teacher training and technology. What seems to be working, and what remains to be done?
Each year, over one million college students enroll in math classes that do not count towards degree credit and serve to delay their time to graduation and use up resources. This talk provides a brief introduction to the major issues and trends related to these pre-college level math classes and then outlines a current effort to help accelerate students through these classes. This will include initial data from a study examining student experiences in this class.
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