Webinars
"If I Knew Then What I Know Now" by Herb Gross // 3 Part Series
Organized by AMATYC (American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges)
Have You Ever Seen a Number?
October 13, 2016
This first webinar will discuss the assertion that students will internalize math better if we teach them to view numbers as adjectives that modify nouns. For example students recognize that both a million and a billion are “big” numbers. However they get an “aha” moment when they see that a million seconds is less than 12 days but a billion seconds is more than 31 years! Emphasis will be placed on the ways that this concept impacts the study of fractions. Students who cannot grasp fractions will most likely never successfully complete a degree or program in a STEM field.
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The Game of Algebra
November 3, 2016
This second webinar will discuss the implications of the common student comment “The algebra course was easy. I could do everything except the word problems”. Sadly in the textbook of life there are only word problems (which, ironically in basic algebra can always be solved without the aid of algebra!). To help students learn to internalize algebra better, Herb will share with us his concept of teaching algebra as a game in which the rules are the axioms of arithmetic (the field axioms) and the objective is to discover the inescapable consequences that follow logically from these rules.
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Implementing the Vision
December 1, 2016
Under the aegis of Corning Inc., Herb Gross, with the help of Judy Bender and Rick Medeiros, has developed a website that espouses in detail the vision he has shared with us in the previous two webinars. His hope is that the members of AMATYC will take ownership of the website in whatever ways they wish; for example by using it as a supplemental resource for students and faculty involved with developmental math courses or using it as a resource to share with the general public and the teachers in K -12 in the college’s service area, etc... All of the material on the website is available for anyone to use free of charge. To help viewers internalize the content of the website, Rick and Judy will take the audience through excerpts of the videos and powerpoint slideshows that are available on the website.
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