Re: education, technology & chat (The Mathematics of it)

[Peter Moxhay <moxhap@portlandschools.org>]

Peg, you wrote:

> he portlandschools in your e-mil address.  I want
> to know more about it.

It's the Portland, Maine, public school system.

> So, no, I haven't gotten it central, but I get measurement and 
> modeling of
> operations in by whatever means necessary.  Number words, count lists 
> of
> them, the Gelman and Gallistel and following stuff, and the info about
> number word structuring in other languages -- it can be a useful
> complication for numbers curricula, don't you think?

Of course! There are many ways to go about it. Getting the points you 
mentioned
added into a traditional introduction of number is a really good start.

The challenge for me has been, though, to keep the measurement-based
approach from being pushed off to the side as a "unit" -- a nice way to 
do "measurement "
for a couple of weeks and then we move on to another, unrelated topic.
AT-based approaches have such potential for a qualitative change in how 
concepts are
developed in children -- engaging teachers and administrators in a 
dialogue on this
is a task of a different order of magnitude, I've found.

Peter