Posts published in February, 2016

Week 7 - Thu Ngo

The Keith Devlin video gave me a totally new perspective on math and symbols. The first is that I’ve always seen math as what Devlin describes as “the representation of math”. The second is that the symbols that we use to use represent math is artificial. This second realization was huge for me. Mathematical symbols… Read more Week 7 - Thu Ngo

Week 7

I found the article on the cool-math games website extremely fascinating. It reminded me of Luminosity which was recently sued for millions of dollars for claiming to make games that improve your ‘brainpower’ when in actuality they did nothing. Cool-math games also seems to have an empty claim like this and what is even worse… Read more Week 7

Bedtime Books and coolmath

I found the Berkowitz study to be interesting mainly because I find it hard that they were able to find “math” books that did not also have an effect on children’s literacy. Separating the two seems impossible to me. To Berkowitz’s point though that mathematical skills lag behind literacy due to lack of parent interaction… Read more Bedtime Books and coolmath

Week 7 Reading

As a student who loved math growing up, but gradually lost interest over time, I often wonder what changed. I found Keith Devlin’s talk on “Using Video Games to Break the Symbol Barrier” very interesting.  Devlin argues that one explanation might be found in the way math is represented, particularly in its symbolic form. He proposes… Read more Week 7 Reading

Week 7: Role of technology in simple interventions

What I got out of the readings is that interventions can be really simple and don’t have to involve high technology. Interventions like talking kids through math problems and solutions, and supervising on which websites to go to, can make a huge difference. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a professor, who… Read more Week 7: Role of technology in simple interventions

Week 7 Discussion - Juan G

I was surprised when I read that educational research had not taken advantage of the popularity of coolmath-games. By collaborating with a popular site such as coolmath, we can gather data that could help designers use this information to work on creating games that are not just popular, but also effective in improving student performance. I… Read more Week 7 Discussion - Juan G

Are we designing for the wrong learning goal?

I was interested in the results of the Berkowitz article, which found that children from families with math anxiety improved their understanding of math after playing with a math app at least once a week. However, playing with the app more than once a week did not further improve their math scores. This result made… Read more Are we designing for the wrong learning goal?

DQC week 7 - neopets incentives

Grimes & Shade, 2005- It doesn’t surprise me that Neopets is built on immersive advertising. Although children are more vulnerable to being exploited by commercial interests, this is not limited to the online media world. Product placement surrounds them in all aspects of their lives- everything around them at home, at school, through interactions with… Read more DQC week 7 - neopets incentives

Week 7 Discussion

The Zhang reading indirectly highlighted a very fascinating issue about how the Internet facilitates the achievement gap. Zhang states, “highly educated adults were more likely to use the Internet for personal development, while adults with lower education levels more often were online for gaming and social interaction” (11). As a result, “the digital divide in… Read more Week 7 Discussion

Week 7 Discussion

In Using Games to Break the Symbol Barrier, Keith Devlin provides Wuzzit as an example of an educational math game that uses a game’s visual affordances to convey math concepts without abstract math symbols in the way. I found Devlin’s concept of the “symbol barrier” to be accurate and compelling, and perhaps a leading cause for… Read more Week 7 Discussion